KUALA LUMPUR: The government will consider increasing the construction quota of houses ranging in price from RM90,000 to RM120,000 under the 1Malaysia Civil Servants Housing Scheme (PPA1M).
Chief secretary to the government Tan Sri Dr Ali Hamsa said if all goes well, the effort to help civil servants of all pay grades own homes should be realised beginning next year.
He said that the government could build a large number of homes in the price category.
“We (do) have (a) limited number of these units in Kuala Lumpur, but outside (the city), we will be offering a lot. We have done this in some areas, but the challenge is doing it in the Klang Valley due to land and subsidy constraints.
“We will put this new request into the formula. There are projects where we can offer up to 30 per cent of houses (in a housing development) in this price range. We will look at the price models and subsidies,” he said in a Labour Day gathering with the Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) here today.
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Ali added that the government has so far received 200,000 applications for houses under the scheme, 147,000 of which are being processed, and 10,000 of which have been approved.
“We have special units for the police, and we will look at building homes in the price range for all. We should be able to do this by 2019. There should be approvals by then,” he said.
Ali stressed that he will get the ball rolling immediately, based on a Labour Day request made by Cuepacs president Datuk Azih Muda.
Meanwhile, Azih said that it is not impossible for the government to raise the minimum wage of civil servants to RM2,500 in stages, based on the country’s economic performance.
He used China as a benchmark, where the republic had set a minimum wage of 2,500 Yuan (RM1,500) in 2012 – which allowed the economy to grow to US$15 trillion.
“The Malaysian economy has also grown in that period. It grew from RM690 billion to RM1.23 trillion in 2017.
Cuepacs is sure that the growth in the economy will herald an increase in minimum wage,” Azih added.