KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 17 — Local Government Development Minister Nga Kor Ming today said that the Singaporean government had given its approval for the country’s HDB flat contractors to visit his ministry next month to share their knowledge on building affordable housing.

The ministry will examine case studies for best practices and the matter is one of its main focuses, he said on the Astro Awani programme Awani Agenda tonight.

"I very much agree with the view that a house is not just property, but a home,” he said.

The ministry has also tripled the number of employees working on issuing advertisement permit and developer's licenses, he said.

He explained that this is to fast-track the application process for housing developers to ensure the country’s economy does not stagnate.

Besides that, the ministry is also in the beginning stages of implementing a rent-to-own scheme which will benefit Malaysians in the B40 and M40 groups.

He said that he was shocked when he saw a list of 384 abandoned housing projects by previous administrations in his first week of work at the ministry.

Another 129 were classified as ’sick projects’ due to being delayed more than 30 per cent compared to the progress that should have been made or if the period of the Sale and Purchase Agreement has expired.

"The total is more than 550 [projects]. The total value is billions of ringgit,” he said.

He has since created a special task force to handle the matter, which meets twice a week to update him.

The issue was caused by a lack of transparent practices, he said.