Housing Ministry reveals their decision to distribute the flats of the eligible recipients as per the list sent by ACC following their investigation, and said that the state has no intention to nullify the original list.
Housing Ministry has said today that the state has no intention to annul the Flat recipient’s list under the “Gedhoviriya” Scheme and announced that flats of recipients with no related issues will be assigned to accordingly.
The “Gedhoruveriya” scheme introduced by former President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih was released two days before the end of the former government’s term which had prompted the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) to halt the flat distribution.
Their investigation found 60 percent of the listed recipients had not met the eligibility criteria. The flats devoid of any faults were approximately 20% of the recipients while all the remaining applications contained various errors in their applications such as misinformation and partial point allocations amongst many other issues.
The ACC had sent a new flat recipients list consisting of the rightful, eligible recipients of the former list to the Housing Ministry on Thursday last week, prompting mixed responses from the public.
Addressing this, State Minister of the Housing Ministry, Mohamed Faaiz revealed to Mihaaru News that the Ministry had never come to the decision to annul the original flat recipient’s list.
“The statement we released last night also did not state that the list was negated, did it? We are proceeding forward with AG (Attorney Generals Office)'s counsel,” he said.
When questioned regarding the unclear procedure of inspecting the living conditions for the list compiled during the ACC’s investigation, Faaiz responded that some of the recipients were paid visits on behalf of the Ministry during the former government's term and their living situations were assessed. He acknowledged that complaints have been surfacing in regards to the disregarded inspection of some houses and assured that they are investigating it.
“Former members of the Ministry are also involved. Therefore, the information cleared made it evident that some houses were visited. The criteria and policies to be assured by the ministry were verified before the distribution back then,” Faaiz explained.
Housing Minister, Dr Ali Haidhar had assured last week that the flat distribution of eligible recipients under the “Gedhoruveriya” scheme will commence as soon as possible. Following the investigation of the original recipients list of the 4000 flats, the ACC had recommended the Housing Ministry to proceed with the distribution to the eligible recipients devoid of any errors.
A statement released by the Ministry last night addressing this confirmed that they had received a list from ACC on Thursday last week subsequent to their investigation, consisting of the rightful applicants whose forms contained no errors during the inspection. As the applicants in the list were based on information gathered for investigation purposes, the Ministry announced that it is currently under deliberation of the criteria for finalizing a list of flat allocations.
Due to the delay in flat distribution, some members of the public have lodged a complaint to the parliament calling to expedite the process.