Barwa announces the latest developments and updates of its Housing Program

Speaking at the press conference, Dr. Yousef Mohamed Al-Horr, President of Strategy and Investment, Barwa Real Estate, announced the organizing of site visits for Musaimeer tenants. This site visits aims at keeping the tenants aware of the status quo of the site and allowing them to closely inspect the units of the project, which is a pivotal step in facilitating their decision-making process of signing the lease contract.

Setting the stage for the site visits, Barwa has made all the necessary arrangements to ensure the success of the event and achieve its expected goals. Accordingly the tenants will be contacted via emails and SMS messages as well as phone calls, to notify them of the dates and schedule of the visits. Ensuring the highest standards of customer service, Musaimeer tenants will only be exclusively welcomed at very comfortable circumstances in order to conduct site inspections. In order to achieve the best results, organizers of the event request that Masaimeer tenants do not bring their children with them during the visit for safety purposes.

Furthermore, parking spaces have been saved and special vehicles will be available to take people with special needs on tours to see the different buildings of the development., Vital facilities have also been considered in order to provide visitors' with maximum comfort. Every tenant will be handed a press kit providing them with useful information about the project, as well as a list of required documents needed to be submitted upon signing the contract.

The site visit program will include inspection of the 3 bedroom and 2 bedroom apartments which are the main component of the development. At this stage, supervising and organizing teams will be available on site to support tenants by providing answers to queries and necessary guidance. They will also accompanying them in their filed tours to provide them with any assistance they might require.

The visit will allow tenants to check even minute details of the apartment, which will give them the opportunity to identify all needed equipments including electrical devices and kitchen appliances. Tenants will also be able to see all the project facilities which make it different from other projects, such as the spaces between the apartments and buildings that were designed to provide privacy, offering tenants the maximum comfort possible. Moreover, the visit will allow tenants to see the wide green spaces spreading among the buildings of the project, as well as the car parking areas and other details..

It is noteworthy that Barwa's dedication to provide more services to its housing program tenants never comes to an end. An agreement has been arranged with Qtel to provide tenants with Mosaic packages, which consists of an internet line, phone and a variety of TV channels, at competitive prices. Butane gas will also be provided at an annual charge of QR 360. At the moment, all works related to gas extensions to the developments apartments, storage facilities and other related systems have been completed. In addition, all works to extend the water connections to the project site from the region's main water network have also been completed.

Coordination with civil defense is taking place to conduct the necessary and required tests on power facilities and connections, thus Barwa would like to sincerely extend its appreciation and gratitude to Civil Defense Directorate for their best efforts, which were exerted in taking all the necessary measure to ensure complying with the highest internationally approved standards of safety for the development potential tenants. In this regard approval of Alrayyan municipality was obtained to connect electricity to the project site, which requires about a month's time for inspection and necessary tests to be commissioned.

You can reach Barwa Housing Program at Masaimeer through the road to the city of Alwakra or through the road of the industrial city, as shown in the map below. Here, Barwa would like to thank the ministry of Ashgal for its effort in opening roads to the project site.

In response to the tenants' requests and comfort, Article 17 stipulated in the lease contract, was revoked. This Article stipulated provisions of furnishing the demised apartment with an amount equaling the rent due on the whole contract period and gave the leaser the right to hold the leaseholders' mobile properties.

Dr. Al-Horr announced that the dates of signing the lease contracts with the tenants are scheduled to take place from December 15 to 25, 2008, beginning 7:30 am until 2:30 pm. To raise the efficiency of performance and taking into account the interests of the tenants' time, beneficiaries will be contacted to determine the dates of their attendance to sign contracts during the period from November 30 to December 4. These dates were chosen by the company to give the beneficiaries a good chance to enjoy Eid Al Adha holidays. The process of signing the contracts will start as scheduled. Accordingly, Barwa requests that beneficiaries abide by the dates reserved for them. All necessary requirements were completed to guarantee a fast contract signing process and complete all the procedures in as short and as easy a manner.

It should be noted that the project came within the framework of a pioneering initiative by Barwa to help middle-income people, who were selected to acquire residential units at Barwa Housing Program. As one of the leading companies in serving the society, Barwa took the initiative to launch the Housing Program, which is considered one of the most important projects of a humanitarian and socially responsible nature. This housing project has received the support of all officials in the company who made a lot of effort to complete it at the earliest possible opportunity.

The first phase of the project was collecting the data from research centers and carrying out studies and online research to gather all information which could be useful for the project. Once the ideas were developed, the officials reacted quickly in order to determine major titles which launched the project. The design, execution and supervision on Barwa Housing Program website in both Arabic and English languages, is one of the important phases, since it includes complete details of the idea, targets, facilities and services of the project. The application for registration was one of the websites main content, since it was designed on a scientific and comprehensive basis. A special electronic email for Barwa Housing Program was allocated to provide the public with an easy way to get the answers for their questions.

The project's officials organized a promoting campaign, in which real and live images of the project's social targets were presented. A well-planned strategy for media coverage was prepared, which the launching of the website for registration was its first achievements. In addition, the company created a documentary which was presented in the launching ceremony and at the Estate exhibition 2008, where there were distributions of the project brochures and responses to public queries.

Social research committees, having all required experience and fluency in English and Arabic were appointed to fairly communicate with all nationalities desirous to apply in Barwa housing program. In this regard, recruitment advertisements were posted to recruit the specialists with good experiences in this regard. As a response, we received many CVs meeting the required specifications.

By the beginning of this year, the relevant committees started performing their tasks. They started by setting the acceptance standards and requirements that observes the nature of the program and aims at fulfilling its goals. The committees' strategy was to approve a fair and subjective research template based mainly on interviewing the nominated applicants. Then, it started sorting the accepted applicants and a primary short list has been prepared.

