Housing Minister Dr Haidar spoke with the Petition Committee of the parliament today and clarified some concerns surrounding the Gedhoruveriyaa scheme.
The 4,000 apartments to be issued under the 'Gedhoruveriyaa' [home owner] scheme does not include the 100 flats to be dedicated for Maldives Customs Service employees, said Housing Minister Dr Ali Haidar Ahmed today.
The Minister's comments were made during a meeting with the Parliament's Petition Committee after Housing Ministry's senior officials were summoned to the committee regarding a petition submitted to the parliament requesting to not cancel the list of flat recipients under the Gedhoruveriyaa scheme which was previously gazetted by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih's administration.
Speaking at the meeting, Minister Haidar said that the current government is investigating the list of the initial 4,000 applicants announced as the recipients of apartments which was opened for applications in 2022 by the former administration. However, these flats do not include the 100 apartments dedicated for Customs, he said.
He went on to say that if there is an agreement between Customs and Fahi Dhiriulhun Corporation (FDC) which is building the flats, then that agreement would be honoured by FDC.
"However, we have not seen anything reserved for Customs employees among these 4,000 flats," he said.
"When we discussed the matter with Customs, we noticed that Customs did not have much interested in getting flats for their employees among these [apartments]."
Last year, Customs said that they conducted an internal evaluation and sent a list of 100 employees from the institution as requested by the Housing Ministry. At the time, officials of the Housing Ministry confirmed that the 100 individuals would be included in the Gedhoruveriyaa scheme.
However, when the permanent list of recipients was published by the former administration, the individuals from the Customs' list were omitted.
Anti Corruptions Commission (ACC) previously told the Parliament's Petition Committee that it had received complaints about the flats allocated for Customs employees.
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