Home, sweet home, in a Felda scheme
BENTONG: Home, sweet home! Firdaus Roshidin Mohd Mohidin, 39, describes his home as just that.
The Felda second-generation settler is proud of his house at Felda Mempaga 1, the second Felda settlement opened in the country after Felda Lurah Bilut.
He is glad to have purchased a house built under the ‘Perumahan Warga Felda’ programme initiated by the government to cater to the rising need for housing by Felda second-generation settlers.
In 2004, he moved into the house and became his father’s neighbour.
Housing was not an issue in Felda schemes from the time the first settlement was established in Lurah Bilut in 1958 until Felda stopped taking in settlers in 1990.
It became an issue only after the original families expanded and the children began to have their own families. That’s when the government stepped in with its housing initiative.
“Once we got married and started a family, it is not proper to continue to live with our parents,” Firdaus Roshidin, the eldest of seven siblings, told Bernama.
Firdaus Roshidin, who works as a Kemas (Community Development) supervisor in the Sabai state constituency, appreciated the neverending attention given by the government to the Felda community and applauded its commitment to building more houses, not only for the second generation but also the third generation of Felda settlers.
He now lives with his wife and children in the comfort of their three-bedroom terrace house in the Felda settlement, bought at just RM35,000.
Early last month, a new model of the Felda second-generation settlers housing programme was launched by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to ensure that the second-generation settlers could afford to own houses.
Under the programme, 5,000 houses will be built, each of 1,000 sq ft with three bedrooms and two bathrooms and will be sold at a subsidised price of RM55,000.
In addition, last year, the government approved the construction of more than one housing unit on each plot of land in the Felda scheme, with more than 70,000 houses expected to be built.
Another second-generation settler, Mohd Saiful Rizal Zainal, 38, who has been living two houses away from Firdaus Roshidin’s in the same scheme since 2005, expressed relief at being able to own a house inside the same settlement where he had grown up.
“The majority of the secondgeneration settlers prefer to remain in the Felda schemes because the cost of living is much higher in the cities. In the schemes, we can continue to work on the farms or sell goods online,” said the father of four.
Describing the upcoming housing programme as good news to the many second-generation settlers who have yet to own houses, the self-proclaimed entrepreneur, however, voiced out his concern that many of them might still face difficulties to secure one, given their financial constraints.
“The problem is a majority of these people do not have a steady job with a salary statement, which makes securing a loan difficult,” he said.