Our housing problem and others are not solved by a laggard government

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IT is hard to overlook how Kuwait is being neglected deliberately or unintentionally by the executive authority, which seems to be singing its own songs while the entire nation is searching for salvation from the country’s current situation, which attracts a new crisis every time it emerges from another.

Apparently, the Council of Ministers is not trying to get out of the political quarantine it entered due to the fear of taking any step that could lead to a parliamentary inquiry, which perturbs the government’s comfort and its addiction to vacuum.

Because of this, the executive authority does not move except when disaster strikes and calamity erupts. This has become a very normal thing.

The front-liners are looking for the reward that was approved for them a long time ago. Such a reward is still unseen, and the Cabinet may drink “lion’s milk” if any of the MPs file an interpellation against the Prime Minister in order for the government to spend the money on those who put their health at risk in order to protect the country and its people from COVID-19 virus.

This issue is one of the many that are awaiting a solution. The housing issue is nothing but the tip of the iceberg in terms of the suffering that the Kuwaitis are experiencing because of wrong treatments. Such cases have been accumulating for years, rather decades, because there are those who do not want to hear the opinion of specialists, and do not take into account dozens of suggestions that were presented by MPs to successive governments including the current one whose leader seems to be comfortable with its situation, and does not want to initiate what he sees as “a headache”.

The issue of housing care was proceeding according to a clear methodology when the late Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem announced the valuation of old houses and the start of distribution of plots to Kuwaitis in the 1960s. However, the process turned into a dilemma with time. When the word of real estate dealers was heard by the government and the relevant institutions, waiting for this vital care became like the anecdote – “The key is with the carpenter, the carpenter wants money, the money is with the groom, the groom wants milk, the milk is with the cow, the cow wants weed, and the weed wants rain”.

The words of the General Manager of the Kuwait Credit Bank Salah Al-Mudhaf in a press statement were clear in this regard. He said, “The bank needs KD 16 billion to finance housing loans until 2035”. Hence, the fund of KD 800 million approved by the National Assembly in agreement with the government is nothing more than a sedative that would not serve the purpose.

Based on this principle, we reiterate that the government should study the experiences of other countries in this regard, such as the Sultanate of Oman, Morocco and Egypt. These countries resolved the housing issue within a few years in a successful manner and saved billions.

This is what Al-Mudhaf emphasized when he said, “The current situation is not stable. There is no possibility for the bank to continue providing loans in this way in the long term. The housing policy must be reconsidered to develop sustainable solutions”.

There is no doubt that these solutions can only come with a decision. Because the government is reluctant and its head is inactive, we turn to the political leadership, which is in control of the matter, to consider the proposals submitted by experts and MPs in order to get the nation out of this impasse.

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

This news has been read 19678 times!

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