News Desk
MALE’ — Maafannu West MP Mohamed Mustafa used a television appearance this week to make a sweeping claim: that in two terms of MDP government, not a single patch of land was reclaimed in the Male’ region for housing purposes, and that everything the MDP did was to distribute land reclaimed by previous administrations.
The claim is politically useful. It is not accurate.
Start with Hulhumale’. The 7,000 social housing units project in Hulhumale’ Phase 2, sixteen 25-storey buildings with a total floor space of 468,000 square metres, was commenced on 19 December 2017 and completed in March 2020. That project was initiated and delivered entirely under the Yameen administration, which is Mustafa’s own political lineage. Hulhumale’ Phase 2 reclamation itself, adding 244 hectares, was also completed under Yameen in 2015. Mustafa is correct that the MDP did not build those units or reclaim that land. But attributing that work to Maumoon, as his framing implies, is misleading. It was Yameen.
Now Gulhifalhu. The Gulhifalhu reclamation project is far more nuanced than Mustafa suggests, and the historical facts cut directly against his narrative.
The project’s origins date back to Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s government in 2007, when it was initially envisioned strictly as an industrial zone. However, the MDP administration under Mohamed Nasheed fundamentally altered this trajectory. As early as 2010, Nasheed integrated Gulhifalhu into his flagship “Veshi Fahi Malé” decongestion programme, transforming the vision into a residential and connected island hub to alleviate crowding in the capital.
The physical transformation of the lagoon was later materialized under Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s MDP government. On May 6, 2020, the Solih administration approved the massive reclamation phase, contracting the Dutch dredging company Boskalis for approximately USD 53 million. This multi-year engineering project was executed in stages through 2024, successfully adding 150 hectares of land to Gulhifalhu.
Crucially, the Solih government then allocated these newly created land plots directly to Malé residents under its Binveriyaa housing scheme. Because this vast footprint of land was explicitly contracted, funded, and reclaimed under an MDP presidency, Mustafa’s claim that the MDP never reclaimed a single patch of land completely collapses.
The Muizzu government then cancelled the previously allocated Gulhifalhu plots, changed the land use plan and began a new redistribution. It has also signed an MoU with MTCC to reclaim a further 85 hectares, though as of late 2024 financing for that additional work had not been secured.
On the 4,000-unit India-funded housing project in Hulhumale’ Phase 2, the facts are shared. The project, initiated under the Solih administration (MDP), aims to construct units using a USD 227 million loan from India’s Exim Bank, with 700 units completed and handed over during President Muizzu’s visit to India. The project stalled under Solih and has been accelerated under Muizzu. Both governments have a legitimate claim on it.
Muizzu is the longest-serving Housing Minister in the country’s history. He knows the detail of this sector better than almost anyone in the government. Which makes the selective framing of Mustafa harder to excuse as ignorance. It looks like a political choice.
What Mustafa gets broadly right is that housing in the Male’ region has been chronically underprovided across every administration, and that no government has solved it. The MDP’s record on completing and handing over what it started is genuinely weak. Projects were announced, funded and begun, but residents waited years for keys that did not arrive before the political cycle turned. The Thilamalé Bridge, contracted to India’s Afcons Infrastructure, is a clear example. Announced with deadlines under Solih, the dates came and went without completion.
Rasmaale is a different matter. That is a Muizzu initiative, started under his administration, and he deserves credit for it. The current government is not starting from zero, but Rasmaale’ is genuinely new ground, not inherited stock.
The honest version of Mustafa’s argument is this: the MDP started things it did not finish, and the current government is finishing some of them while starting new ones. That argument has merit and could be made accurately. The version he chose to make, that the MDP reclaimed nothing and distributed everything others built, is not supported by the record.