The govt has completed a total of 255,341 affordable homes, says minister

By P PREM KUMAR & DASHVEENJIT KAUR / Pic By MUHD AMIN NAHARUL

The government has only completed 23% of the targeted 1.1 million units of affordable housing nationwide between 2013 and 2018.

Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Tan Sri Noh Omar (picture) said in the period of five years, the government completed a total of 255,341 affordable homes.

“A total of 285,097, or 25.6%, of the houses are under construction while another 432,415 units, or 39%, are in various planning stages,” he told the Dewan Rakyat yesterday.

The remaining 138,775 units, or 12.4% of the target, are yet to make it to the planning stage, he said, responding to a question from Shah Alam MP Khalid Abdul Samad.

Khalid had asked the government to state plans to achieve its commitment to build 1.5 million affordable homes by next year.

Noh, however, disputed that the initial target was set at 1.5 million. He said instead that the government had expected to complete one million units of affordable homes within five years from 2013 to 2018, but had to raise the target to 1.1 million recently due to demand.

He said affordable housing projects are being carried out nationwide under various federal and state government agencies, as well as the private sector.

Among major projects were the People’s Housing Project, the 1Malaysia People’s Housing (PR1MA), the Youth Transit Home scheme, the MyHome and MyDeposit programme, as well as the revival of various abandoned projects.

“While the private sector focuses more on market demand, the government concerns itself with providing adequate, affordable and quality housing for all — particularly the middle-income group and low-income group,” Noh said.

He also attributed the encumbrance in meeting the 2018 target lies in the lack of cooperation from state governments.

“The commitment to deliver the houses has to be supported by the state governments as well.

“For example in Selangor, we wanted to construct 51,992 units, but could only deliver 11,000 because cooperation from the state government is lacking,” he said.

Noh also called the Opposition to understand the process of house construction where the state government’s cooperation would be vital.

“In fact, these state governments should give us special approval to construct these affordable homes,” he said, adding that the federal government is spending up to RM2.2 billion for the project.

Noh said Kelantan, for example, cooperated with the federal government on the building of PR1MA homes, while Selangor would only provide land for the federal affordable housing initiative at market prices — which had raised the prices of PR1MA homes in the state.