Seac Pai Van project insufficiencies acknowledged

The fact that the Seac Pai Van social housing project opened without having concluded work on all of its social facilities is having an impact on the daily livelihood of the people that live there, lawmaker Chan Meng Kam said yesterday during a Follow-up Committee for a Public Administration Affairs meeting.
The committee is asking government departments for opinions on the revision of the affordable housing law. After a closed-door conference yesterday afternoon where members chiefly addressed the issue of long-idle public housing units in the city, Chan Meng Kam, who presides over the committee, told media that the authorities are now awaiting opinions from the CCAC on devising a legal definition of “non-
occupation” to deal with cases where the affordable flat owners have lent those flats to others.
Aside from the modification to the law, committee members also came to a consensus with the government that efforts to improve residents’ livelihood in the Seac Pai Van area have to be ramped up as disgruntled citizens have complained that the shortage of supporting facilities there has taken a toll on their lives after moving into the social housing units.
Chan Meng Kam said: “Residents reflected that their children could arrive at school on time by getting up at seven thirty whereas since living in Seac Pai Van they might be late for school even if they got up at six thirty.”
The committee head also mentioned that the neighborhood was in need of facilities such as supermarkets, wet markets, schools and a more refined transport network, all of which, he presumed, might be behind the low occupation rates of the housing units there.
The legislative assembly passed the revamp of the affordable housing law in a plenary meeting in the middle of last month. Staff reporter