The Kirkuk municipality has resumed the process of accepting transactions for the registration of illegal houses. Three years ago, they received 90,000 applications for the same purpose but did not register any.
On November 28, 2022, the Iraqi Council of Ministers decided to register all illegal houses in Iraq, including Kirkuk province. The Kirkuk municipality received approximately 90,000 applications for registration.
Adnan Hamashkur, head of the media department at the Kirkuk municipality office, informed KirkukNow that the registration of illegal houses in Kirkuk has resumed for citizens who own illegal houses but were unable to submit applications in the past.
"The illegal houses must be built on agricultural land or belong to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance," he stated. "Additionally, the house must be within the Kirkuk municipality, whether inside or outside the city."
The process of registering houses has begun in Iraq, but in Kirkuk, the process was suspended and handed over to committees.
On January 13, the Iraqi Council of Ministers decided to register all illegal houses in Iraqi provinces, excluding Kirkuk.
According to a letter signed by the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers on December 13, two Kurdish ministers, Khalid Shiwani, Justice Minister representing the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan PUK, and Bangin Rekani, Minister of Reconstruction, Housing, and Municipalities representing the Kurdistan Democratic party KDP, requested the formation of a committee to investigate the land situation within the basic map of Kirkuk as a mechanism for resolution.
Statistics from the Kirkuk administration show that the province ranks third in illegal houses following Baghdad and Basra. There are over 130,000 illegal houses in Baghdad and more than 90,000 in Basra.
The majority of these houses were constructed in 2003 when the Kirkuk administration allocated land to families displaced by the Ba'ath regime's policies, who later returned to their hometowns after the regime's fall.
"Most of the applications for registration have come from Kurdish areas. We have about 10 illegal neighborhoods, seven of which are Kurdish. I can say that 70 percent of the applications are from Kurdish areas," Faraidun Adel, former director of the Kirkuk municipality, told KirkukNow in a previous interview.
"We have 90,000 applications ready for registration from 2022. With any decision from the Council of Ministers, we can complete the procedures soon," he added.
"In the current transactions, the illegal houses must be within the neighborhoods.”
"The property value will be calculated based on the market price, and applicants must pay 10 percent of the total value of the property. There are installment options, and the amount must be repaid to the government within 20 years," he explained.
The northern, oil-rich, ethnically mixed province of Kirkuk is home to about 1,77 million Kurds, Turkmen, and Arabs. Located 238 kilometers north of Baghdad, Kirkuk has long been at the center of disputes between the federal government in Baghdad and the Erbil-based Kurdistan Regional Government KRG.
On November 28, 2022, the Iraqi Council of Ministers made another decision to register all illegal houses in Iraq, including Kirkuk. However, the process was halted without providing any explanation after the Kirkuk municipality received about 90,000 registration applications.
