GEORGE TOWN: The Penang Development Corporation (PDC) is set to build more affordable housing units in the state soon.
State Local Government Committee chairman Chow Kon Yeow said the state has tasked the corporation with building some 800 low medium-cost (LMC) houses on mainland Penang.
"The units will be built on state land and priced at RM72,500," he told reporters after officiating the groundbreaking of Sunway Property Penang's regional office and sales gallery at Jalan Anson.
Chow said the state will tap into a fund where contributions had been made by property developers who had not built low cost and low-medium cost housing units within their developments.
"For the non-provision of LMC houses by developers, the state has collected some RM100 million already and will spend it on building affordable homes, along seeing to other amenities and infrastucture like drainage and allow schools to be built on land provided by property developers," he added.
He said the affordable housing project - at an undisclosed location in Seberang Prai - would be the first of several other similar projects to be carried out by the PDC.
The corporation which in the early 1970s opened Malaysia's first free industrial zone at Bayan Lepas, had also established two new townships - Bandar Bayan Baru on the island and Bandar Seberang Jaya on mainland Penang - to provide affordable housing and redress the economic imbalances between the rural and urban populations.
In the new townships, surpluses obtained from the sale of medium-cost housing units were used to subsidize low-cost units.
Chow said compliance costs generally make up about between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of a development project cost in Penang.
"The local councils collect these funds and utilise them for public infrastructure and amenities," he added.