There is no doubt that Barwa Housing program has given much attention to the Qataris in particular, so the first list of beneficiaries was for Qataris only. The social research team started its activities by contacting the applicants and telling them about their nomination, in accordance with sending emails to every one of them to inform them about their nomination and about providing the documents needed.

The most important result of these communications was getting an appointment with the candidate, and focusing on bringing their required documents, complete and new. At this stage, the project was transferred gradually to the personal interview phase, where every committee was aware of getting the complete documents and their dates of issue, as well as listening to what the candidate was saying about his case, while writing down all what is necessary information.

The program received thousands of applicants looking for getting a residential unit, but the social research committees were focused on discerning the neediest cases. Sometimes, there was an extension of work hours to 12 for receiving the applicants. We must not overlook the directions of the company's high officials, who focused on the necessity of accepting the largest possible number of women- widows or divorcees - and those of special cases who received an order of evacuation from the court, or termination order, within the frame of humanitarian touches counted for Barwa housing program and the people behind it.

Despite these aspects, ground visits were also accredited for special cases. A special team was founded to determine the cases which need visiting, and then it had to present a detailed report about each case, supported with images and recommendation. The visits on the field unveiled cases needier than others and also helped in providing recommendations for those more deserving. For more transparency and justice, all these cases were well studied by different committees, so no case reached the final decision stage unless it was examined thoroughly by social research committees, examination committees, and final revision committees. Thus, no case was determined by only one person.

The Project organizers adopted the principle of equal opportunities for all the nationalities, in a way which ensures balance and justice in distributing the units among different nationalities of the programs tenants.

For more attention, the project organizers appointed a special team for contacting the names in the list, to confirm their knowledge of getting an apartment at Barwa, and to inspect their desire of wanting it or not.

The basis on which the tenants were distributed in the projects apartments, was carefully considered in order to achieve the most possible social and cultural coherence among people, to create an understanding and cooperative environment among beneficiaries, since they derive from different social, religious and cultural backgrounds.

"We are about to deliver the residential units to the beneficiaries, and we are working really hard to achieve this the soonest. The rate of beneficiaries according to the final results reached 78% out of the correct and deserving applications ", said Dr. Al-Horr.

The selection process was transparent and honest; it was based on meeting the conditions and aspects required by the specialized committees for benefiting from this leading housing program. Fulfilling certain conditions was a must to be selected, some are: the applicant's non-owning a private house, his ability to pay the monthly rent charges of the residential unit, and his ability to face other living demands after taking out monthly salary's loans. During the personal interview, the committees asked the applicants to provide them with important documents such as bank account statement, and other documents related to the commercial and estate record, just to enhance the opportunity of the deserver to get his residential unit. Unfortunately, a number of applications were refused due to their inability to fulfill many of the conditions like a limited monthly income which the company determined at 16000 riyals. In addition, some didn't prove their necessary social need to benefit from the residential unit. The committees in housing program made sure of the applicants' information and documents presented to the social committees formed by Barwa Real Estate for this purpose. The final results of the classification and selection process ended in selecting 1,984 family , equally divided between the two sites of the program, 992 at Mamsaimeer and 992 at west of Alsaileya.

The non-accepted applications were refused for the following reasons:

1- Family monthly income exceeds QR 16,000 (including the raised public sector salaries)
2- The applicant owns his private house, or has properties for the family which provide him with money.
3- The size of the family exceeds the specified number for safety conditions and necessary requirement which must meet with the program terms to give an opportunity for other, more deprivileged families to receive a Barwa Housing home.
4- Some applicants withdrew their applications for special reasons related to their way of living which is not provided by the program.
5- A number of applications were withdrawn after inspection and review period due to better living conditions.
It is worth noting that applications selected to benefit from the pioneering Barwa Housing program covered various different age groups: 374 families of 20-30 years, 379 families of 31-40 years and 467 families in the 41-50 age group. This is a manifestation of Barwa Housing Program in responding to the needs of various categories of the Qatar Community.

Income was considered an important criterion when allocating housing units. For this reason, 997 units were allocated to families earning less than QR10,000 per month with 872 units allocated to people earning less than QR 15,000 per month. Statistics recorded by Barwa committees show that 1804 units (93%) were allocated to married families, 57 units for divorced families, 19 for widowed families and 40 units for people supporting large families.

Barwa housing program lies in two separate areas, the first is in west Alsaileya, and the second is at Musaimeer South of Doha. The first stage of buildings witnessed 31 huge buildings in every area,14 buildings composed of 2-bed room apartments (figure 1-1), and 17 buildings composed of 3-bed room apartments (figure1-2). Each building consists of 32 apartments, so the total number of apartments in the two areas is around 2,000 apartments.

The project is a master plan of modern residential projects which offers comfort for residents. Applying the slogan which Barwa takes in its projects "we don't build houses but position", the projects includes green wide spaces and courts for children. It was equipped with comprehensive facilities like club house, gymnasium, games' rooms, multi-purpose halls, and two courts for basketball and tennis, swimming pools, in addition to commercial shops and a nursery. Each site of the project was provided with a recreational area in the center of the site; it includes ATM machines, shopping center consisting of supermarket, pharmacy, laundry, barber shop, café, nursery and the administrative building at which all missions of estate management, facility maintenance and cleanliness and security procedures are done.

The project is also distinguished because of specifically designed ground floor apartments for people with special needs, in addition to the mosque, wide spaces for car parking, internal gardens and recreational facilities to enrich the general view, which form all together a stylish self-independent city with intimate family atmosphere.

The program also presents a range of diversified services which help the tenants enjoy a stylish way of living such as nursery, gym, and gas extensions. The following figure declares the services and fees suitable for families' incomes: