58 properties acquired this year for public interest projects, says Bahrain minister

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning ministry issued 58 acquisition decisions this year to facilitate public works, Essam Khalaf, the Works Minister, said.

“This is as per Law No. 39 of 2009 for acquiring real estate for the public benefit,” said the minister.

The properties acquired were for projects, including establishing a public park in the Al-Naeem area, parking spaces to serve the water park in the Gufool area, and a road network in Block 338 in Adliya.

The is in addition to partial acquisitions within the projects of the Urban Planning and Development Authority.

The total costs of these projects were BD3,145,087.

The minister also announced completing procedures for issuing expropriation decisions for 40 properties.

The minister said 25 properties were for the occupancy affairs sector that cost the exchequer 1,419,220 dinars.

Another four properties costing BD852,271 were for urban development projects.

The acquisition works in three stages, which are scrutiny, expropriation and compensation.

Explaining the procedures, the minister said, “The process begins with the Department of Acquisition and Compensation receiving expropriation requests from ministries, government agencies.”

The department then verifies the purpose and aspects of public interest of the applications according to Article 3 of the law, and then compensation is estimated by one of the departments.

The expropriation stage, Khalaf said, “begins with the issuance of the acquisition decision in the Official Gazette and two local newspapers in Arabic, and a notification to the owner of the property and all relevant government agencies.”

“This leads to tasking the appraisal departments for the final appraisal of the expropriated property or its parts affected by the public benefit project.”

“After notification of the evaluation decision, the compensation phase begins, and the door to the grievance is open against the acquisition and appraisal decision for 45 days.”

Khalaf said that a beneficiary could, at this stage, accept compensation through an official letter directed to the Department of Acquisition and Compensation or request a grievance and accordingly, the subject reaches the grievance committee.

He added, “The committee has 30 days to decide on the grievance presented to it.

 Beneficiaries will receive a notification of the decision, which they could accept within a maximum of 60 days.