Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has stated that it wants to ensure that authority in Hulhumalé is decentralised.

Speaking to RaajjeTV on Tuesday night, Ali Niyaz, MDP’s deputy chairperson for administration, said that this will ensure that Hulhumalé is effectively utilised.

In Tuesday’s interview, Niyaz stressed the importance of allowing regional authorities to be given power over their resources, as opposed to centralising said power.

Niyaz said that Hulhumalé, which is an urban island considered to be an administrative part of capital city Malé, was developed to ease Malé’s housing situation. 

Niyaz said that the island was reclaimed, during the tenure of former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, for this purpose and that MDP had attempted to follow through when former president Mohamed Nasheed was elected in 2008. 

However, Niyaz said that during the past four years, former president Abdulla Yameen has used it as a hub into which migrants from all over the country have come in.

Niyaz described this as part of President Yameen’s attempt to centralise development to the Greater Malé Area, and highlighted this continued to frustrate the situation.

He said that while the congestion and housing situation in Malé continued to worsen, encouraging more migration from the atolls caused similar congestion in Hulhumalé.

MDP will work to bring about decentralisation of power and development, so as to ensure that migration does not become the ‘primary resort’ for residents of Maldives’ out lying islands.