KUWAIT CITY, March 8: MP Adnan Abdul Samad says the issue of housing is the number one problem in Kuwait which can snowball into a crisis due to the large number of applicants and the difficulty in gaining access to land and rising prices of house rents.

He said the problem is not about presenting the issue. It is about the implementation because “we have become used to hearing sweet talk but nothing actually happens.”

He indicated 15 years ago when Abdurrahman Al-Houti was chairman of the Municipal Council he came to the National Assembly and said there were 104,000 housing units that were being prepared, and a lot of presentations were made during discussions of the housing care budgets, but nothing really happened.

He hopes the Parliament will take charge and follow up the housing issue “because the numbers and dates that have been given to us by the Budgets and Final Accounts Committee differ from what was presented during Thursday’s special session. ‘They’ told us during the committee meeting that 139,000 housing units will be ready by 2017, but now this date has been extended to 2020.”

He added, “It was said that advanced censorship of the Audit Bureau and the Central Tenders Commission (CTC) hinders the resolution of the housing issue and had demanded the formation of a joint committee, but this committee will not be formed because it may contradict with laws and regulations.

Moreover, according to the study carried out by the Audit Bureau the existence of advanced censorship was the period that the housing projects are completed in 1,437 days, but this period increased after the abolition of advanced censorship to 1,745 days, which means the achievement was fastest when censorship was in place.”

Concerned
He said the housing issue is very important and this is also the concern of HH the Amir. Each time they met the Amir, he put across to them this issue and called on those concerned to solve it as soon as possible using all available means.

He pointed out “there is a lot of political tension in the country because of the housing problem in addition to other issues and it may also affect the economic activity.”

Meanwhile, MP Bader Al-Bazali has presented a proposal which calls for the removal of military camps from residential areas and relocating them on the outskirts of the mainland taking into account the environmental, strategic and military aspects to protect the land of the country.

He has also proposed that these lands be used to build markets, entertainment places and commercial centers.

He explained building camps for the Army, National Guard and police in the heart of Kuwait City distorts the view of the Capital. Their existence in the midst of high rise buildings leads to exposure of their secrets and confidentiality of vehicles and building structures.

Moreover, MPs Hisham Al-Baghli, Adel Jarallah, Adnan Al-Mutawa, Khalil Abdullah and Yaqoub Al-Sane have submitted another proposal to establish security offices in all ministries and government institutions to ensure security in cooperation with security companies.

According to the proposal the office will be under the control and authority of a security man and its duty is to record complaints and refer the perpetrators to the interrogative authority directly without the need to go to police station.

In their proposal, the lawmakers explained the reason for the proposal is due to many heated arguments and quarrels that occur between employees and visitors during working hours in these government institutions which affect the stability of work in public facilities and their productivity suffers.