Government will scrutinise PPR dwellers

KUALA LUMPUR: The urban wellbeing, housing and local government ministry will conduct a thorough survey on low cost public housing (PPR) to ascertain the legitimacy of residents staying there.
Its Minister Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan said this comes following complaints he has received about the abuse of these low cost public housing pertaining to owners who have abused their privilege to stay there.
"We want to make sure who is staying there, whether they are the legitimate owners or whether the owners are renting it out to a third party. We will deal with them. It is not fair when 20,000 or 30,000 deserving people are waiting for their housing when the other people are abusing their privilege," he said.
He said it is even worse when the owners are no longer eligible to live there anymore.
"Say their circumstances have changed, they earn comfortably and can afford better housing, they should move out to make way for others," he said while speaking at the #TanyaGomen talk entitled "Can the lower income group afford owning homes?"
He said that the ministry are looking at ways to follow London's method of council homes where these homes are owned by the government and once a tenant has surpassed a certain income threshold they will have to make way for a new tenant.
"We are trying to make it so that in certain PPR's, we will set aside units to rent so that the ministry will have control over it," said Dahlan.
Dahlan explained that plans were in the pipe works to initiate a public housing management body called the 3PPPAN which will be a new platform to manage and oversee these PPR's from next year.
"The 3PPPAN will have more authority and power to determine worthy PPR dwellers, we must have a comprehensive system and database," he said.
He said that the 3PPPAN is now in its infancy and will be tabled at Parliament soon in hopes of getting it up and running by June 2016.