The Parliament's housing committee, headed by eng/ Ibrahim Abu Ouf, has witnessed Monday objections expressed to the representatives of the Ministry of Housing and the Urban Communities Authority, on reducing the prices of draw lands and narrowing chances for Damietta residents to apply. One of the committee's members asked for a briefing request to re-allow reservation for the public draw on family housing lands -which ended last Thursday, and 180 thousand applicants have applied for a number of 9880 pieces of land in 6 new cities-, for what some believed to be “unfair" for the residents of Damietta after adding to the applicants residents of Dakahlia and Port Said, the thing that minimized the Damietta's chance to obtain lands. Members did not just stand at the notification quest, but also intervened in the ministry's plan, objecting to the fact that the current government is only transitional having no rights to set long term plans, in addition to objections expressed on the price value of lands that –they believed- to be lower than the actual market price of lands. Kamal Al Din Hussein, rep. of the urban authority and eng/ Ameen Abd El Men'am, vice president of cities development authority, have declined the briefing request, on the grounds of the increasing number of applicants, especially in 6 October and New Damietta, which led one of the members to request the allocation of lands for all applicants in a specified time frame, the request that has been declined as well.
