KUCHING, Sept 22: Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) national women vice chief Voon Shiak Ni says there is no issue of additional or logistics costs to be placed on any potential buyers of People Housing Project (PPR) houses built by the Federal Government.
Voon stressed that PPR houses are built and paid for by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (KPKT) and handed over to the Sarawak government to be sold to the people.
“Our question to Sarawak Government is simple – why is the Sarawak Government charging an extra 10 per cent in the purchase price for PPR houses?” Voon asked.
Voon in the statement further explained that Sarawak government neither pay for the costs of construction nor transportation of the building material as all costs were absorbed by the federal government.
“The Minister of Housing and Local Government Zuraida Kamaruddin only discovered the differences in the pricing of the PPR houses in Sarawak compared to West Malaysia when she conducted her first site visit to one of the PPR projects in Samarahan last year on August 11.
“Zuraida had called on the state government to adjust the housing prices during her said visit to the state last year,” she added
Voon reiterated that PPR houses were built to make them accessible to the people and if the Sarawak government were to raise the prices further, they would burden the people.
She thus stressed that what Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg claimed – that 10 per cent needed to be added on to houses due to transportation of material – had no basis.
“We hoped with the clarification, there is no lack of understanding of the issue at hand,” she said.
Abang Johari had on Friday (Sept 20) said houses in Sarawak were about 10 per cent more expensive compared to the peninsular because of additional cost incurred during transportation of materials from Peninsular Malaysia.
Abang Johari explained that when Sarawak developers imported building materials from overseas, the materials had to be shipped to Port Klang first before being shipped again to Sarawak.
He said this in response to Zuraida’s who expressed surprise that Sarawak low-cost houses are more expensive than those in Peninsular Malaysia.
Currently, low-cost houses cost between RM35,000 and RM42,000 in the peninsula, but they cost more in Sarawak and Sabah, and Zuraida who visited Sarawak on Aug 11, wanted to know why. — DayakDaily.
