Press Statement
Mr. K.S.Law is unfit to be Political Secretary to the Ministry of Housing, as he does not know anything about the housing problem and needs of Malaysians.
Mr. Law challenged me to state where I got the figure that the present urban housing backlog needs is in the region of 330,000 units, and he suggested that I was inventing figures.
I would like to ask Mr. Law what he was doing in these years as Political Secretary to the Ministry of Housing?
Mr. Law should refer to Hansard (Parliamentary report) of 10th November 1965, where his Minister, Inche Khaw Khai Boh, said:
“According to the Federal Commissioner for Town and Country Planning it is estimated that in Kuala Lumpur 60% of the total population is inadequately housed and if it is assumed that similar conditions exist in other urban areas, then of the 3.2 million living in urban areas (1962 figure) 1.92 million are inadequately housed.
“At 6 persons per housing unit this represents a backlog of 320,000 units. No figure is entered for backlog in rural housing since it is not readily available from existing statistics.
“Acknowledging a 20-year period to work out the present backlog in housing it will be necessary to build 16,000 unites per annum which in addition to the 18,720 units required for population increase give a total of 34,720 units of low cost housing to be built per annum.”
These are Mr. Khaw Khai Boh’s own figures, which can be expected to be conservative.
But Mr. Law does not know it. It is apparent he knows nothing. If Mr. Law has sense of decency, he will resign, because no man of honour will collect taxpayers’ money without doing solid work.
We know that political secretaries are an excuse for the Alliance to give ‘jobs for the boys’ and that Political Secretaries, although they are paid from public funds, do no useful public work. Mr. Law is an excellent example.
In the first four years of the Ministry of Local Government and Housing, an annual average of 1,500 units were built. At this rate, it will take 200 years to clear the back-log of housing. Mr. Law claims that from this year onwards, the Ministry will be building 10,000 units a year. Is there any proof? Even if Mr. Law is right, it will take 30 years to clear the backlog. But what of the annual population increase? What of the rural housing needs?
I will ask Mr. Law to keep quiet if he does not know his subject. Otherwise, he makes a fool of himself and his Minister.
Audited on 2021-05-03.