The Special Low-Cost Housing Programme is heading for a third thumping failure at the end of the Sixth Malaysia Plan in 1995

Speech (Part 2) by Parliamentary Opposition Leader, DAP Secretary-General and MP for Tanjung, Lim Kit Siang, at the opening of the Kampong Kolam DAP Branch Annual General Meeting held at branch premises at Seang Teik Road on Tues¬day, 16th March, 1991 at 8 pm.

The Special Low-Cost Housing Programme is heading for a third thumping failure at the end of the Sixth Malaysia Plan in 1995.

The Ministry of Housing’s Special Low-Cost Housing Programme (SLCHP) is heading for a third thumping failure at the end of the Sixth Malaysia Plan in 1995.

The SLCHP to build 328391 low-cost housing units at less than $25,000 per unit was meant to be a
crash programme to be complet¬ed in three years from 1986 to 1989.

When the SLCHP completely flopped in 1989, it was extended for another three years till June 1992. However, despite the three years’ extension, the SLCHP has been a second thumping failure.

From the figures produced by the Minister of Housing and Local Government, Dr. Ting Chew Peh,
only 112,679 units or 34 per cent of the target had been completed, while 109,373 units were now under various stages of construction and another 106,339 units were being planned.

This means that although the SLCHP programme was meant to be a three-year low-cost housing crash programme, at the end of six years, 106,339 units or 32 per cent of the target had not gone beyond the planning stage and may never be built at all.

From the record of the Ministry of Housing and Local Gov¬ernment – which is the most incompetent Federal Ministry in Malaysia as well as Dr. Ting Chew Peh’s performance as Minister of Housing who
is the most impotent and ineffective Housing Minister in history – the SLCHP is heading for a third thumping failure at the end of the Sixth Malaysia Plan in 1995.

There are still 215,712 low-cost units under the SLCHP or 66 per cent to be completed in the next three years – units which were targetted to be completed in 1989!

Is Dr. Ting Chew Peh prepared to say how many per cent of these 215,712 units would be completed
by the end of the Sixth Malay¬sia Plan in 1995? Dare he peg his expectations at 30 per cent, 40 per cent, 50 per cent or 60 per cent?

Dr. Ting could probably only deliver 50 per cent of the SLCHP units after nine years, when they were all to be built in three years.

I would not be surprised if at the end of the Sixth Malaysia Plan, only about 50 per cent of the SLCHP would have been built. In other words, in a three-year SLCHP programme to build low-cost housing units, Dr. Ting could probably only deliver fifty per cent after nine years!

I do not know where to find a Federal record of greater incompetence and inefficiency to match this.

I am very pessimistic about the success of the SLCHP because the Housing Developers Association (HDA) has publicly stated that the $25,000 ceiling price for the SLCHP should be raised if the Government wanted ‘full participation from housing developers’.

If Dr. Ting Chew Peh allows the $25,000 SLCHP ceiling price to be raised, then it is no more the SLCHP as conceived in 1986.

Although Dr. Ting said last week that the Government has no intention of increasing the current ceiling price of the $25,000 low-cost houses, it is the Ministry of Housing which must bear responsi¬bility for the mounting HDA pressure for the increase of the ceiling price.

This is because it was the Deputy Housing and Local Govern¬ment Minister, Osu Sukam, when opening the National Seminar on Housing in Kuala Lumpur on 2nd December last year on behalf of Dr. Ting
who first stated publicly that the government might review the $25,000 ceiling price for the low-cost houses.

Is Dr. Ting capable of an extraordinary effort to ensure that the remaining 215,712 SLCHP units could be completed by 1995.

An extraordinary effort is needed to ensure that the re¬maining 215,712 SLCHP units of less than $25,000 each could be com¬pleted by 1995.

Is Dr. Ting Chew Peh capable of this effort? In order to ensure that the SLCHP, which was to have been completed in three years in 1989, could be fully completed at the end of nine years in 1995, is Dr. Ting prepared to give his single-minded devotion and energies to this challenge, and drop all other distractions, including his post as MCA Secretary-GeneraI?