Public housing residents given warning for subletting units

CHRISTOPHER TAN, CAVINA LIM, LOGEISWARY THEVADASS, R. SEKARAN, KHAIRANI QALBI and M. DARISHINNI MATHURA at the Penang State Assembly

THE state Housing Department has issued non-compliance notices to seven public housing residents for renting out their units.

State Housing, Town and Country Planning Committee chairman Jagdeep Singh Deo (pic) said the state was stern in its effort to deter public housingresidents from renting out their units.

“For other housing schemes not supervised by the state, the jointmanagement bodies or management committees are responsible to submit complaints to the Commissioner of Buildings and the local council if the units occupied posed dangers to the residents,” Jagdeep said in response to an oral question by Lau Keng Ee (DAP-Pengkalan Kota) in the assembly yesterday.

Lau had asked if the state issued warning notices to low medium-cost owners who rented their units to foreign workers.

Later, during lunch break, Jagdeep said the workers’ dormitory is not meant to restrain foreign workers within.

“They are free to move in and out. However, there will be some security measures in place.

“Just like in the workers’ dormitories in Singapore, there will be a face recognition technology to track if the workers are in or out of the dormitory at any time.

“I went to a third generation foreign workers’ dormitory in Singapore recently.

“The dormitory has amazing facilities and is clean,” he told a pressconference.

Fears of social ills when these dormitories are near residential areas, Jagdeep said, were unfounded.

“Foreign workers are spreading into residential areas now as it is.

“With the dormitory, we will keep them out of the local neighbourhood.

“It will, to a large extent, also address the problem of foreign workers staying in public housing units,” he said.

He encouraged factories to set up the dormitories if they had the space.

“However, they must comply with approved guidelines,” he said.

Jagdeep said there had been three applications to build such dormitories in Penang so far — in Juru, Bukit Tambun and Batu Maung.