Baghdad holds quarter of Iraq's urban slums

Shafaq News / On Wednesday, the Iraqi Ministry of Planning declared that Baghdad is home to a quarter of the country's slums. According to ministry spokesperson Abdul Zahra Al-Hindawi, Iraq has 4,000 slums that house around 3.06 million people. He said, "Baghdad ranked first with1,073 slums, followed by Basra and Nineveh with over 700 slums each, while Najaf is among the governorates with the fewest slums, with only 89." Al-Hindawi also noted that "one of the solutions the government is working on to eliminate these urban areas is the construction of new housing units, which represents a part of the solution for slums in Iraq, considering that there are government-owned residential cities that will be distributed to eligible categories based on priorities." The spokesperson for the Ministry further stated that "slums have emerged and grown in various areas, sometimes in the heart of cities or on the outskirts, and other times in commercial or agricultural areas, depending on the circumstances that allow their growth." Notably, Iraq is experiencing a major housing problem as the population grows faster than the number of residential complexes, and residents with limited incomes cannot create their housing units due to the high cost of land and construction supplies. The Ministry of Construction and Housing anticipated that Iraq would require more than three million housing units to ease the country's housing crisis.