Algeria: “Social housing quota” steeps municipality Mayors into bribery and cronyism

The various municipalities across the national territory have been facing huge constraints in fulfilling the citizens’ requests in terms of new housing units as part of the social housing program earmarked for the needy and low-income earners.

Statistics conveyed to Echorouk reveal that most of the time, the local municipality officials are grappling with an uphill task as the applicants’ files are enormous and can’t be addressed in their entirety because of the meager available housing quota allotted to each municipality.

Ninety per cent of these files are brushed aside on account of the unavailable housing units to be distributed to local needy residents.

This nagging problem remains unresolved as the demand exceeds by far the supply with the various municipalities earmarking only 200 available new housing units for over 5 thousand application files.

In a bitter reaction, numerous angry residents of various districts of the province of Algiers whose names have been scrapped from the recipients’ lists have accused their local Mayors of indulging in bribery and cronyism practices.