Rebuilding the KMC flats

suppadmin | July 20, 2017

Local Government and Housing Minister , Senator Datuk Dr. Sim Kui Hian’s wish to upgrade the lives of the KMC flat residents prompted him to go for a first dialogue session with the residents there on Tuesday night.

At the dialogue session, Dr. Sim said his main objective is to rebuilt 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 is over 60 years and in 2011 when there was repair and maintenance work done, it cost the Federal government RM10 million.

“Old building are hard to maintain so in the long run it is better to tear the whole thing down and build new buildings. We will always accommodate the tenants and will work out ways how to give them a fair deal either renting to them for a certain number of years and letting them buy it,” he said.

Dr. Sim said they want all the residents to understand their good intention and there will be more dialogue sessions in the future. He said once there is majority agreement among the tenants, they can bring in engineers and architects on how to do it.

He then showed an example of a KL building which was in a dilapidated situation and the DBKL torn down the old building to be replaced with a high rise 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 has been going on good progress,” he added.

The rebuilding 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 queries from the tenants.

At the moment, there are 411 Chinese, 61 Dayaks, 41 Malays and 4 Indian families staying in the KMC flats.