GEORGE TOWN, March 8 — The Penang state government has offered affordable housing units to a total of 41,114 eligible applicants since 2013, state exco Jagdeep Singh Deo said today.
The state housing and town and country planning committee chairman said these applicants were approved after the establishment of the Selection Process Enhancement Committee (SPEC) to fine tune the approval process.
“I set up SPEC after I found that there were a lot of applications for low-cost and low-medium cost housing that dated back to even the 1970s that were not processed,” he said in a press conference at his office in Komtar today.
He said in the last five years, SPEC had managed to process most of the applications and bring them up to date.
The waiting list of applicants for North Seberang Perai and Central Seberang Perai has been updated to those made this year.
“The applications for the other districts have been cleared until the oldest pending application is from 2012, not 1970s, and we will work hard to clear it until it is up to date,” he said.
He said the housing department had also conducted promotional activities to encourage more eligible first-time home buyers to apply for affordable housing under the state government priced below RM300,000.
A total of 32,954 applicants have registered for affordable housing, of which 9,829 were for Type A or low-cost units, 12,516 for Type B or low-medium cost units and 10,609 for Type C for units priced up to RM300,000.
Jagdeep said the state government is serious about prioritising the supply of affordable housing for first-time home buyers in Penang.
He said to date, there are a total 74,161 units of Type A, B and C houses all priced under RM300,000 that are in various stages of completion in Penang.
