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PENANG Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow needs to see the issue of raising quit rent rates from the grassroots perspective instead of just from the civil service standpoint, said his predecessor, Lim Guan Eng.
Chow needs to meet the ordinary folks, who are disappointed with the excessive quantum, said the Bagan Member of Parliament.
To complicate matters, Lim said that the steep increase was also not part of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) manifesto 2023, and makes the coalition vulnerable to criticism.
"There are no states other than Penang that are brave enough to approve an increase of a thousand times higher. The reasoning that there was no quit rent revision for the past 32 years, since 1994, is not strong enough. There is no justification for the steep spike in quit rent rates," said Lim in a statement.
The statutory declaration fees went up from RM4 in 1994 to RM10 this year.
It is reasonable, and no one is questioning it, but one would be puzzled as to how the quit rent went up by five times; for example, the Bola-Bola low-cost apartments in Bagan went up from RM3,676 to RM22,120.
Or the village homes in Kampung Sekolah in Juru, which went up 2,842 times from RM12 in 1994 to RM34,118.
Lim expects the appeal numbers to go up in tandem with the unhappiness over the increase, saying that the people see that spike as inaccurate and illogical.
Lim said that his open invitation to Chow to go down to the ground to meet the ratepayers here over the quit rent controversy was politely declined.
He said that among the schools affected, the SRJK (C) Li Hwa in Butterworth saw the quit rent up from RM2 to RM8,074, and then suddenly saw a discount of 90%.
The chief minister needs to face the reality that there is a need to review the quit rent structure to a system which is logical, fair and rational, he added. - March 17, 2026