Sabah gov’t housing policy more for aliens?

By DANIEL JOHN JAMBUN

The recent announcement by Datuk Madius Tangau that the state government was forming three committees to look into three important problems in Sabah, namely citizenship and immigrants, land affairs and political appointment/power sharing clearly showed it was a belated plan by a neglectful or a failed government. 

After being in power since 1994, the BN state government is indirectly admitting it had failed in these three areas. By saying the formation of the committees was agreed to in a recent state BN meeting,  Tangau raised the question of  why the announcement was made by Upko and not by the BN. Was BN or Umno reluctant with the formation of these committees to look into sensitive matters and was reluctant to announce it? And was Upko announcing it as a means to force the BN to admit to the formation of these committees? Why was there no response or confirmation about it from the BN and other BN components?

The three committees are long overdue, formed at a time when the issue of housing and real property ownership in Sabah had become very serious. Only recently the very embarrassing case of a single mother and her children living in a dilapidated house without any basic amenities and without a proper kitchen was exposed with the intervention of the wife of the Prime Minister. To address the housing woes, the Prime Minister, in the last national budget, promised assistances to newly employed Malaysians to own their first houses. But that promise may be just hot air because with the high and accelerating inflation in the nation today, the problem of house ownership is impossible for most young people. And mre so for the KDMs, but more on that later.

Last March, the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) published a statement pointing to the fact that because of “typically low starting salary, young adults, professionals and semi-professionals alike are experiencing an unfair disadvantage compared to their counterparts in other, if not most states in Malaysia, especially that of the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur. This is so, even when Sabah has one of the highest costs of living of any states in Malaysia.” SAPP gave a calculation of living expenditures for a single person earning RM2,000 per month which included EPF deduction and Socso deduction, car loan (for a Myvi at RM430 per month for nine years), mobile phone, petrol, water and electricity, foods and drinks, personal and car insurance, and room rental, all of which leave the wage earner a paltry balance of RM150 per month. SAPP calculated that these expenses “does not even include costs of vehicle maintenance, Astro and Streamyx subscriptions, cooking gas, shampoos and soaps, house maintenance and miscellaneous” and that the wage earner would need 25 years to save “just to have enough to make a 10 percent deposit to buy a house costing RM 400,000.” 

Madius had admitted that the government has been treating local squatters and favouring immigrants, saying that “instead of evicting them (squatters who are Sabahans), they (the government) should be more proactive like providing all these local squatters a place in the people's housing programme (Program Perumahan Rakyat), instead of giving these home units to non-locals of whom many are foreigners based on their looks and so on.” Citing the cases in Tuaran, he said that many PPR units were built but at the end of the day “we see more non-locals, believed to be foreigners, than locals living in the PPR. And now it is very clear, as the police are having problems in Tuaran in controlling the crime rate, especially in the Telipok Ria and Seri Rugading areas which are now considered crime hotspots in the district.” It’s been reported that in Seri Rugading fights between locals and immigrants are common and the Tuaran police have become tired of it.

In November last year, Assistant Resource Development and Information Technology Minister Datuk Jainab Ahmad Ayid announced the shifting of fire victims from Lembaga Padi squatter area to the Telipok Ria apartments, saying, the deposit for moving into the apartments were waived, and “My officers had been very thorough in identifying eligible recipients for the housing scheme. We make sure only Malaysians will get the assistance.” But a simple visit to Telipok Ria would confirm that she was LYING with these assurance because the percentage of the immigrant population of the housing area is really alarming. In fact the immigrants are the majority in these housing areas. How did this happen? It is wellknown that the little Napoleons at the Tuaran District Council, possibly under instruction, almost never gave application forms to those who were KDMs, by saying “Borang habis!” Could the Tuaran District Council, the assemblyman of Sulaman Datuk Hajiji Mohd. Noor, the Member of Parliament of Tuaran Datuk Wilfred M. Bumburing, give a racial breakdown of the occupants of Telipok Ria, and Seri Rugading?

I have also been informed that those few locals who have received their apartments in these areas can no longer tolerate the noise, rubbish, human wastes and thefts they have to face there, and are seriously planning to leave.

While I believe that Upko is sincere in trying to help the locals in the matter of housing and land ownership, I strongly doubt if the state BN (or Umno) will listen to Upko. I also believe that the three committees will not achieve anything meaningful. Somehow some people from somewhere will stall meetings or delay implementation of meeting decisions. And even if the committees become active, how much can it do before the next election comes, and the whole thing will be conveniently forgotten? The best that Upko can do is to form its own task force and aggressively carry out its own investigations and reveal the statistics and the hard political realities that corrupt the housing policy of the state government, including the way the PPRT and the e-Kasih programme are implemented. These programmes have been heavily criticised as very biased towards certain political supporters, and even aliens. After all, Upko has been very aggressive, to the point of playing brinkmanship, in its fight for justice in other areas so far, so why should it compromise on the matter of housing and land matters? Also, we all know that the arrangement in the state BN puts the Upko at a disadvantaged where decision making is concerned because all the top posts in the state BN committee are held by Umno leaders.