Welcome Rakan Sarawak June 2005

Rangkaian Khidmat Awam Negeri Sarawak

A MONTHLY SUPPLEMENT OF RAKAN SARAWAK BULLETIN

(People, events, activities and programmes which make for a total quality-managed Sarawak Civil Service)

ISSN 1394-5726

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Affordable Housing Development A New Concept

Members of the community can wok together to plan and encourage more healthy and socially acceptable activities
for their children

The inclusion of a resource centre in all housing estates may soon be reality once everything goes according to plan, including the approval of the proposed restructuring of the Ministry of Housing within the 9MP.

Different from a community hall, these resource facilities are actually informal learning centres that will provide its residents with a place to gather and to conduct their social activities besides using the available facilities to improve their knowledge and skills. The proposed available facilities may include a mini library where the residents could read, interact with one another and also for the children to do their homework, their revision and even play.

The proposed facilities may also provide residents with newspapers and magazines to keep them in touch with the latest development and issues while children especially students could use the centres to do their homework and revision or interact with other children to widen their social circles.

The idea, says Housing Minister Dato’ Sri Haji Abang Haji Abang Johari Abang Haji Openg, is to provide a healthy place for youth to patronize during their free time using whatever available educational facilities to help them improve themselves. Such centres would allow the youths to indulge in healthy activities and useful pursuit so that these youths would not be left too free with nothing to do which could lure them to undesirable and wasteful activities, he added.

Besides the youth, said Abang Johari, the older residents would also benefit from this centre as it provides them with the place and facilities to interact among themselves in order to foster closer bond of friendships and goodwill among the housing inhabitants.

Housing estates, he added, should not just merely be places to live but it should a strong and close-knit community where, if possible, residents should know one another.

Housing developers, the minister added, should change their old fashioned ideas about “low cost mentality” but to think to their projects as affordable houses. This way, he said, the developers can move away from their comfort zones which could ended them with them building low-cost houses which are deplorable and fit only as a “Rumah Kuda” or the horses’ stable.

Parents can use the community facilities to
hold dialogues and meetings to discuss problems faced by the residential
community and seek solutions to solve them

The minister, a well traveled man also commented that the terms “low cost” to refer to housing estates is not popularly used in a lot of developed or developing countries. Countries like Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and United Kingdom do not use the “low cost” concept any longer but instead had implemented the concept of friendly housing areas where social facilities like community development and neighborhood centres and other facilities are provided.

However, this plan may not happen so soon as there are lot of things that need consideration including financial matters and the skilled manpower to man these centres. Campaigns to convince housing developers on this concept may also need to be in placed so that this new concept has their support and
a chance to succeed.