KUALA LUMPUR (March 2): The Ministry of Local Government Development has identified 166 housing projects that were completed late, 437 sick projects, and 115 abandoned projects as of Jan 31, according to Deputy Minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir.
He said that overall this year, the ministry projected that there would be 354 late projects and 538 sick projects if there is no intervention from the government.
“When we set up a task force for sick and abandoned private housing projects, we focused on four roles, namely tracking, resolving, preventive and forward modelling.
“Yesterday (Wednesday, March 1), when I went down to a hospital project site, we found that the trend is increasing in 2023, and to be transparent and honest, the tracking data we create is not only according to the existing classes, which are late, sick and abandoned, but the task force also make assessments in terms of the projections for this year,” he said.
Akmal Nasrullah was replying to a supplementary question by Onn Abu Bakar (Pakatan Harapan-Batu Pahat), who wanted to know the number of sick and abandoned projects as of this year, in the Dewan Rakyat on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the deputy minister said a total of 15,024 borrowers benefited from the Housing Credit Guarantee Scheme through total financing of RM1.91 billion, with the scheme being housing financing without the need to pay an advance, and it is offered to people who do not have a fixed income or the gig economy group.
Meanwhile, to help first-time homebuyers, he said the ministry had implemented initiatives such as Malaysian Housing Financing (i-Biaya) in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance.
The ministry has also announced the i-Miliki initiative, which involves the provision of stamp duty exemption incentives for transfer documents and loan agreements for the purchase of the first house for homes worth up to RM1 million.