GEORGE TOWN – For the first time in decades, residents of the island's oldest affordable housing scheme are enjoying Chinese lanterns hung throughout their residential area as they usher in the Lunar New Year.
According to a resident Leong Meng Meng, 56, Chinese lanterns are colouring the skyline at the Rifle Range Flats for the first time in some 40 years.
The state’s oldest low-cost housing settlement after it was completed in the 1970s by the Penang Development Corporation in Air Itam, the Rifle Range Flats are mostly occupied by working-class residents, who tend to celebrate the Lunar New Year in a moderate and subdued manner.
This year, however, newly elected Bukit Bendera MP Syerleena Abdul Rashid was compelled to do something for the neighbourhood after being touched by tales of their grit and struggles to earn a living when she was campaigning here last year.
Although the majority of the units are now leased out to migrant workers, pockets of local residents continue to stay there, some not because of poverty but due to its strategic location just off George Town.
It makes travelling convenient in the midst of the present road congestion.
So upon realising that the Penang Island City Council (MBPP) had stocks of skyline lanterns after the bulk of them were hung in the town centre, Syerleena convinced the council to install some at Rifle Range.
Last night, she went on a tour of Block F where the majority of the lanterns were strung together.
Residents were seen beaming, and Leong remarked that the last he recalled the lanterns being installed in the area was when he was still in his teens, during the early years of Rifle Range.
“The Year of Rabbit has begun in earnest for us with the lights,” said Leong.
Syerleena was accompanied by Amanah Youth Tanjong division head Mohd Faruk Abdul Rahman and MBPP secretary Datuk A. Rajendran.
She thanked Rajendran for helping with the initiative.
He in turn addressed the residents by urging them to appreciate the colourful lights while extending his Lunar New Year greetings.
According to historical accounts, the Rifle Range was a shooting range for the military and the police during the British colonial era.
It was also the site where victims of the Imperial Japanese Army’s alleged Sook Ching massacres were buried.
During World War II, when Penang was under Japanese occupation, thousands of ethnic Chinese were executed by the Japanese troops and later buried in mass graves throughout Penang, including at Rifle Range.
Rifle Range was a pilot project to resettle residents from George Town. Completed in the 1970s, there are six blocks of 17-storey flats, and three blocks of 18-storey flats remain till today.
There are about 3,000 units with 66 ground floor shop lots. – The Vibes, January 20, 2023
