PARLIAMENT | BN's failure to deliver on its election promise to build 1.1 million "affordable" housing units within five years came under scrutiny in the Dewan Rakyat today.

Khalid Abdul Samad (Amanah-Shah Alam) got the ball rolling during question time, accusing BN of making promises it can't keep, after Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Noh Omar acknowledged that only 23 percent of the target was met.

Noh claimed that the remaining 64.2 percent of the houses were still in the construction or planning stage and that the government was still 138,355 units short.

"So, only 250,000 units have been completed while the balance of 900,000 has not. You made 'sweet' promises during the elections. But when (your term) is about to end, you cannot deliver," Khalid said.

Nor shot back by blaming the situation on the Selangor government's refusal to cooperate on the matter.

"You are only an energy engineer, that's why you don't understand," said Noh (BN-Tanjong Karang).

"You think that building a house is as easy as speaking. Planning (the affordable housing alone) was an extraordinary effort, but we need the cooperation from the state government.

"Taking Selangor state government as an example, only 11,000 out of 51,992 units (in the state) were completed. Why? Because of lack of cooperation from the state government," he said.

Noh urged the state government to give special treatment to the federal agencies that deal with affordable housing as they cannot be treated as private developers.

He added a committee is needed to be set up to deal with the affordable housing projects, which are defined as units priced below RM300,000.

[More to follow]