Lim Koon Teck (Chinese: 林坤德) (28 November 1904 – 29 October 1984) was a barrister-at-law, industrialist and politician in the Malaya and Singapore.
Liau Chia-Heng (廖正興), a pepper merchant whom his father was friendly with at the Teochew Club, made a gift of $5,000 to help fund Lim's education abroad.
[9][10][11][12][13][14][15] Upon him qualifying as a barrister, his father moved the family to a rented house at 119 Emerald Hill Road, next-door to Seow Poh Leng, to reflect Lim's status.
[25][26][27][28][29][30] Lim sat for and passed in Malay in August 1936,[31] and was appointed Registrar of the Straits Settlements High Court in January 1937.
[36] In May 1940, Lim was transferred from his position as Third Police Magistrate in Penang to Malacca to act as District Judge and Registrar, Supreme Court,[37] but this was temporary.
[41] After World War II was over and the British returned to Penang, the local government was reformed with the previous administration except for Lim.
After reestablishment of the local government, the British Military Police took Lim away for investigations relating to collaboration with the Japanese.
Lim put his case for wrongful imprisonment before a Judge who cleared him of all suspicion and praised him for having saved the lives of British soldiers.
[49][50][51] Lim wrote a letter of complaint for being sent to the lowest possible post despite all he had done to keep order in Penang, the lives he had saved, and his being cleared of all charges of collaboration.
In less than a week he received a letter putting him on early retirement at full pension, at just 42 years of age, which was unheard of.
While he started as a Private, owing to the high position he held, he was given special training and was promoted, in October 1929, to Second Lieutenant in charge of a Company of 40 men, just a month later.
[58][59] Before the British left, they asked Lim to stay back to keep law and order among the people, and to hand Penang over to the Japanese when the latter arrived.
Conditions in prison were so bad that Lim avoided sending people there, preferring to let them off with a warning and an extremely light sentence.
When the Japanese discovered that he was giving those prisoners more than vegetables, salt and rice – he had introduced a bit of pork bone that he got from the roadside market – they objected.
Explaining that the prisoners would not live long on the diet they had been allowed, Dr. Evans suggested adding Bovril or some other meat stock into the soup.
[69] He often criticised Government spending where he felt it was excessive, was sympathetic to the plight of the less fortunate who struggled to have their own homes and encouraged savings among wage-earners.
[74][75] By the end of 1955, one of those, Phoo Yong Estate, off the sixth mile Bukit Timah Road, became home to 150 low income families.
Eace of these came with a bedroom, sitting room, store, kitchen and bathroom, and if wood were to be substituted for steel in the house frame, a lavatory could be added on for free.
Initially Lim was occupied in attending to Lee Kong-Chian's war claims and buying land very cheaply at auctions – no one had much money at that time.
[98] He saw an opportunity in real-estate and Lim soon spent most of his time acquiring property for Lee Kong-Chian, including the Chequer's Hotel, purchased at 24 cents an acre.
Lim told Kong-Chian of his love for building houses, especially to help lowly-paid people like clerks, own their own homes.
In 1949, with a nod from Lee Kong-Chian, Lim, all by himself, started and ran a factory, on 50 acres of land at Elias Road, to manufacture concrete blocks.
[99] He helped solve problems of delays at the Singapore Improvement Trust's Tiong Bahru project caused by a brick shortage by supplying them with 2,000 light cellular concrete blocks.
When the Salvation army approached Lim for help in building a Home for Boys he turned to Kong-Chian who agreed to give them the other 25 acres.
[102] In 1968, he became chairman of newly formed Bukit Sembawang Estates Limited, listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.
[111] Lim's interest in taking up the Directorship with Sembawang Estate was to help people through the construction of low-cost housing.
His first project involved 100 acres at Sembawang, Upper Thomson Road, entirely built under his supervision, and sold at prices below that being charged by the syndicate who had bought the land earlier (for Serangoon Gardens estate).
[136] Taking up his new seat he showed that his position, however, had not changed, when he made a call, in the Legislative Assembly, for the Government to help lower income groups in need of housing, proposing that Government start a 'revolving fund' of $1,000,000 to buy land and sell cheaply as building sites, the proceeds of which could be recycled indefinitely.
Then the war occurred, and after liberation he was informed that he would be appointed district judge, Ipoh, but a month later he was told that he was to proceed to Seremban as registrar of the high court there.
[141] In April 1956 Lim, representing the Liberal Socialist party accompanied Chief Minister David Marshall to London for the first Malayan Independence or Merdeka Constitutional Talks at Lancaster House.