Rent reform offer
This is surely not a case of the famous film The Day After, as a rent reform report commissioned by the government in 1997 was delivered to Minister Dolores Cristina in 2004, eight years after it was commissioned. Although the report in The Times of...
This is surely not a case of the famous film The Day After, as a rent reform report commissioned by the government in 1997 was delivered to Minister Dolores Cristina in 2004, eight years after it was commissioned. Although the report in The Times of October 1, 2004 states that "Ms Cristina's comments come in the wake..." it is evident that it was The Times that requested the minister's comments as on both the ministry's and the Department of Information's websites there are no press releases issued by Minister Cristina in order to reply to the statement issued by Alternattiva Demokratika on their decision to go for a referendum petition on rent reform.
Anyone interested in the subject matter of national and planned reforms, and in particular rent reform, may have read through my article on the subject of rent reform that was published in The Times on September 27, 2004 (page 11). There are great similarities between what I wrote then and the comments made by Minister Cristina. For the benefit of readers I will make a summary:
(a) that the rent market has been liberalised in 1995 but this did not have the desired effect of bringing more vacant property onto the rental market;
(b) the knotty problem is the pre-1939 legislation that has frozen rents at very low levels, with in many cases these rents not covering the cost of necessary structural repairs for which the owners are still responsible;
(c) in many instances these properties have moved from first generation to second generation of tenants;
(d) within my ministry a study is also being carried out on profiling the owners and the tenants so that we may have a clear picture of the whole scenario.
It baffles me why this issue falls under Ms Cristina's ministerial portofolio and even more why such reports remain the domain of the legal profession. The legal profession is there to draft the laws to make the reforms and not to draw up the reform. This is one drawback of this government: each and every problem is seen from the legal point and this maybe is the result of the bias of the legal profession within the party in government and its cabinet.
Given the fact that there is convergence between the government and my reform plan, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my services in this matter. I guess it is more convenient to communicate with a government minister through The Times than any other medium. One caveat only: I do not carry a double-barrel surname and neither am I in any way related to any minister in government.