Your Highness Prime Minister … housing care has stalled, learn from the neighbors

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BRAVO to the Council of Ministers for placing the housing welfare file at the top of their priorities, and declaring a bold step in this regard.

However, it must be emphasized that this file cannot be resolved by the usual methods that have been used by the concerned authorities since the start of work on housing care nearly 60 years ago.

This is due to the fact that it has caused many social and environmental problems, and burdened citizens with unbearable weight.

At first the project was good because circumstances in those days necessitated the rules that were in place. However, with the development that the country witnessed and the idea of​​ “land and loan” that it later adopted, it turned out to be the worst thing a country could pursue to secure good housing care for its citizens.

Then the chaos and lack of follow-up caused the creation of cement forests, to say the least that they are just living boxes and not a suitable place to live.

Therefore, today we are witnessing chaos in most areas due to misunderstanding of the meaning of housing care, and the failure to observe the correct foundations in construction and utilization of spaces.

This issue has today become almost a dilemma. It takes several years to get out of the impasse, firstly because of mismanagement, and secondly because the financial abundance that existed in the past decades has shrunk, which prompted the concerned authorities to delay in deciding on the many applications that they had.

Your Highness the Prime Minister, it is unfortunate that our successive governments did not learn from the experiences of other countries in this matter. Things “stalled” due to the lack of creativity in the art of decision-making.

On the other hand, most countries that suffer from securing housing care for their citizens managed to solve this matter using an easy and inexpensive manner through banks specialized in housing, supervised by the government and financed by commercial banks, and their capital can be between KD 3 billion and KD 5 billion. In this manner, the state grants land and builds infrastructure, and guarantees in return the interest on loans that are for long periods. Thus, it does not cost any money and does not require liquidity, as is currently the case in Kuwait.

In those countries, especially the Gulf ones, there are three models of housing care subject to this file, according to the needs of the citizen, ranging from the equivalent of KD 70,000, 90,000, and 120,000. The beneficiary chooses the model and works on it without any modifications, and the borrower pays the installments according to his financial solvency.

The solution to this problem is very easy if the intention is sincere. If you do not have sufficient experience in this field, you can use housing experts from abroad, given that in patched solutions, corruption in this file will remain forever.

There is a lot of manipulation in these projects, in addition to favoritism that hurts the public and raises the financial burden, which makes most housing projects mired in corruption.

By Ahmed Al-Jarallah

Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times

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