However, Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Government Minister Noh Omar said Putrajaya will first carry out a whitening process to ensure that the units are occupied by the original tenants and not rented out.

He said the rent-to-own offer would be made to the tenants without any deposit.

“If the tenant has a good payment history, the amount paid will be taken into account,” he said at the ministerial question time session today.

Noh was responding to a supplementary question from Anuar Abd Manap (BN-Sekijang) on the mechanism of granting ownership to PPR tenants.

Earlier, Noh said as of December 2017 the government had built 84,490 PPR units nationwide, involving 122 projects.

He said the government offered a rental rate of RM124 per month while the selling price per unit was RM35,000 for Peninsular Malaysia and RM42,000 for Sabah and Sarawak.

He said there were two categories of PPR. In the first category, the construction cost of the PPR is borne by the federal government but the site is provided by the state government. For the second category, the federal government provides the land and bears the construction cost.

“So for the federal PPR, we will grant ownership rights to existing tenants.

“As for PPR on state government land, the matter will be discussed with the respective state governments on giving permanent ownership to the tenants,” he said in response to Anuar’s initial question on the government’s plan to grant permanent ownership to PPR tenants.