Mahathir's ancestral home renovated

Mahathir's ancestral home renovated

KUALA LUMPUR (AP): A 5.2 million ringgit ($1.4 million) project to renovate the birthplace of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in northern Malaysia will be completed later this year, a government minister said on Thursday.

About 30 percent of the work on an auditorium, an exhibition hall and an office around the modest wooden home where Mahathir was born, has already been completed, the national news agency, Bernama, quoted Deputy Minister of Works Mohamed Khaled Nordin as saying.

The project to beautify the area around Mahathir's ancestral home in Alor Star in Kedah state began in January, Bernama said. Mahathir, who has ruled Malaysia for nearly two decades, spent the first 30 years of his life in the five-room wooden house propped up on cement stilts.

The interior of the house, which is now a museum, is sparse with a few beds, a table, wicker chairs and an old Phillips radio on a bookshelf.