KUCHING: The Sarawak government is still waiting for the federal government to provide funds for the building of low cost housing.
The Malaysian Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamarudin who was briefed by the state in August 2018 had yet to make any allocations to the state despite being very impressed by the presentations made to her.
Local Government and Housing Minister Datuk Dr Sim Kui Hian said this in reply to a question from reporters attending the Malaysian Hindu Sangam Sarawak State Council Ponggal Celebrations at the Kuching Waterfront yesterday.
“The state is still waiting for the money as this is the responsibility of the federal government. We showed her hundreds of acres of land ready for development already, so it’s not a problem of land. Now, they have to come up with the money or else how are we going to build?” said Sim.
“On the part of the state, we will be building 2,500 affordable housing in 10 locations throughout the state and our Chief Minister has announced two policies and one of them is ‘Rumah Sri Petiwi’ which is to be sold at prices between RM90,000 and 100,000.
“Those who do not qualify for bank loans will be given a second chance with financing from the state owned firm Mutiara Mortgage.”
The minister explained: “The federal government defines low-cost housing as houses below RM300,000 and ours are markedly lower, so there is no reason for delaying.
“In Sarawak, we have marked houses built by private developers priced at RM300,000 and below as affordable housing,” he revealed.
On the matter of the second policy, Sim explained that allocations would be made for existing resettlement schemes and village extensions to get tar-sealed roads and concrete drains in stages progressively while new schemes would have these infrastructures in place from the beginning.
“In the old days, the government used to allocate land as relocation sites but now, we are concerned that some people can’t build the houses even if we give them land so we will build the 2,500 houses starting this year to help the poor people own their own homes.”
He added, “With the LRT and other public transportation projects, these low cost houses will be accessible to the cities and major towns making them an attractive option to the B40 groups and young first time house owners as well.”
“The funding for these two policies will come from the 5 per cent sales tax which the government wishes to share with everybody.”
To a separate question, Sim said, “Those who own land but can’t afford building a house have to wait for the federal government to continue with the ‘Rumah Mesra Rakyat’ programme as it is a federal project.”
