Okaz/Saudi Gazette JEDDAH — Municipal authorities will soon distribute the compensation for about 1,000 pieces of land confiscated for the construction of the new international airport in the city, officials said. An official source said the owners would soon be notified to come to the department of lands at the municipality with the deeds of confiscated property and their national IDs for the compensation process. A municipality official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the compensation would be in the form of plots proportionate in size to the land confiscated for the airport. He said the municipality has already developed a district containing more than 1,000 plots consisting of all services near King Abdulaziz University in Asfan and another district named Al-Riyadh in the same area for the purpose. The official said the two districts were connected to all utility services and a number of streets were already lighted and asphalted. The Administrative Court in Jeddah has ruled that the owners of land confiscated for building the new airport should be compensated with plots similar in size in a suitable area. Meanwhile, the administrative court will soon consider a lawsuit filed by a number of volunteering lawyers asking the municipality retrieve from real estate sharks land set aside to build 500 public parks in Jeddah. The lawyers said the plots of land designated for public parks were usurped by real estate brokers. Abdullah Al-Ahmar, chairman of the land evaluation committee at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the plots should be given back to the municipality if they were designated for public use. "These plots have to be given back to the municipality and could never become private property," he said. Al-Ahmar said a certain amount of land belonging to the municipality would be handed over to government departments such as the police, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and others to build public utilities.
