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GEORGE TOWN: A family of five who had been going from one public toilet to another and living out of their car for the past eight months after losing their home in a fire today moved into a temporary floor provided by the state government.
Ganesh Soundarajah, 33, his wife and three children, ages eight months to six years, moved this morning to their government apartment in the Rifle Range at Air Itam.
The flat is free for them and is a temporary unit that is made available to disaster victims until they find a new home.
Ganesh’s troubles were made known to the public after an NGO noticed that his family lived in an old Proton Saga on the polo fields earlier this week.
They also received the attention of well-known philanthropist and preacher Ebit Lew, who got them home appliances and a house rented for a month.
Handing over the keys to Ganesh, the chairman of the state Housing Committee, Jagdeep Singh Deo, said he was deeply concerned after seeing them living in difficulties.
“Please don’t assume that we are doing nothing when we have been doing everything possible to help, despite our limitations,” he said, adding that there are only 999 units of flats intended for the poor or Popular Housing Projects (PPR ) in the state to date.
Jagdeep clarified that the rent flats of RM 90 per month were under the control of the federal government. Penang had the fewest available units of this type in the country: 999, or just 1% of the total 114,652 units available nationwide.
“We have proposed five parcels of land from the state government to Putrajaya for PPR since 2017, but there has been no response.
“We have 772 people on the waiting list (for PPR flats) since 1983,” he told reporters here today.
The five proposed sites are located in Sungai Pinang, Batu Maung, Bagan Dalam, Machang Bubok and Bukit Tambun.
Explaining the delay in helping Ganesh, Jagdeep said the state only received one application for a government housing unit from him on Wednesday (December 23), a day before the press learned of his difficulties.
Jagdeep said that when Ganesh lost his home to a fire in April, welfare officials offered his family a place to stay in a temporary evacuation center, but this was rejected because Ganesh wanted to live with a relative.
Ganesh thanked the Penang government for the flat and credited the press for making this possible. He insisted that he had applied for government housing through a “YB office behind the old Rex Theater” on Kinta Lane.
He said he then took the forms to Komtar and was then told to “wait” as there were so many people on the waiting list.
P Murugiah from the Penang Hindu Association, who inquired about Ganesh’s housing application, was informed by a government official that the application form was “incomplete” because certain required documents were not produced.
Jagdeep, when contacted for comment on this, reiterated that the Penang government had offered Ganesh a place at the temporary evacuation center in April, but he had refused to accept the offer.
He said that Ganesh would now be placed on the priority list for a rent-to-own or affordable apartment for now. “We got him a place to stay within 48 hours after his application was submitted on Wednesday,” he added.
