Corruption in housing
the ministry of finance, in its capacity as the authority supervising the state properties because it knows who occupies real estates and others, the ministries contact it to meet their housing needs for expatriates, including doctors, nurses, civil and military experts, education teachers and others.
the ministry meets the needs of all parties in the state either in terms of property or renting apartments, buildings, and villas for the benefit of various entities; for the purpose of use by the government, and thus it has acquired a long experience in this area over the decades either to rent apartments, validity for use or to concluded legal contracts.
in a surprise move, the cabinet approved a few days ago the request of the ministry of finance to abandon this task and that each entity and government ministry to choose the buildings and villas they want to rent, according to their plan and needs within their budget.
there is no doubt that this procedure is sound and goes well, but we must be careful not to include all government agencies. ministries such as justice, endowments (awqaf), health, and education, for example, need to be independent of the finance ministry in this matter, because of the huge need for housing on the one hand, and knowledge of what they want, and this will save a lot of their time, and make things easier, and get rid of the hellish cycle known as ‘reference to our letter and reference to your letter’.
as for those who need less housing, and they are a majority, we must keep the task of meeting the housing needs of their expatriate employees or otherwise within the ministry of finance simply because transferring the responsibility to do this task for each entity will lead to the creation of housing departments in each ministry and government, and will increase the size of its employees overtime, and each party will need legal advisers, and will end up with appointing assistant undersecretaries to take over its administration.
we wish the minister of finance will pay attention to this part for a simple reason that the fear of abandoning the task will lead to a glut in the administrative system. we also ask him to pay more attention to the rumors of corruption in his housing administration, and i was personally a victim of this.
