Najib’s 20,000 affordable houses – Is it for real?

ARCHIVES 2012

By admin-s On Dec 16, 2012

I genuinely pity Najib, none of his advisors including Teng Chang Yeow had any clue on the Penang housing problem. Promising to build “not less than 20,000 units of affordable housing…in Penang,” (1) without knowing the fact that the same very BN had earlier made a promise under the four Malaysia Plans spanning from 1976 to 1991 to build 39,279 houses, but only managed to deliver 5,484. And it is even more clownish as this big “Promise” comes under the “Promises Fulfilled” banner.

Choo Sing Chye

Jestering about the return of the free port status in exchange for a Barisan Nasional’s victory in Penang had made its chief Teng Chang Yeow an undisputed local political clown. I thought this title would be permanently etched in the minds of the people in Penang, but Najib had to butt in and go national.

I genuinely pity Najib, none of his advisors including Teng Chang Yeow had any clue on the Penang housing problem. Promising to build “not less than 20,000 units of affordable housing…in Penang,” (1) without knowing the fact that the same very BN had earlier made a promise under the four Malaysia Plans spanning from 1976 to 1991 to build 39,279 houses, but only managed to deliver 5,484. And it is even more clownish as this big “Promise” comes under the “Promises Fulfilled” banner.

Malaysia Plan

		Targets	Actual Units Built
3rd Malaysian Plan	1976-1980	4,279 units	2,422 units
4th Malaysian Plan	1981-1985	21,000 units	2,654 units
5th Malaysian Plan	1986-1990	14,000 units	140 units
6th Malaysian Plan	1991- to June 1995	No Targets	268 units
	Total	39,279 units	5,484 units

Najib, buoyed by his BN advisors’ flawed perception, shoots out his mouth with a huge dose of pomposity, “it is now open for registration online and these housing units will be priced below the market price so if the market price is RM500,000, it will be sold at RM300,000” (2).

Najib’s advisors should not be in the dark and put their boss in an humiliating position. These highly paid advisors should just leaf through the past records of the BN government, they would immediately know that the state government had another 3-year Special Low-Cost Housing Privatisation Programme of its own to build 41,080 low-cost housing units.

This Programme was launched in 1986 and it was to be completed in 1989. And in it, there were about 40,635 eligible applicants registered with the State Housing Department.

Furthermore, this programme was backed by a RM1.4 billion Special Low-Cost Housing Federal Fund set up by the Federal Government for the purpose of building low-cost homes from which the State Government could apply.

Apparently BN being an incompetent government as it always shown to be, it managed to build only 2,926 units(7 percent) out of the targeted 41,080, thus missing the golden opportunity to provide 41,080 Low-Cost houses for the poor. And shamefully, the 2,926 units were built over a period of 8 years and not 3 years as targeted.

Now, the BN clowns have gone on a breast-beating show around Penang but they cannot hide the fact that they have lost the only once in a lifetime opportunity to help the poor.