GEORGE TOWN, Oct 5 — The Penang state government will be putting a stop to low-cost and low-medium-cost housing owners from renting out their units.

State housing exco Datuk Seri S. Sundarajoo said these affordable housing units are heavily subsidised and are only meant for those who can’t afford expensive homes.

"Someone has to put their feet down to enforce this and stop people from renting out low-cost housing to others,” he told reporters after launching a housing symposium at Mercure Hotel in Tanjung Bungah here.

He said these low-cost housing are meant for the poor to live in and not for others to enjoy.

"I understand that when they rent it out to some factories, they can get rental of RM1,000 or more and use it to rent other places outside for half the price and keep the balance as extra income,” he said.

He said this is not the purpose of low-cost housing being approved for those who can’t afford homes.

"I stress that these heavily subsidised housing are for them and their family to use, they cannot rent it out, whether to locals or foreigners,” he said.

He said he will discuss with the local government development ministry to amend the sales and purchase agreement (SPA) to resolve this issue.

"At the state level, we will come up with our own enforcement action, we will be presenting papers to the state exco in the next few weeks,” he said.

He said there are already social problems arising from many of these units being rented out to foreign workers.

Meanwhile, Sundarajoo said there are factories that have rented up whole blocks of vacant low-cost and low-medium housing units to be converted into foreign workers’ quarters.

"In South Seberang Perai, there are low-cost housing units in remote areas and most of these are vacant, so factories have rented up blocks of these projects,” he said.

He said he is working with the local government state exco Jason Hn’g to convert blocks of vacant low-cost and low medium-cost units into hostels for foreign workers.

"It will be a very practical, clean and healthy solution to housing the foreign workers,” he said.

He said suitable projects for such schemes include those in remote areas that are vacant and some that currently have more than 70 per cent of units occupied by foreign workers

"We target blocks like this to be converted for workers and let factories rent the whole block,” he said.

He said this can be done in an orderly and controlled manner

He said there are low-cost projects that were built in remote areas due to low land costs and this resulted in low sales of these units.

In the long term, Sundarajoo said they are studying ways for centralised workers’ quarters to be built within the factory’s premises.

"We are looking at allocating a corner in industrial parks for this purpose,” he said.