TEACHING vocational skills, conducting tuition or organising sports programmes – those are among the community service work that Public Housing Project (PPR) flat residents in Selangor can soon do to pay their rent arrears.
State Housing Building Manage-ment and Squatters Committee chairman Iskandar Abdul Samad said the state government had approved the scheme, which is presently being fine-tuned by the Selangor Housing and Property Board (LPHS) before it is implemented by Jan 1 next year.
“The problem now is to work out how to relate the number of community service hours with their rent arrears.
Fun time: Children of PPR flats playing in an open area near their home in Taman Putra Damai, Lembah Subang. “Only those who qualify can subscribe to this scheme,” he said.
“These comprise those from the low-income group whose income is less than RM1,500 per month irrespective of the number of family members, and those who earn more than RM1,500 a month but depending on their number of children,” he added.
The scheme is aimed at offering the tenants a sense of responsibility and encouraging them to be more active in their community.
Iskandar said the idea originated from the United Kingdom where the unemployed carry out community service work while receiving unemployment benefits.
Selangor’s proposed community service activities include organising community programmes, teaching skills based on existing capabilities, volunteering at community centres, overseeing youth activities or conducting census.
On suggestions to include cleaning as one of the jobs, Iskandar said this may overlap with the existing cleaning services being carried out.
He stressed that the scheme was not a punishment, but an avenue for tenants to contribute back to society.
“We could get them to supervise cleaning activities or projects related to cleaning like gotong-royong instead. The scheme will be flexible, and done according to their time and skills,” said Iskandar.
“LPHS, the department which will be responsible for setting up the guidelines, will go down to the ground to find out the types of work required, as it could be unique to each PPR locations,” he said.
On the management of the scheme, he said it would be best done by the respective local councils or through the flats’ residents associations.
The PPR flats are presently located at Lembah Subang (Petaling Jaya), Kota Damansara (Petaling Jaya), Serendah (Hulu Selangor) and Kg Baru Hicom (Shah Alam), with the first two being the larger ones.
While tenants have appealed for the rent to be waived, Iskandar said the state exco decided that this would be wrong as it is the taxpayers’ money.
He explained that the PPR flats were built by the federal government, but managed by the state government who collects the rental and conducts maintenance work.
There are various forms of financial assistance available from Lembaga Zakat Selangor or Social Welfare Department, but Iskandar said that these two agencies sometimes failed to capture all who needed aid.
“The rent is RM124 per month at the moment. The previous government had in June 2007 increased it from RM124 to RM250, albeit in stages.
“We have received a lot of complaints since then, so the state exco decided in November 2008 to reduce the rent to RM124 for those whose income is less than RM1,500 a month and have five family members.
“Since there are still people who can’t afford the RM250 a month rental, we decided last week to fix it at RM124 for those who qualify to pay at this rate,” said Iskandar, adding that the rental rate for similar flats that are not PPR are between RM400 and RM600 a month.
For the tenant’s convenience, the application for rent reduction will now be processed by the local council offices and need not be sent to the LPHS in Shah Alam.
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