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Iraq has awarded a contract to a foreign consultancy firm to prepare the designs for “Sadr” residential city in the capital Baghdad, an official said in remarks published on Wednesday.
The Baghdad Municipality has allocated a land with an area of around 14 square kiloemetres for the project, which comprises around 90,000 houses, said Haidar Majeed, a cabinet spokesman.
Majeed was quoted by Al-Iqtisad News and other Iraqi publications as saying the project is part of several residential cities planned by Iraq to ease demographic pressure as a result of war damage to houses and a steady population growth.
“We have awarded a contract to a serious foreign company to prepare the designs for Sadr City…after the designs are completed and endorsed by the government, we will award the project to a global company,” he said.
The Iraqi cabinet has already approved the project for the development and extension of Sadr City, a key district suburb of Baghdad that was formerly known as “Saddam City” and has a population of nearly one million.
Majeed said the project involves the construction of 90,000 new housing units in phase one with the aim of easing the demographic pressure in the city and create new jobs.
(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)
