"Who lost a plot?": a nine-minute showdown with the housing minister

My phone rang just as I sat down for lunch at Salt Café. I missed the call as I hurried to swallow my food. I called back immediately. The minister sounded annoyed and snide in equal measure. 

“Even if a single person is denied land because of your rule changes announced on May 29, I will speak out!” I responded sharply to his opening question.

Unlike him, I am a democratically-elected official. I have to answer to my constituents. I not only have a moral duty, but a well-defined legal and constitutional one to represent them and defend their rights. Dr Muththalib, on the other hand, is an unelected technocrat, appointed by President Dr Mohamed Muizzu. As long as the president is happy, it does not matter to the minister. 

If the minister must know, none of my family members (including aunts, uncles and cousins) and friends who applied for the Binveriya scheme, nor I, will be disqualified due to the new rules. 

On Monday, Muththalib questioned the legality of agreements signed by the previous administration with recipients of land plots awarded from Gulhifalhu. Amended agreements would need to be signed to comply with the 2002 land law, which prohibits granting publicly-owned land to individuals who own property, he insisted. The previous agreement only required recipients to relinquish land under 600 square feet in the Malé region. But recipients must actually relinquish land owned anywhere in the country, the minister contended.

On Tuesday morning, the supermajority of the ruling People’s National Congress flatly rejected a motion from opposition MP Mohamed Ibrahim ‘Kudu’ to open the floor for a debate on the government’s mishandling of the Binveriya and Gedhoruveriya housing schemes.

The vote was a stark reminder of this administration’s vice-like control of parliament. Not a peep of dissent is heard. Frustrated, I posted on X, calling out the silence from Malé’s elected MPs: Why won’t you even debate the housing ministry’s arbitrary, retrospective changes to the Binveriya scheme’s eligibility rules?

The conversation with Muththalib escalated quickly. I told him bluntly that his ministry was tormenting applicants, people who had waited years for housing, by constantly changing the rules.

He denied this.

“I only updated the agreement in accordance with the law,” he said. “If applicants are expected to leave claims to any plots in Malé, why should it not be expected of what they own in the atolls?”

I pushed back.

“A 5,000 square foot plot in Meemu atoll Raiymandhoo cannot be compared to even a mere 200 square foot plot in Malé. You cannot pretend they are the same thing.”

He argued that the Land Act prohibits individuals from owning two bandaara (state-owned) plots, and that the amendment was therefore legally necessary.

The minister seemed to be completely unaware of the fact that the government had launched a housing scheme with specific, published terms. People made life decisions based on those terms. Land was awarded. Agreements were signed. Futures were planned.

“You can’t wake up one day, declare those original terms illegal, and then impose new ones,” I said. “You’re forcing people to sign new agreements under threat of losing what they were already promised.”

He responded: “Nobody is being forced. No one is compelled to sign the new agreement.”

“Do you honestly believe that?” I asked, incredulous. “You’re holding people’s land hostage. We will not be coerced under new arbitrary terms. We will fight tooth and nail!”

I reminded him that three years have passed since the plots were awarded. He cannot just unilaterally change the terms of agreements already in effect. Had he sought the legal opinion of the Attorney General Ahmed Usham, I asked. And even then, the correct course of action would be to seek judicial review – not issue unilateral ministerial diktats that upend people’s lives.

This wasn’t the first time the minister had pulled this tactic. I reminded him of what happened with the Gedhoruveriya flats – an 18-month long circus of broken promises that I've documented in detail.

The scheme went from 95 percent of recipients signing agreements in November 2023 to Dr Muththalib scrapping everything and starting over, ultimately disqualifying more than 3,100 applicants, often for petty or arbitrary reasons like submitting city council residency documents or spending time abroad for medical treatment. In a few tragic cases, applicants lost eligibility because a disabled family member under their care had passed away.

I laid all of this out to the minister. There was no response.

Then I raised the most shocking injustice: his ministry is judging 2022 applications based on living conditions in 2025. Applicants are now being disqualified because their current situation has improved, not because they were ineligible at the time.

Some applicants were disqualified after buying a home through the government-owned company they worked for – in some cases, a one-bedroom apartment smaller than 300 square feet. Others were deemed ineligible because they received housing support through compensation for failed private schemes like SeaLife. All of this occurred after the application period.

Yet no accommodation is being made for those whose circumstances have worsened.

“If you want to assess applications based on current living situation, then do so across the board,” I told him.

Families who had children after applying receive no extra points. Households now forced to squeeze 10 people into one room get no recognition. People who developed a disability since applying receive no consideration.

Why use present-day facts to exclude applicants but never to include them?

He had no answer.

Beyond Article 59 of the constitution, which prohibits retroactive penalties, the government’s actions, in my view, breach multiple constitutional rights.

The constitution guarantees not just equal treatment, but also the right of citizens to rely on state policies that shape their lives and futures. By changing the rules mid-process, the government violates the principle of legitimate expectation – a principle recognised in Maldivian administrative law and upheld in case law.

Applicants made good faith decisions based on the original rules, signed binding agreements, and prepared to build homes and lives. When the state reneges on its own commitments, it doesn't just inconvenience people, it undermines legal certainty and causes irreparable harm to real people’s lives.

Dr Muththalib insisted that the ministry had received no complaints regarding the new change in rules – smugly placing faith in the power of people’s fear over losing their Binveriya plots.

On May 29, the government abruptly announced that the first 4,000 flats under the Gedhoruveriya scheme would now be distributed based on the original November 2023 list. This nullified the revised February 2025 list that Dr Muththalib himself had overseen.

He insisted this wasn’t a reversal.

“If this isn’t backtracking, then what is it? Why did you make thousands of people waste their entire Ramadan drafting complaints?”

I personally spent 25 nights during Ramadan, hunched over my laptop from 8:30pm until dawn, typing up complaint after complaint — 276 cases, totalling about 71,500 words, borne out of meetings with 306 disqualified applicants for social housing.

He said nothing.

At the end of our nine-minute call, I made myself clear: “Even if we refuse to sign your arbitrary new agreement, you will still have to give us our land. You cannot hold the registries hostage.”

And as I was about to hang up, I added: “Sure, you didn’t reverse anything. Sure, you’re not inventing excuse after excuse to exclude people.”

“Ok!” replied the minister. With that, the call ended.

God knows if the conversation left him with any food for thought. But on Wednesday night, the ministry posted two gazette notices in an apparent U-turn. The first required recipients to sign new agreements with updated plot information. But this was later deleted and replaced with a second notice. According to the revised announcement, recipients would only need to sign a document acknowledging administrative changes (new registry numbers, coordinates, and plot numbers that changed after the land use plan was overhauled). 

The bottom line: no changes to the terms of the Binveriya scheme. Recipients will only have to give up any claim to plots in Malé as originally agreed upon. At least that was the policy as of Thursday afternoon. It is entirely possible that things have changed by the time you finish this sentence.

Saif Fathih is a columnist at the Maldives Independent and a serving member of the Malé City Council for Galolhu North. With his educational background in communications, international studies and public policy, he previously worked as a journalist, editor and public policy advisor, with roles including senior policy director at the ministry of national planning and editor of Ocean Weekly Magazine. Saif began his career as a radio producer and presenter at Minivan Radio, writer for Minivan Daily, and translator for the British High Commission and the European Union Mission to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. He is also the host of Ithuru Vaahaka, the Maldives Independent podcast.