RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s housing minister said urban land left undeveloped could be confiscated to build much-needed homes, local media reported yesterday. The world’s top oil exporter and biggest Arab economy is pushing to reform its housing and labour sectors to make it easier for citizens to get places to live and jobs at private companies.
A shortage of land in big cities has frustrated efforts to build half a million homes — a project ordered by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz in 2011 which analysts say was one of several steps taken to avert ‘Arab Spring’-style unrest.
Wealthy Saudis have bought residential land plots around the country as long-term investments, pushing up prices and making them too costly for developers of lower-income housing. Under a previous system, other plots were awarded as land grants to citizens who could not afford to develop them.
Mursi invites judges to discuss reforms
CAIRO: Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi has invited senior figures from the judiciary to discuss a crisis triggered by proposed reforms that would push out thousands of judges, state media said yesterday.
Islamist lawmakers have put forward a bill that would force out more than 3,000 judges by lowering the retirement age, causing a revolt among the judiciary and widening political divisions in the country more than two years after a popular uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Egyptian judges — along with the country’s secular, leftist and liberal opposition — say the law aims to cement the authority of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood rather than stamp out corruption.
Mursi’s legal adviser and the justice minister resigned in protest over what they said were attempts to curtail judicial independence.
The bill was proposed by the moderate Islamist Wasat Party, an ally of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
Agencies
