Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has lambasted Umno for playing with racial politics by questioning why the state government did not use the Bumiputera Housing Trust Account to build affordable houses for the Malays.

Earlier, Lim said, Umno attacked the state government for not setting up the trust fund to help build houses for Malay bumiputeras.

When this was proven false, he added, Umno turned around and blamed the state for not using the trust account to build the units in Penang.

"This malicious slander plays around with racial ideologies to plant sentiments of hatred among the people and to attack the state leaders, especially the chief minister," Lim said in a statement today.

"Eventhough it is the responsibility of the federal government to build affordable housing, Penang has achieved a record not done before by allocating RM500 million for such units all over the state, including the island," he added.

"It was not easy to collect the RM500 million and four years was needed to do so. This amount is enough only to build 18,000 units of affordable houses for all in five years time," Lim said.

Discrimination against Malays

Lim was referring to a Bernama report quoting Penang Umno secretary Azhar Ibrahim as saying that not spending the fund amounting to RM33.36 million was "discrimination against the Malays" in the state.

NONE Azhar ( left ), who is state opposition leader, said such an attitude also clearly showed that Lim did not care about the fate of the bumiputeras, especially the poor and homeless.

Lim said that since 2008, the state through the Penang Development Corporation had built 4,000 units of low- and medium-cost houses.

An additional 8,000 are being built by the private sector, making it a total of 12,000 units.

"If we were to use the trust account first, Utusan Malaysia (the Umno-owned newspaper) and Umno will accuse us of not wanting to use the state's money to build the houses instead of using money collected for bumiputeras," Lim lamented.

"To avoid such allegations, we used money from the state coffers. Money from the trust account is not sufficient because to build 350 units of low-cost houses. The building and land costs would have come up to RM35 million," he calculated.

Azhar 'illogical'?

Lim said Azhar's statement was illogical as it implied that only RM3,360 is needed to build a unit of such houses.

Lim challenged Perda - which Azhar chairs - to build low-cost and affordable houses with that amount of money.

Lim assured the Malays that the trust account would be used to build affordable housing and it would be proven with the actual buildings (flats) and not with words.

"It would not turn out like the BN government which promised to build quarters for the Royal Malaysian Air Force married staff in Kepala Batas but has yet to do so until today, after 28 years."

According to Lim, the plot of land reserved for the project is currently being leased out by the Defence Ministry.