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Housing programme under the spotlight

The government has set no limits in extending its services to the people of the UAE, Shaikh Hamdan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Public Works, said on the second day of the region-first Government Summit.

During his speech, he assured the audience that the UAE Government would stop at nothing to provide best service to its people, noting that dedicated convoys along with electronic services have contributed towards its continued success at reaching out to people in the coutry including the elderly, those with special needs and residents living in remote areas.

Shaikh Hamdan, who is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Shaikh Zayed Housing Programme, said it has always been the endeavour of the government to extend the services to the people in far-flung areas, and he communicated his eagerness to close up the distance between the programme and the residents.

In the past, many voiced their concerns about government services, with the general consensus being that it was not up to scratch and of low quality, but since the issues were raised, the government has tried to change this outlook. It laid a strategy to provide excellent services to the Emirati customers on the basis of customer satisfaction, as well as improvements to the working environment of those working within these entities. Steps were taken to ensure high quality services were made available, which in turn created a challenge between the ministries and the organisations, Shaikh Hamdan remarked at the dialogue session held in collaboration with United Nations, and convened by Undersecretary of the Ministry of State for the Federal National Council Tariq Lootah.

“UAE is the first country in which the government services are measured by the points system used in rating the hotels according to the international standards,” he said, noting that: “I am proud that the Shaikh Zayed Housing Programme had managed to get five stars for the first government entity”.

He said: “Many efforts (are) being made and works (carried out) by the government to develop its services and change the routine (monotonous) government pattern, and to achieve this goal, a code of customers had been issued to identify them with the extended services”.

In addition, he said, 5,000 employees received high quality training on how to provide a flawless service to customers, in a way that would benefit and create convenience for the customers. Furthermore, a government gate was launched with the duty to receive the queries of the customers and quickly reply to their questions.

Shaikh Hamdan underlined that the government monitors every new issue, and works on innovation and upgrading the standard of man to spell out new ideas. In reference to this point, he cited the Shaikh Zayed Housing Programme as an example.

Elaborating, he said there had always been a perplexed question: Who really deserves a house and how does one go about choosing eligible applicants for houses, without, what he termed as, intervention of emotions? The problem was solved when a digital criterion consisting of 31 standards was laid down, which highlighted a number of conditions involved in the eligibility of being allotted a house. Included within this criteria was the type of house, the income of the individual, and the number of family members. Under these new conditions, the applicant is selected and declared as eligible for being granted a house.

Shaikh Hamdan stated that everybody can chalk out a strategy, with the help of consultants, but the issue lies with how to successfully follow it. In light of this, the government has laid out programmes for measuring the performance, which comes into light out of the reports filed by the mystery shopper.

Zayed Housing Programme has carried out many experiments involving residential inspections conducted by a group of individuals, (which are evaluated according to his personal view). The challenges faced by the programme included finalising transactions at the earliest stage, but to resolve the problem the employees in the programme managed to put rules in place for granting the payments on the same day, a process which previously took three weeks, he added.

malzarooni@khaleejtimes.com