House buyers lose out as tribunal has no bite
10/06/2004 The Star

The inability of the Housing Tribunal to enforce compensation has caused some house buyers of Taman Fadason in Jinjang Utara, Kuala Lumpur, to lose their confidence in the body. Although the tribunal had awarded the house buyers compensation of between RM1,000 and RM4,000 for late delivery in March of last year, they have yet to receive the award from Fadason Holdings Sdn Bhd.

Apparently, the developer is planning to go to court over the award. If Fadason does that, then the house buyers will have to do so, too. Kepong MCA public services and government affairs bureau chairman Yee Poh Ping, who is helping the 570 house buyers with their claims, said they had spent RM20 each on filing costs and gone through a long proceeding in the tribunal over their low-and medium-cost flats.

“Until now, the developer has yet to pay any compensation to the house buyers,'' he said. “Although we met the developers several times, they gave the same excuse that they would appeal. “The house buyers', with the exception of 48, are giving up on their efforts,’’ he told reporters during a visit with five house buyers to the tribunal's office in Pusat Bandar Damansara recently.

Yee said if developers went against the tribunal's decision, then the rules and regulations pertaining to buying properties protected the developers, not the buyers. “What is the use of a tribunal, then?” he asked. Yee urged the Housing and Local Government Ministry to review the Housing Development (Control and Licensing) Act 1996 to ensure that the tribunal had powers to issue stop-work orders or suspend a developer's permit if it failed to comply with the award.

Tribunal secretary Wan Husin Wan Hassan said the responsibility of enforcing the award was not its, but the enforcement division's. “It's like when a judge passes a sentence, he or she will not pull in the accused for failing to comply with the sentence. It becomes the police's job to do so.”