KOTA BARU, March 29 — The federal and state governments have identified 56.7 hectares of land for the construction of permanent houses for 1,415 families who face problems over the status of their land after their homes were destroyed in the floods in Kelantan last December.

Chairman of the Kelantan State Post Flood Joint Committee, Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said the areas that had been identified included Chenulang, Kuala Krai and Bertam Baru in Gua Musang. 

“The federal government has also allocated RM6 million to build about 100 houses on land which have been identified, specifically in Gua Musang.

“The latest technologies can hopefully speed up the process of constructing the houses which used to face problems over land previously,” he told reporters after chairing a Post Flood Meeting at the Federal Development Department here today.

Mustapa said the 56.7 hectares of land that had been provided were sufficient for the construction of the 1,415 houses for the flood victims.

He said in previous committee discussions, the federal government had agreed to build 1,244 permanent houses while another 580 would be built by the state government.

“Out of the 1,824 houses, only 409 families had clear land status while that of another 1,145 was unclear or was not their own.

“We decided to speed up the construction of the 409 houses first and expect them to be completed by the month of Ramadan or before Syawal,” he said.

He added that 59 of the 409 houses had been completed while another 129 were still being constructed.

In a related development, Mustapa said 55.5 per cent or 34,558 of the 62,267 flood victims had received cash donations of RM500 and the remainder would get theirs in the near future. — Bernama