CM: Better for Perda to sell all gov’t land, close shop

Lim Guan Eng questions how private developers are able to build homes on site but Perda cannot.

GEORGE TOWN: A Penang-based federal agency has been advised by Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng to close shop over a loss-making land deal.

Lim said the Penang Regional Development Authority’s (Perda) failure to build homes and their decision to pass on this responsibility to a private company instead was reason enough for it to call it quits.

“It is unthinkable that a not-for-profit government agency is not capable of building homes, but a private company can do it with profit.

“If that is the case, it is best for Perda to fold and sell all land to the private sector,” he said in a statement issued here today.

Lim also panned Perda for not coming clean on how the land sale was conducted.

“There is no surety of the actual cost of the land, when Perda has been silent on how the land was sold.

“An open tender would have gotten a high price for the land. Being a land broker, you must profit, not (make) a loss,” he added.

Last week, Lim revealed that a plot of land measuring some three football fields was sold by Perda to private developer SYT Prestige Sdn Bhd at RM1.42 million last year instead of RM16.6 million. The land was originally acquired by the government in 1986 at RM1.7 million to build affordable homes.
Shabudin Yahaya, the chairman of Perda, an agency under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Department to develop the state, argued however that the land was sold cheap due to soil erosion problems, among others.

Shabudin said a cost benefit analysis showed it was no longer worthy to pursue the housing project on the site as it would incur losses of up to RM10 million. He added 107 homes already built and abandoned for the past 30 years had to be cleared as well to make way for the sale.

Lim however rubbished Shabudin’s ‘loss’ claim, saying the land could have been restored for only about RM5 million or less.