Mr. Ahmed Abdullah Al Thawadi, Director of Information Technology Department at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, confirmed that the number of visitors to the Ministry's website during the first half of this year exceeded 100,000 visits, pointing to the increasing demand and interaction by citizens and visitors to complete housing transactions by using e-services, available through the remote customer service center platform that was launched last June.
Al Thawadi added that the number of requests to use the housing e-services available through the Ministry's website, in addition to the national portal bahrain.bh, has reached more than 20,000 requests, ranging from applications to benefit from financing services, applications to benefit from a housing or housing voucher, as well as requests to maintain housing units and apartments, applications for the right of disposal and completion of ownership procedures, fifth category applications, and other available electronic services.
Al Thawadi also pointed out that there is a remarkable demand for the services of the remote customer service center platform, which was introduced last June, in light of the ease of use of electronic services, the means of support and support provided to visitors to complete their transactions easily and conveniently, as well as the interactive channels that added more interaction between citizens and the Ministry, indicating in this regard that the Ministry provided 507 financial consultations remotely to citizens who are interested in benefiting from financial services.
In terms of the e-service for booking appointments to visit the Customer Service Center at the Ministry's building, 2453 appointments were booked, and all services and inquiries were met, and the necessary consultations were provided to visitors to the center.
In a related context, Al Thawadi said that the number of visits to the Muharraq City Development Project webpage reached more than 3,000 visits, with high rates of usage of the electronic services available through it, namely the services of inquiring about the acquired properties, acquisition procedures, answers to frequently asked questions, as well as access to the project outputs and the guiding guide for urbanization in urban heritage areas.
Al Thawadi stressed that the Ministry's efforts are continuing to implement plans to achieve comprehensiveness in the electronic services provided to citizens, and to continuously work on finding opportunities for improvement and development of all housing services and transactions, noting in this regard that the Ministry launched four new housing services during the current year, namely a maintenance request service, a corner annexation request service, an inquiry service for properties acquired in the Muharraq City Development Project, in addition to the remote customer service center platform, which adds to the package of services introduced earlier as part of the digital transformation plan.
It is worth mentioning that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning's efforts to develop digital services have resulted in the Ministry receiving the e-Government Excellence Award 2023 for the best website, as well as the Bahrain Digital Content Award 2023 for the best integrated government services provider, under the 'Government and Citizen Engagement' category.
Ended.
