How to stop the rot
NST 14/06/2006

IT seems that putting builders in jail for failed projects is the flavour of the month.

If the powers that be are serious about beating the rot out of the construction industry, the builders, in all fairness, should not go to jail alone. They should be accompanied by errant architects, site supervisors and local authority personnel who issue occupation permits for buildings.

A builder cannot fail unless his comrades-in-compromise work with him to line their pockets while bleeding innocent housebuyers.

Almost every failed or abandoned housing project has the same litany of complaints:

• Sub-standard workmanship and materials;

• Non-compliance with approved plans;

• Architect signing progress-payment certificates blindly;

• Late delivery; and,

• Unfulfilled promises to carry out remedial work.

Housebuyers appear to have no saviour. The Ministry of Housing appears to be more the guardian of developers’ rather than house buyers’ rights.

Coupled with tardy responses, their world is a round of meetings and seminars with neatly capsulated and stillborn proposals.

Can the construction industry ever regain the confidence of the house-buying public without a major overhaul of the industry with the relevant minister in the driver’s seat?

R.J. NOEL Kuching