CONTROL OF RENT (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

3.30 p.m.

The Minister for National Development (Mr Ong Eng Guan): Mr Speaker, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The main purpose of this Bill is to make temporary provisions to suspend for a period of six months those sections of the Control of Rent Ordinance which operate to the detriment of legal farmers and other legal tenants.

Mr Speaker, with the present law as it is, we have found that many unscrupulous building societies or landlords have acquired acres and acres of agricultural land at a very low nominal price. There are hundreds of families of farmers who have paid their rents sometimes for two or three generations. These building societies, or in some eases unscrupulous persons, buy over the land at an average of a few hundred dollars an acre, and get the S.I.T. and the City Council to approve their building plans. So long as the plans are in order, the S.I.T. and the City Council will have to pass them. These unscrupulous contractors will take such building plans, engage lawyers, go to the court and seek the eviction of the farmers who, in certain cases, to my personal knowledge, have been staying on the land as legal tenants for three generations.

In the course of eviction, no compensation is ever given. Neither is there the humane consideration to provide alternative sites. When the Government evicts people from the land in order to develop the land for the benefit of the nation and the public at large, compensation is normally given, and more often suitable alternative sites are offered. But this is not the case with these unscrupulous societies and other persons.

Now, Mr Speaker, it is the intention of Government to introduce at an early date new legislation to assist farmers and householders, but definitely not illegal squatters of land. The idea of the new legislation is to assist legal farmers and legal householders to obtain compensation, or the offer of a suitable alternative site, when evicted from land required for so-called development purposes. Pending the introduction of such legislation which will take some time to draft, it is considered necessary and desirable to make temporary provisions to suspend for a period of six months paragraphs (i) and (k) of section 15, subsection (1) of the Control of Rent Ordinance.

Mr Speaker, this Bill is a short and simple one. Sub-clause (2) of clause 1 provides for the Ordinance to remain in force for a period of six months only. Clause 3 provides for the deletion of paragraphs (i) and (k) of section 15, subsection (1) . In other words, these two paragraphs will have no effect for six months. Clause 4 is merely consequential.

Mr Speaker, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole Assembly.

Assembly immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill.-[Mr Ong Eng Guan].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read the Third time and passed.