'Ministry never offered flats to Dengkil tent dwellers'

The Taman Permata Dengkil residents who have been living in tents near their cracked-up flats for 90 days now have denied that they were offered temporary housing by the federal government.

"The residents are represented by the Taman Permata Dengkil residents' committee, which was chosen by the residents themselves.

"To date, the residents' committee has never received any letter (on this) from the (Housing and Urban Well-being) Ministry.

"In fact, we only found out that the ministry had written to the Selangor government about our situation when we issued a memorandum to the ministry on July 30," the committee said in a statement toay.

'Certain quarters instigating the residents' 

It was responding to Housing and Urban Wellbeing Minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan's claim that the government offered the residents alternate housing in Bukit Jalil when it found out they were living in tents.

Rahman ( right ) said that the offer was spurned because there were quarters "instigating" the residents to continue living in the tents for political reasons.

As for the "instigation" claim, the residents urged the minister to not make further claims but to visit the residents in their tents himself.

"We are living in tents because we are desperate. Our flats on block 5 of the building are not safe to live in, as attested to by the Sepang Municipal Council on June 11, 2013," the committee's statement said.

The residents also urged the ministry to focus on working together with the Selangor government to solve the problem , and to keep the committee in the loop.

The Selangor government had said earlier that it would provide any land deemed appropriate by the Housing Ministry, but the federal government said it needs to know where first before it could build the housing.

The state also needs the ministry to provide a letter of undertaking that it will build the houses.

The ministry had, prior to this, rejected a parcel of land provided by the state, saying it was former mining land and unfit for housing.

The residents, all former plantation workers, were moved to the low-cost flats in Dengkil 14 years ago, to make way for the construction of Putrajaya.