A year later... where did Resolution 320 arrive at converting agricultural land to residential?

Although a year has passed since the Council of Ministers’ decision No. 320 regarding converting agricultural land to residential, this decision still faces many obstacles in its implementation by the concerned authorities, in addition to the citizens’ suffering from the cessation of construction in the inter-lands, which led to their complaint with Dozens of workers stopped working and their livelihoods were cut off.

In turn, the Baghdad Municipality confirmed that implementing this decision requires time, because most of the lands covered do not belong to it and transferring their ownership requires procedures carried out by the relevant ministries.

In December of last year, the Council of Ministers approved special instructions for converting the type of agricultural land that had been used for housing purposes and ownership, including amending the Baghdad Municipality and municipal institutions in the governorates, to the basic design of cities and changing the different uses of lands on which residential units were built randomly, owned by the state, and built before. The issuance of this decision, and the activation of the secretariat and municipal institutions in the governorates, decisions of the dissolved Revolutionary Command Council No. (581 of 1981) and (80 of 1970) for the purposes of owning land whose use has been changed for the purposes of this decision, in addition to preparing sectoral designs for the areas covered in a manner consistent with the design of modern cities.

Mayor of Baghdad, Ammar Musa Kazem, said that the secretariat is continuing to implement Resolution 320, but most of the lands in the capital do not belong to the secretariat, and therefore we need to transfer their ownership or ownership to the secretariat for the purpose of ownership.

He added that ownership procedures take time, but the secretariat is continuing to implement the decision, and that the rest of the procedures relate to other ministries, and once they are completed, the decision will be launched and implemented, indicating that the recent decision of the Council of Ministers provided facilities for the implementation of this decision, as there was confusion in the interpretation of some paragraphs, according to Al-Sabah newspaper. Official.

On November 7, the Council of Ministers issued a decision amending the controls for changing the type of land from agricultural to residential, which included adding a paragraph to Clause (First) of the controls for implementing Cabinet Resolution (23107 of 2023), and defined the regular residential complex as a group of constructed units. With fixed materials in the form of separated blocks, in ways that occupy no less than (30 percent) of the entire encroached plot of land, and the competent municipality is responsible for determining the amount.

Among the matters related to the decision, citizens expressed their complaints about being deprived of building on their inter-lands located within residential complexes covered by ownership, despite the fact that construction rates in these complexes exceeded 80 percent, in addition to the suffering of dozens of workers whose livelihoods have stopped.

The people of the Degla neighborhood, located in the Doura area, demanded that the Prime Minister lift the injustice they suffered and allow the entry of building materials, similar to the approvals granted to the Taji and Kadhimiya areas recently announced by MP Hassan Al-Khafaji, as this process is subject to jurisprudence, according to the newspaper.

They added that the neighborhood is nearing completion and has been built in an orderly manner, with the provision of the required services that require the concerned authorities to maintain and continue to improve it, stressing that they were not able to build previously due to their limited income and spent their savings on purchasing a plot of land in agricultural areas, to be a shelter for them due to inflation. Great for regular residential real estate prices.