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By Himanshu Bhatt. MY FIRST ever crime assignment when I was a rookie news journalist in the mid-90s was at the Rifle Range flats in Ayer Itam. I remember being in theSun’s Penang office, then at MacAlister Road, some time in the late afternoon when the newsdesk got a phone call to tip us off about a murder. The upshot was that I found myself flying off with another newbie reporter to the infamous flat area, not knowing how much of a baptism of sorts the experience was going to be. It was the first time I saw a corpse at close range, a man with his brains literally splattered on the pavement after he had been apparently stabbed and pushed out a window of one of the high-rise buildings. And just as we were let through the police cordon to take photos, with just the small film camera we had, gunshots suddenly rang through the air. In a completely unrelated incident, an armed robbery was taking place on the other side of the very block we were at. The crowds scattered even as policemen rushed round the corner in an utter state of confusion. That was my early impression of Rifle Range, no pun intended. A dishevelled and filthy ghetto-like quarter of Penang riddled with crime and various social problems. For years now, the nine heavily congested blocks of flats and another four low-density blocks have long been known for their shoddy infrastructure and lack of recreational facilities. Garbage chutes were dirty, elevators unkempt, electrical wiring haphazard, and pipes in states of disrepair. Built in the sixties, Rifle Range was an example of how the government’s mass housing projects from that era have failed to live up to the crucial test of sustainability. Along with other similar public housing estates like the Pekeliling Flats in Kuala Lumpur, Kampung Melayu in Penang and the Bagan Dalam flats in Butterworth, the buildings all stood out like sore thumbs over the modern urban skyline as years passed. Now in a fresh ray of hope, the state authorities recently undertook the unenviable task of rejuvenating Rifle Range and other public housing estates. The buildings are earmarked for new paint-jobs, landscaping is being carried out, drains are being cleaned, and wiring and pipes changed. And in perhaps the most symbolic move, a “Linear Park” is being planned at Rifle Range to provide the tens of thousands of people there a green lung for recreation and leisure. A private philanthropist has already come forward with a commitment to bear the entire cost of the park, while its design is researched and prepared on a pro bono basis by Landscape Studio, a private company. The move is long overdue. What the community there has long needed was a psychological boost to heighten the morale of the entire neighbourhood. In October 2009, the Penang government announced it was drawing up a five-year master plan to repair and revitalise existing government housing projects in a bid to enhance the condition and status of public housing in the state. There is without doubt a stigma associated with low-cost residences, even among those who live there. And even as there is a general feeling of insecurity in such communities, questions are being raised on why they cannot have the most basic amenities on par with more expensive housing projects. The state recently gazetted the Penang Housing Board, which is expected to look at models used in Singapore, Hongkong and some western countries where public housing does not have negative connotations. Indeed, one cannot help but look at Singapore’s Housing Development Board, which has long been known for providing citizens with relatively pleasant, clean and well-facilitated estates that certainly put the low-cost projects we have on this side of the causeway to shame. Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng in fact once lamented that public housing in the state was currently seen as “a final abode of those who have no where else to go”. Having liveable, comfortable and safe housing, whatever its cost, is not at all an impossible task. But it will certainly be a heavy commission for the authorities today to rejuvenate not just the physical environment but also the spirit of the communities that have lived in these slum-like homes after decades of relative neglect. ** Reprinted with permission. This article first appeared in the July 7, 2011, issue of theSun. Himanshu is theSun’s Penang bureau chief.
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