De-Baathification curbs real-estate business in Thi-Qar

THI-QAR / IraqiNews.com: The director of Thi-Qar‘s real-estate directorate, Shaalan Hadi Shibeeb, said that regulations put in place by the de-Baathification committee curbs the mechanisms of the real-estate market, while the head of the committee’s branch in the province, described the issue of demanding people to prove that they are not Baathists as “unfair.” “Our problem is with law number 88 of 2003 related to the de-Baathification,” Shibeeb told IraqiNews.com. “This law has become a sward on the neck of anyone who seeks to sell or buy a real-estate in Thi-Qar that he or she owns,” he said. According to this law, Baathists are not allowed to buy or sell real-estate. “Our directorate has become responsible for investigating whether a person is a Baathist or not,”  Shibeeb added. “Many deals have been stopped just because there are similarities in names,” he noted. “On average, there are around 50 deals per day that cannot be executed due to this issue, a matter that curbs real-estates business in the province,” he asserted. For his part, the head of the committee’s branch in the province said that his office is not involved in the real-estates issue. “My office is only responsible for re-employing those who were dismissed from their official positions for political reasons,” Saad Ali Mahdi told IraqiNews.com. “But the real-estate issue has become unfair, as every day we receive around 100 persons who seek to prove that they are not Baathists,” he said. “This matter is illogical, because most of those people themselves are victims of the Baath Party,” he added. Nassiriya, the capital city of Thi-Qar province, lies 385 km south of Baghdad. MH (S)/SR    2