JEDDAH — The Municipality of Jeddah has discovered that a large portion of real estate in the east of the city that is supposed to be public property has been turned into private residences owned by people who do not hold legal deeds, Al-Watan reported. These residences have been established over 40 years ago mainly by businessmen and prominent officials. The municipality demanded the Ministry of Justice carry out legal investigations to prove the rightful ownership of the land. The local authority described the size of the land as “large” and claimed it to be government owned. The committees also discovered that electricity bills have been issued throughout the years to the citizens living in the areas. Volunteers from a legal committee in Jeddah promised to reclaim 600 illegal properties. So far they have succeeded in submitting cases concerning 500 properties that had been earmarked for public parks. Legal advisor Talat Attar and his team of lawyers in the committee said an example of this was a property deed belonging to a businessman that had a market value of SR15 million. However, he stated that a 5,000 square meter public park was supposed to have been built there instead. Attar explained that investors manage to steal public land by first leasing it for playground projects and then illegally selling the land to citizens. He stated that some officials at the municipality were negligent in reporting the stolen land. He proposed forming neighborhood committees throughout the city for people to report any public land that had been stolen in their district. He further called for encroachers to be held legally liable to solve the problem more effectively.
