On February 2, the Penang Deputy Chief Minister, Datuk Mohd Shariff Haji Omar assured Malays staying in premises affected by the repeal of the Rent Control Act in Georgetown that they would not be asked to move to Seberang Prai.
He said that Penang UMNO would ensure that the Malay families would continue to stay in the vicinity of their present premises.
Shariff’s assurance is most commendable. However, what the people of Penang want is that such an assurance should be given to all, regardless of race or religion.
For this reason, I call on the Penang Chief Minister, Tan Sri Dr. Koh Tsu Koon to give an assurance to the people of Tanjong who would be affected by the repeal of the Rent Control Act that they would be rehoused and would not be uprooted and relocated to outside Georgetown.
If the Penang Deputy Chief Minister could give a specific assurance to the Malays in Georgetown that they would not be uprooted and relocated to outside Georgetown, there is no reason why the Penang Chief Minister could not give a general assurance to all Penangites, regardless of race, that they would not be uprooted or relocated by the repeal of the Rent Control Act 1966.
On Wednesday, the Chief Minister announced that the Federal Government had approved an allocation of RM160 million to the state to build low and medium-cost houses for those affected by the repeal of the Rent Control Act, which came from two funds - a RM100 million revolving fund and a RM60 million direct fund.
He said the first fund would be used to build and sell the units while the direct fund would be used to build houses only for rental.
Although the RM160 million allocation to re-house the people who would be affected by the repeal of the Rent Control Act is most welcome, the Penang State Government had been remiss in having failed to take far-sighted action to provide housing for the low-income people who would be affected by the repeal of the Rent Control Act to ensure a minimum of social dislocation, hardships and sufferings. The Penang State Government had known that Penang leads the country in having the most number of pre-war premises, as out of the 39,000 controlled houses, 12,600 are in Penang, followed by 5,600 in Johore, 5,500 in Perak, 4,100 in Malacca, 2,500 in Kuala Lumpur, 1,440 in Pahang, 1,100 in Trengganu, 690 in Kelantan, 430 in Selangor, 300 in Kedah/Perlis and 180 in Sabah.
The number of people who would be affected when all the 39,000 pre-war premises are decontrolled in 27 months from September this year to the end of 1999 could run to close to a million people.
In 1976, the government set up the Rent Control Review Committee under Dr. Ling Liong Sik, who was then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Local Government. In August 1977, Liong Sik said that the lifting of rent control was justified only when there were adequate “low-cost and low-priced” houses for the people.
He found that the rent control premises to be greatly congested. In Malacca, for instance, the Rent Control Review Committee found one house being occupied by 145 people and in another case in Penang, 23 families cramped into one place.
The situation of congested living in rent control premises has not changed greatly in 1997 from 20 years ago - and the repeal of the Rent Control Act must be accompanied by the provision of adequate low-cost and low-priced houses for the people.
Tsu Koon had more than six years to prepare and implement a masterplan to rehouse the people who would be affected by the repeal of the Rent Control Act in Penang but this had not been done.
He is only now talking about getting RM160 million from the Federal Government to build low and medium-cost houses when firstly, this sum is grossly inadequate to rehouse all the people who would be affected by the repeal in Penang; and secondly, when the rehousing programme should have been carried out in phases in the past six years. Furthermore, many of the houses that are now being planned for construction would probably be completed well after the tenants and sub-tenants in the rent control premises had been evicted by 1st January 2000.
It is not that the Penang Chief Minister had just been informed that the Bill for the repeal of the Rent Control Act would be presented to Parliament next month.
Tsu Koon not only had ample notice, he was the earliest advocate for the repeal of Rent Control Act when he first became Chief Minister of Penang in 1990. This was why he was the first Barisan Nasional leader to publicly advocate the repeal of the Rent Control Act in the nineties, when no other Barisan Nasional leader had even proposed it in the eighties.
In a press interview on his first 100-days as Penang Chief Minister in February 1991, Tsu Koon expressed his eagerness to repeal the Rent Control Act in Penang and revealed that he had met the 50 major owners of the rent-controlled premises in Georgetown who own more than 50 per cent of the 12,600 pre-war properties in Penang on the repeal of the Rent Control Act.
It was the DAP’s strength in the Penang State Assembly at the time which forced Tsu Koon to back off from his ambition to pioneer the repeal of the Rent Control Act in the country.
I agree that the Rent Control Act had outlived its usefulness and is very unfair to the landowners. However, the government cannot disclaim responsibility to ensure that any repeal of the Rent Control Act must be carried out in a manner causing the minimum of hardships and social dislocations.
It is most unfortunate that despite repeated reminders by the DAP Assemblymen in the last State Assembly, Tsu Koon had failed to make good use of the intervening six years to ensure that the repeal of the Rent Control Act would be carried out with the minimum of social dislocations, hardships and sufferings by ensuring that every affected tenant or sub-tenant family would have the option of a low-cost housing built by the State Government.
(15/2/97)