WESTLITE Accommodation Malaysia, a Centurion Corp : OU8 0% unit and owner-operator of purpose-built workers accommodation (PBWA), plans to raise the capacity of its dormitories, it announced in a Tuesday (Sep 13) bourse filing.

The move comes after Westlite reconfigured all its Malaysian PBWA assets in December 2021 to comply with a regulatory requirement, passed in July 2019, that requires employers to provide migrant workers accommodation that meets certain minimum standards aligned with the International Labour Organization.

Dubbed “Act 446”, the regulation mandated the provision of a bathroom, toilet, bed and mattress, a locked cupboard as well as sufficient space for cooking, resting and eating in worker dormitories. Act 446 became fully enforceable at the end of 2021, after grace periods given by the Malaysian government due to the pandemic.

As a result of the reconfiguration, the bed count of Westlite’s Malaysian PBWA portfolio has been reduced to 25,099 beds as of end-June, the company disclosed, albeit without specifying the previous number of beds. It has 8 properties across the states of Johor, Penang and Selangor.

Westlite now hopes to grow its PBWA capacity to cater to the growing needs of multinational companies, SMEs and human resource agents in Malaysia. In Q2, it undertook asset enhancement works carried out at the Westlite Tebrau property, adding 688 beds to the portfolio.

“With more employers including SMEs striving to comply with Act 446, we expect to see a growth in demand for high-quality, thoughtfully constructed and professionally-managed worker accommodations,” said Centurion CEO Kong Chee Min.

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“This would also benefit the human resource agents who now need to ensure that they are adequately housing the foreign workers whom they bring into Malaysia,” he added.

Shares of Centurion ended Tuesday at S$0.395, down 3.7 per cent or S$0.015.