KUCHING: Minister for Local Government and Housing, Senator Datuk Dr. Sim Kui Hian’s wish to upgrade the lives of the KMC flat dwellers prompted him to go for a first dialogue session with the residents there on Tuesday night.
Telling the over 100 residents at the dialogue session, Dr. Sim said his main objective was to rebuild the KMC flats to improve, upgrade the lives of the people so that they can have a better living and safer environment.
He told the residents the building was over 60 years old and in 2011 when there was repair and maintenance work done, it cost the Federal government RM10 million.
“Like human being, old buildings are prone to wear and tear and need constant maintenance. So in the long ran, it is better to tear the whole thing down and put up new buildings. We will always accommodate the tenants and will work out ways to give them a fair deal either renting to them for a certain number of years or letting them buy it,” he said.
Dr. Sim said they want all the residents to understand the authorities’ good intentions and there will be more dialogue sessions in the future.
He said once there is a majority agreement among the tenants, they can bring in engineers and architects to plan on how to do it.
He then showed an example of a KL building which was in a dilapidated situation and the DBKL tore down the old building to be replaced with a high rise sophiscated one.
“If KL can do it, we can too as our Chief Minister has said we should rejuvenate the Chinese area as the Malay areas have been making good progress,” he added.
Pointing out that it is a good opportunity for the tenants to have better housing, Dr. Sim said everyone has to be in it together. It may take two years to rebuild but we need to thrash out the whole issue.
The rebuilding, he added, would also ease shortage of housing in the city. In Sarawak, 60,000 people wanted to have proper housing and this would be an opportunity for those who have no houses in the city.
Dr. Sim also answered a number of queries from the tenants. At the moment, there are 411 Chinese, 61 Dayaks, 41 Malays and 4 Indian families staying in KMC flats.
