5 October, GEORGE TOWN – A new People’s Housing Project (PPR) will be developed in Jelutong here by the state government in an effort to provide low-cost housing to low-income families in Penang.
Chairman of the state Housing, Local Government, and Urban and Rural Development Committee Jagdeep Singh Deo said the PPR project which involved 1,000 units of homes will be built on two pieces of land amounting to 2.02 hectares.
Right now, Penang is the state with the least number of PPR units of 999 compared to 120,000 throughout the country, and I as the Housing exco have applied many times for new PPR here.
In my meeting with Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin in Putrajaya yesterday, she informed me that the Federal Government has agreed to build a PPR project in Penang in order to provide low-cost housing here, he said in a press conference here today.
Jagdeep Singh said the project is scheduled to start soon and the Penang Government will hold talks with the squatter settlers in the area on the matter.
He said the PPR project is expected to be completed in two to three years time, and so far, there are 1,200 names on the waiting list for the housing units.
Besides this project, I will also be presenting several proposals for land in five districts in the state where PPR can be built in the future. We want the people in the state, especially the poor, to own homes, he said.
Meanwhile, he said the Penang State Government will speed up its application to the Federal Government to upgrade the status of the Seberang Perai Municipal Council (MPSP) to city as the local government met the criteria.
It could not be done before because of the Federal Government’s policy to limit one city for each state, but in our meeting, Zuraida informed that there was no such policy and urged me to submit the application immediately.
So we will be submitting the application as soon as possible because all the necessary details have been completed and I hope the MPSP will become a city soon, he said.
– BERNAMA