May 21, 2012
Penang Umno has warned that about 50 villages housing some 36,000 residents are slated for demolition, posing a major eviction crisis for the state.
State Umno chairman Datuk Zainal Abidin Osman said the villages, located on the island and mainland, were occupied by squatters who would be slapped with court orders to move out in the near future.
“The situation affects some 7,000 families, mostly Malays and Indians,” he said.
“We need a government with strong political will to overcome this problem,” he added.
He said the issue of squatters living on someone else’s land was severe before with some 100 such villages, but the number has been reduced to fifty now.
He said the Barisan Nasional (BN), when it ruled Penang, had implemented low-cost housing projects in phases to overcome the problem by giving affected residents alternative roofs over their heads through the projects.
He criticised the current Pakatan Rakyat state administation for not having adequate new low-cost housing projects since assuming power in 2008.
“We should have done more, I agree. But we were doing it in phases, and it was broken when the new government took over with no avenue to continue to the next phase,” he said.
Zainal Abidin emphasised the need for more affordable housing in Penang by pointing out that some 23,000 individuals had received aid under the federal 1Malaysia
People’s Aid (BR1M) programme, representing families with total income of less than RM3,000 each.
“This reflects on how many low-income people there are in the state, and low-cost housing should be planned accordingly to cater for this income group,” he said.
Source: The Sun Daily
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