Mr. Mofeed Behnam, company executive manager in charge, said to Al Hayat, “The project includes the construction of a big housing city at a cost between $300 and $350 million dollars. It includes 1200 housing units, in addition to their infrastructure of social facilities, a school at international standards and a central public market.” He added, “The cost of the project is subject to increase, according to the possible additions. The specified duration to finish the works is 24 months.” According to Behnam, the project also includes the construction of luxurious stores and multi-storey residence buildings, at international standards.
The company administrative manager attributes the reason for the extended scale of its investment works in Iraqi Kurdistan to “the stability of the security conditions, compare to the other Iraqi provinces. This is the same reason that led to the increase of demand on purchasing residence and commercial pieces of land in the region, on behalf of individuals or investment commercial companies, in addition to the facilities that the regional government for the local and foreign investors, allowing them to enter Kurdistan and encouraging them to invest in it.”
In response to a question of Al Hayat on the reason for the continuous housing crisis and the incredible rise of real estate prices in Kurdistan, despite the wide-scale construction and development movement that the region is witnessing, and the limit of participation of the company in such crisis, Behnam said, “The construction movement is not a reformation movement to overcome the housing crisis and it includes no actual projects to relieve it. Our company is not capable of overcoming the crisis, but it certainly can assist in limiting it. Therefore, we see no harmony between supply and demand, as the latter is witnessing noticeable increase.”
He confirms that it is hard to solve the housing problem, which is existing for six years in Iraq, just all of a sudden.”
Behnam believes that the best means to handle the problem lies in vertical construction, which is represented in residence buildings and supplying with more investment facilities in the region to attract the investment companies that are working in the field of construction.
Within the same context, the economic prosperity in the region of Iraqi Kurdistan, the availability of employment opportunities and the improvement of employees salaries have led to a shortage in the work force in the field of construction. Many construction workers refrain from work. They prefer to work in a governmental department and receive a reasonable salary, in addition to the job benefits, instead of spending the whole day in hard work.
Mr. Mofeed Behnam said, “Due to the expansion of the scale of projects that the company is executing, our demand for workforce is continuously increasing. Nevertheless, we can not rely on the local workers from within Iraq, the southern and central Iraqi cities, as the security situation in such regions prevents from that.”
He pointed out, “The Company has found a way out for its problem in bringing workforce through private offices for technical workforce, which it continuously deals with. They verify the person’s identity before entering Kurdistani lands. In addition, the security authorities in Kurdistan verify them too to make sure that they do not belong to terrorist cells that are claiming work.”(Source) Lina Sayawesh – Al Hayat
