Residents' concerns:(From left)Ooi, Barisan candidate for the Bagan paprliamentary seat, Song Choy Leng, and MIC co-ordinator for Bagan Jermal J. Ellappan having a discussion with some of the Rumah Hijau residents after the dialogue session.Ooi, who presented his pledge through a letter to the Rumah Hijau Residents Association (RA), said he would continue highlighting the matter in the state legislative assembly.
By
DERRICK VINESH THE 1,000-odd residents living in longhouses at the Rumah Hijau resettlement area in Mak Mandin, Butterworth, need not fear of being uprooted against their will.
Incumbent Bagan Jermal assemblyman Ooi Chuan Aik said the residents no longer need to be relocated to Pangsapuri Ampang Jajar –a low-cost People’s Housing Project (PPR) scheme – as proposed earlier. “As long as I am re-elected Bagan Jermal assemblyman, I will ensure Rumah Hijau residents will remain in their neighbourhood,” he said at a dialogue with the residents at the Mak Mandin Murugan temple in Butterworth on Sunday night.
In 2005, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Abdul Rashid Abdullah said that a total of 1,781 squatter families, including those in Rumah Hijau Mak Mandin, would be resettled in low-cost housing projects in the state by 2007. Abdul Rashid had said that those squatting on state land would be offered to buy some of the state’s excessive low-cost housing units or rent its PPR units.
Rumah Hijau RA secretary V. Varutharaju said he hoped the government would build low-cost terrace units in the area, adding that the residents were willing to buy them at affordable prices.
“In 1972, the residents here gave up their original squatter houses and moved into the longhouses to enable the Penang Development Corporation to develop the Mak Mandin Industrial Area project.
“Initially, the residents were supposed to temporarily stay in the longhouses for about three to five years but it has been 36 years since we moved to Rumah Hijau,” he said.
Another resident M. Manogran, 53, said the two-roomed longhouses were decaying because of white ants, adding that there was also no proper sewerage system in the area.
“Rumah Hijau is a slump-within-a-town. It is not accessible by cars and the houses are often hit by flash floods as well as drainage backflow,” he said.
The Star Feb 26,2008.
