Iraq to rank applicants online for million-plot housing scheme

BAGHDAD — Iraq will take applications for its million-plot housing scheme through an online platform and rank applicants with a points system meant to prevent manipulation, the Construction and Housing Ministry said Wednesday, without saying when applications would open.

A subcommittee headed by the chairman of the Board of Advisers will set the rules, ministry spokesperson Nabil al-Saffar told the state-run Iraqi News Agency. Its members include the director of the Digital Transformation Center and representatives of the Interior, Justice and Planning ministries, among them the Justice Ministry’s real estate registration departments and the Planning Ministry’s Statistics and Geographic Information Systems Authority. Baghdad Municipality and the governorates are also represented.

“The committee is responsible for establishing the regulations governing the distribution mechanism, identifying eligible groups and developing a ranking system that ensures fairness and transparency in the allocation of residential land,” Saffar said.

The platform will take applications across governorates, districts and subdistricts, he said, and each application will be checked against government databases to confirm the applicant qualifies, give citizens equal chances and limit manipulation or exploitation.

Online registration will let officials sort applicants’ details, check eligibility, rank applications and announce the results under the scheme’s procedures, Saffar said. “These procedures contribute to reducing human intervention in the distribution of residential land and ensuring that the results are not manipulated,” he said.

The government had said applications would open on Sept. 1, and Saffar said in August that applicants must not own, or have previously owned, any plot of land or home. On Sept. 29, the prime minister’s office said procedures had been completed for 275,000 plots, a little over a quarter of the million promised, and that registration should open the following month.

The scheme, known as the Watan Initiative, covers 121 cities in the 15 governorates outside the Kurdistan Region, which is not part of it.

The property records the checks rely on have been the target of repeated fraud. On Oct. 18, two Tikrit property registry officials were jailed for four years over an illegal property transfer, one of more than a dozen land and property fraud cases uncovered in recent months.

A deputy planning minister said in September that population growth alone requires about 200,000 new homes a year. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi ordered in early September that a new city be built in each governorate, covering 10,000 to 15,000 dunams and carrying the governorate’s name. A dunam is a quarter of a hectare.