Urban Well-being, Housing and Local Government Minister Rahman Dahlan has tasked local councils with evicting foreigners from low-cost People's Housing Project (PPR) units as many Malaysians are waiting to occupy them.

"Each PPR unit is supposed to be occupied by Malaysians but some are rented out to foreigners. This doesn't make sense. The people are angry at the government. Thousands are still waiting (for homes). We are not doing them justice," he said at a press conference in Putrajaya today.

He urged local governments to conduct spot-checks to see if PPR homes were being occupied by locals, contending that many PPR homes are occupied by foreigners.

Rahman asked that local governments expand enforcement activities to handle the matter.

"PPR residents who are not Malaysians should be asked to leave. There can be no compromise. Which is why I said that enforcement is important," he said.

Rahman added that if the local governments find themselves unable to cope with the PPR matter, they can revert control of the housing schemes to his ministry to oversee and ensure that only those those who qualify will be allocated units.

"All this while, when we build PPR units, we will assign them to the local governments. If they are having trouble administering the housing schemes, they can return it to ministry's control," he said.

On a related matter, he said the government was helpless to stop developers from focusing on building luxury homes as opposed to low-cost projects.

'We can't stop them'

"We can't do that […] to stop them from building (luxury) houses," said the minister.

However, he appealed to developers to take the initiative to build affordable low-cost homes in addition to their luxury projects.

"We can only appeal to them that this (low-cost homes) is a national agenda," he said.

"My point is that the developers do not see a high demand for affordable homes. Though I think they are not fulfilling their corporate social responsibility well."

He was responding to questions on whether the government would advise local councils to stop developers from focusing on high-cost homes.