News Desk
MALE — The Ministry of Housing has publicly called out the Male’ City Council for failing to hand over land needed to begin construction of the Male’ Wet Market Complex, a MVR 116,999,624 project that has been ready to start for two months but remains stalled.
The ministry’s timeline of correspondence, however, raises questions about its own sincerity in resolving the matter.
The first letter requesting the land was sent on 29 March 2026, six days before the local council elections on 4 April. At that point, the Male’ City Council still had a PNC majority. The government sent that letter to a council that was days away from dissolution and whose composition was about to change. No response came before election day.
On 4 April, Male’ voters re-elected MDP incumbent Adam Azim as mayor with 45.1 percent of the vote, defeating PNC candidate Moosa Ali Jaleel. The new council has an MDP majority. The political landscape of Male’ City Council had shifted entirely.
The second letter went out on 12 April, eight days after the election, when the new council members had been elected but not yet sworn in. The third letter followed on 3 May, while the transition was still under way. The fourth and final letter, dated 18 May, came just one day after the new MDP-majority council was formally sworn in on 17 May. The ministry was issuing ultimatums to a council that had been in office for precisely 24 hours.
The only substantive response from the council came on 30 April, when Mayor Adam Azim said he wanted to meet the minister before handing over the land. That response came during the transition period, after the election but before the new council was sworn in. Azim had just won re-election and was preparing to begin a new term. Asking for a ministerial meeting before committing to a land transfer worth MVR 117 million was not an unreasonable position for an incoming administration to take. The ministry does not indicate in its statement whether it responded to that request or offered a meeting date.
The project itself is substantial. The five-storey complex will include stainless steel fish kiosks on the ground floor, vegetable and fruit markets on the first and second floors, five elevators, a firefighting system, a five-tonne ice machine and basement parking. A food court is planned for the rooftop. Construction is scheduled to take 600 days once it begins.
The ministry said every day of delay raises costs and denies Male’ residents a service they should be receiving. That is true. But the question the timeline raises is whether a government that sent its first letter to a dying council six days before an election it expected to lose was genuinely trying to break ground before the politics changed, or whether it is now using the new council’s caution as a public relations opportunity.
The mayor wants a meeting. The ministry wants the land. Neither has moved toward the other yet.
