KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) has urged the federal and the state governments to provide decent housing for the hardcore poor in the state.
HOLES EVERYWHERE: The rusty zinc sheets riddled with holes and (right) Rohead’s one-room wooden home.
Its Wanita chief, Melanie Chia, said after almost five decades of independence and despite being endowed with abundance of natural resources, the governments had failed to provide a decent home for hardcore poor like Rohead Nik Dominic who instead received overwhelming sympathy and unconditional help from foreign ambassadors in the country.
“How would you feel if it takes foreign diplomats to help repair dilapidated homes of the rural poor in our own state? And where have all the monies collected from the oil palm and gaming taxes gone to?” she asked in a statement issued here yesterday.
Rohead from Kampung Morion, Kota Marudu, is suffering from Thalassemia.
The boy recently made headlines in local and national newspapers when the deplorable living condition of his family was highlighted following a visit by Croatian Ambassador Zeljko Bosnjak to his dilapidated home.
During the visit, Bosnjak was visibly moved to tears after seeing the condition of Rohead’s wooden home, which has zinc sheets riddled with holes for the roof and rusty zinc sheet for walls.
The news report on Bosnjak’s emotional visit to Rohead and his family later sparked off efforts from other ambassadors in the country to chip in to rebuild Rohead’s one-room wooden home.
Melanie who is also the Luyang assemblywoman, pointed out that the large number of hardcore poor in the state would continue to live in deplorable condition due to insufficient federal allocation for its housing assistance programme and the absence of housing assistance by the state government.
She noted that Kota Marudu Member of Parliament Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili, who is also Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, had said that in Kota Marudu alone, it would take at least 20 years for the government to meet the housing needs of the poor households.
There were 1,495 hardcore poor households who were eligible for housing aid under the ‘e-kasih’ programme but annually, allocation was only available for some 60 households.
She thus called on the state government to emulate the fine example of the neighbouring state of Sarawak where, in addition to the free housing for the hardcore poor provided by the federal government under the PBR, which is administered by the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development, the Sarawak state government has come up with its own assistance for the poor, such as the longhouse loan scheme in which each longhouse household could apply for a RM10,000 loan to repair their homes.
“So perhaps it is high time that our state government should provide its own housing assistance to the poor in the State in addition to the one provided by the federal government. This could help to eradicate hardcore poverty more effectively in a shorter time,” she stressed.
She acknowledged that the housing needs of Sabah’s poor, especially rural poor, including those in longhouses, were quite serious and they warrant an urgent and appropriate attention of the state government.
Melanie hoped that with the revelation of Rohead’s plight recently, Maximus could now better empathise with the plight of hardcore poor in the state, including those in his own constituency, and to go all out to push for the state government to adopt his earlier proposal to provide interest-free loans or repair assistance for those
whose homes are still reasonably fit to live in, or the PBR model of free housing.
Maximus had proposed that the state government provide repair grants of between RM10,000 and RM15,000 per household.