There are countless ways to usher in the new year. The religious would attend mass, the revelers would crowd into joints and the lonely would stay at home.

In Penang, about 60,000 people turned up at the Esplanade on Sunday night to witness fireworks worth RM50,000 light up the sky. Chief Minister Koh Tsu Koon led the countdown to the year 2001.

However, for an estimated 10,000 people who had moved out of Georgetown in the last 12 months following receipt of eviction notices and escalating rentals, there was hardly any cheer when the clock struck midnight.

"What do you expect? We are banging our heads against the wall," said a tenant who was among a small group who ushered in the new year at Noordin Street, a symbolic place for those affected by the repeal of the Rent Control Act which took effect in January last year.

"For some of us, eviction meant homelessness and sleepless nights on the five-foot-way," he added.

Candlelight vigil

About 100 people turned up that night for a candlelight vigil organised by Save Ourselves (SOS), a non-governmental organisation dedicated to helping affected tenants fight for their legitimate rights to compensation, housing and livelihood.

More than 500 houses along 36 streets in Georgetown have been vacated since last year, turning the atmosphere into a ghost town, said SOS secretary Ong Boon Keong.

"The fact that Georgetown is heading for the status of ghost town before its city status had been admitted by the Chief Minister at a Baba Nyonya function recently," he added.

He reported that State Executive Councillor Toh Kin Woon went further in a comment in the State Assembly recently that rental decontrol was a "deliberate tool to disperse the congested population".

"Most people want to keep Georgetown to its human inhabitants, not to the ghost," said Ong again, handing out to reporters a manifesto that the group had drawn up called "Ghost Town Busters' Manifesto".

Manifesto

The manifesto underlines five areas in which the local town planning unit can play a bigger role in helping evicted tenants.

One of them is an effective social housing policy as a means to stabilise residential use of the city and to shield against increasing property price hikes.

The manifesto stated there is an urgent need to return to elected local governments so as to address local problems neglected by state assemblymen and women and members of Parliament.

Victims of the rent decontrol were urged to utilise the services of the Human Rights Commission (Suhakam).

The local town planning unit was urged to have community conservation programmes written into its guidelines.

A civil society must be encouraged as rent decontrol had given too much power to the land lords which led to a situation where a "few old men" almost turn Georgetown into a ghost town.

People were advised to be wise in the next general elections and not to be swayed by "ghost voters".

Ong said that ghostly tactics to turn Georgetown into a ghost town can be seen through several developments, one of them the booming property prices squeezing out residential use.

The other is the "right" turn in politics in Penang - in other words, a weak opposition - had led to the government's tendency to ignore the lower classes, especially their housing needs, he added.

He also said that top-heavy government structures have allowed the state to use security apparatus to hose down protests, discouraging tenants to hold gatherings to make their plight known.

He added that an architecturally centred heritage movement is nursed by the governing political party to facilitate the depopulation exercise, a la -Pol Pot.

He stressed that the link between highly concentrated pre-war house ownership (20 landlords own 60 percent of property) and the Chinese clans and associations ensure that there is no public outcry over the rental decontrol problem.

"SOS has had four meetings with the state government but the latter is trying its best to ignore the problem and has become very defensive," said Ong.

"The government's responses are less than encouraging, slow and problematic," he added, referring to the rental housing allocation in places such as River Road and Rifle Range.

Ong pointed out that the RM100 million loan facility offered by the state government had not been properly utilised.

Victims of injustice

He said that SOS will continue to educate tenants to demand for proper compensation and lobby the state government to be more pro-active and caring toward the "victims".

It is, however, an uphill task, Ong admitted, as support from local NGOs had been poor. Many people, he added, have no class perspective and decided to ignore the problem because "many of those affected happen to be wealthy".

"But we can't deny that many are also very, very poor. They had built their lives around their homes and would rather sleep in the five-foot-ways than be driven from their homes," said Ong.

The highlight of the night saw a "ghost" draped in black releasing balloons to usher in the new year. Several tenants shared the problems they faced being kept waiting for compensation and homes promised to them.

Keadilan's Penang branch chief Abdul Malik Kassim came to show his support and told the people that the party supports their cause as "we are not fighting for former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim alone. He is just a symbol, of a victim of injustice."

SUSAN LOONE is a member of the malaysiakini team.