PENANG ALSO DEMANDS THAT SUCH PPR UNITS IN PENANG ONLY BE RESERVED FOR LOWER INCOME GROUPS NAMELY UNDER RM1,500 AS OPPOSED TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S INCOME LIMIT OF RM3,000 SO AS TO PROTECT THE INTERESTS OF THE REAL LOWER INCOME GROUP, WHO HAVE YET TO BE HOUSED.
I refer to the request by the Chief Minister of Penang dated 13 September 2017 to the Minister of Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government, YB Tan Sri Noh bin Haji Omar requesting for consideration of more People’s Housing Project (PPR) in Penang.
This is as a result of an answer from the Federal Government in Parliament to the Chief Minister of Penang dated 24 May 2016 confirming that amongst all the states in Malaysia, Penang proved to have the least amount of PPR built namely 999 units out of the total 102,118 units in the whole of the country.
It is very important that more units are made available to the lower income group by the Federal Government under their rental PPR schemes for which they are responsible.
It should be noted that in Penang, we refuse to budge from the eligibility criteria of applicants for such PPR in relation to their income cap that is it should be less than RM1,500 as opposed to what the Federal Government has recently decided that is to increase it to not less than RM3,000.
Clearly, this is going to be a barrier to those lower income groups earning under RM1,500 to access such rental PPR housing.
In fact, I have instructed the Penang Housing Department to ensure that all PPR housing in Penang will continue to only allow those receiving not more than RM1,500 monthly income to access such rental units until such time, that the Federal Government provides more units of such PPR so as we can clear the waiting name list which stands at 1,662 to-date in Penang.
The Penang State Government will continue to ensure that only eligible applicants for such rental PPR units can access them.