Housing Ministry officials must be more proactive

23/02/2000 The Star  By V.K. Chin

It is quite incredible that no housing developer has been taken to task for not submitting six-monthly progress reports which they are required to do under the law. No wonder some developers do not seem to be too bothered with public complaints against them.

 Instead of protecting the housebuyers, it seems that the Housing and Local Government Ministry is more interested in not offending the developers, which has led to the present unsatisfactory situation existing in the industry.

Its Minister, Datuk Ong Ka Ting, intends to change this and for a start he expects the developers to submit six-monthly reports on the progress of their projects.

This will enable the ministry to keep tabs on each undertaking to avoid unnecessary problems later on. Hopefully this will  prevent projects from being abandoned because the developers no longer have the financial resources to carry on.

This of course will be the worst-case scenario. But at least the progress report will enable the ministry to monitor on-going ventures so that any faults could be acted upon.

Without such reports, the ministry will be in the dark and will only know of the seriousness of the situation when a project has to be aborted or upon receiving complaints from buyers about shoddy workmanship.

But the worry is that even if the developers should submit such reports, the ministry must still send its officials to the ground to look into any infringements by the developers.

Not acting on such reports on time will allow the developers to get away with their actions, and the purchasers will have to suffer because of such negligence.

Ong will really be performing an extremely useful service if he can get his officials to be more proactive and to deal with problems faced by6 the industry and buyers promptly.

As has been said many times before, laws are only effective if they are properly implemented by the relevant agencies,. House-buyers should not be expected to resolve their problems by having to take the developers to court for satisfaction.

This is time-consuming and expensive affair and not many wage-earners have the financial capacity to do so. So most of them will suffer in silence and all  that they can do is to write to the newspapers about their plight.

If this should be ignored by the ministry, then they may have to use more of their own limited funds to do the necessary remedial work so that their houses are livable.

Perhaps the Minister should take another look at some of the abandoned projects to see whether something could be done to revive them so that the units could be completed and handed over to the owners.

Thousands of genuine buyers have found themselves in this unenviable position where they have to keep on paying instalments to the financial institutions and yet are unable to occupy these units.

Surely something can be done if only all the parties can sit down together, even if the developers have absconded or their companies closed due to financial problems.

Many of the prospective owners are quite prepared to fork out a bit more money if they can be assured that the new commitments would enable them to take possession of their homes.

But this must be a ministry initiative as it is unlikely that any other party can have the clout to arrange such a meeting.

It will be great if something could be done to end the misery of these unfortunate buyers.