The minister said so in reply to a question asked by Kaashidhoo constituency MP Abdulla Jabir during the parliament’s Finance Committee meeting held today that the companies incur a really high operational cost. “The companies are being reviewed. There are many unneeded employees. The matter cannot be corrected unless these companies are made more efficient. The companies are a huge strain on the budget,” Jihad stressed. MP Jabir had raised the complaint that “people are being selected from the streets” to fill in positions in the boards of these companies and asked if whether these boards are established with the consult of the Finance Ministry. In reply Jihad had explained that the boards of certain specific companies had been established in accordance with his opinion, but did not reveal which companies. Former President Mohamed Nasheed’s government had created several government companies that generate no income of their own and several supporters of the then ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) had been placed as board members of these companies. Complaints are now surfacing that the current government also seems to following on the same lines. Currently, companies that do generate a self income have become termed ‘paper companies’ by locals. Jabir had also questioned why “such an unsustainable formula had been put to operation” while the government did not have the finances, and mentioned that several running business had gone bankrupt. However minister Jihad denied any such knowledge.