Deputy Housing and Local Government Minister Raja Kamarul Bahrin Shah Raja Ahmad said this meant only 1.6% of the targeted housing units have been completed between 2013 and 2018.

PR1MA, set up under the 2012 PR1MA Act, is an extensive programme to build quality houses for the middle income group, that is, those with a household income between RM2,500 and RM15,000 per month.

“The overall target by 2020 is one million. That is in two years’ time. But only 1.6% has been completed.

“We have also discovered that, the total allocation used is RM8 billion. This situation raises many doubts, because so much money has been used, but so few units have been completed.

“We will look at the problems being faced, and see how we can restructure to tidy up the implementation,” he said in his winding up speech on the Supply (Reallocation of Appropriated Expenditure) Bill 2018 today.

From the list of completed units, Perak topped the list with 6403 PR1MA homes, followed by Kedah with 3,341 homes.

Raja Kamarul stated that in 14 states, there are 130 ongoing projects, with 131,000 units under construction, and 268,000 units approved at policy stage.

He also said that the government was in the process of studying successful housing models in other countries which it can emulate.

“We will try to find a formula to build more comfortable housing of at least 1,000 square feet, whether it has two rooms or three rooms,” he said in a response to a question by Siti Zailah Mohd Yusoff (PAS-Rantau Panjang.

Efforts, he said, are still being expended to lower the prices of affordable housing from the current RM300,000 to RM250,000.

“The government has been trying to lower construction costs of affordable housing by exempting some of the building materials from the Sales and Services Tax (SST).

“But this alone will not guarantee construction costs will go down. For instance, the state governments need to play their role concerning land premiums,” he added.