CF – best New Year gift for housebuyers

05/01/2004 The Star

AT long last – that was the initial response of many buyers of the Majestic Heights (Taman Terubong Indah) Phase One when they first learned that the project had obtained its Certificate of Fitness (CF) recently.

Describing the CF as the best Chinese New Year gift, technician Kong Chih Leng, 37, said he could not wait to move in with his family.

“I had wanted to move in with my bride when the project was initially scheduled for completion.

“I have now three sons aged between two months and seven years and I am really happy that I am finally moving in after waiting for six years, ” he told StarMetro North on Saturday.

For clerk Wong Choy Foong, she recalled how she was among thousands of people who had queued up from 6am to 5pm to apply for apartment units when the project was launched in 1994.

“After the project was stalled, my husband and three children lived in my mother's house with my brother and his family,” she added.

The couple also brought two of their three sons, Al Wayne, eight, and Wei Wynn, 18, to visit the site together with the other buyers.

Pensioner O.T. Goh, 68, who bought an apartment unit and a shoplot, said he felt bittersweet when he was told of the good news.

“My wife and I had wanted our spastic son (Jason Goh, 28) to do some business in the shoplot. However, she had passed away without ever seeing her dream come true,” he added.

The Phase 1 project comprises nine blocks totalling 1,527 apartments and 30 shoplots.

The Majestic Heights project consists of 2,955 housing units (grouped under Phases 1, 2A, 2B and 3A), 55 shoplots and 22 light industrial units.

The project hit a snag after developer Majestic Heights Sdn Bhd faced financial and management problems in 1998.

The Housing and Local Government Minister then for the first time invoked Section 11(1)(d) of the Housing Developers’ (Control and Licensing) Act 1966 which directed the developer to wind-up the company.

In 2001, liquidator Deloitte Kassim Chan was appointed after the developer agreed to a winding-up order filed in the High Court by 545 buyers of Phase 1 apartments.

The CF was handed to Paya Terubong assemblyman and state executive councillor Datuk Dr Loh Hock Hun by the liquidator's architect at 4.15pm on Tuesday.

Majestic Heights Phase I Purchasers Ad-hoc Committee adviser S.L. Chang said committee chairman Lim Beng Hong, vice-chairman Lee Kok Eng and himself were waiting outside Dr Loh’s Komtar office for any good news on that day.

“It was as if we were anxious fathers waiting outside a hospital’s delivery room. When Dr Loh rushed out to say “sign already,” we misheard “seh (given birth) already,” “he quipped.

However, the committee’s work is not completed yet as it has now undertaken the task to form the apartments’ management corporation, he said, adding it was expected to be completed soon for buyers to move in before Chinese New Year.

He thanked Dr Loh and Bayan Baru MP Wong Kam Hoong who had “walked with us during our struggle come rain or shine.”

In urging the remaining 23% (353 people) of buyers who failed to pay RM7,500 for the revival work, he said the committee would not interfere if the liquidator took legal action against them.

Lim said apart from having been the country's largest single abandoned housing project, it was also the first self-help and self-managed one.

“We had met as strangers but our bond has grown into brotherhood. Thus, when we move in, we are more than neighbours – we are part of a big family,” he said, adding that a thanksgiving dinner would be held soon to celebrate “their triumph.”

Committee secretary P.L Chang said: “We have now closed a chapter in our story and now we are opening another one where we have to form the eight-member management corporation.”

He said just looking at the buyers’ happy faces was rewarding enough for the committee which was formed in 1999.