Rectify errors, Kedah urged
15/08/2006 The Star

SEVERAL community-based organisations have called on the Kedah Government to rectify the mistakes made in the recent quit rent review.

They claimed that the new parameters used in the quit rent review for 2004/2005 had contravened the National Land Code.

Quit Rent Assessment special committee chairman Cheng Lai Hock said the state should impose the old rates until the mistakes in the new ones were rectified.

He said the Land Office had made a mistake by assessing the quit rent based on the type of business activity and the height of the building.

“It is clearly stated in the National Land Code 1965 that the authority shall not take into account the increase in land values because of improvements made,” he said when contacted recently.

He said the Land Office had based quit rent rates on the type of land based on the nature of economic and business activities like tourism industry, petrol station, hypermarket, private hospital, private education centre, recreation centre and livestock farming.

“The quit rent should be imposed according to location, size, and category of land usage as stated in the grant.

“The height of building and the type of business activity should not be taken into consideration when calculating quit rent,” he said.

The committee comprises the Kedah Chinese Town Hall, Kedah Tiong Hwa Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Kedah Tengah Commerce and Indus-try Association, and Kedah Selatan Tionghua Chamber of Commerce.

It had sent a petition to Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid recently.

“Kedah has also identified new categories of land such as Malay reserve land, town land, small town land, suburb land and village land when assessing quit rent.

“This would mean that non-Malay reserve land will be assessed at the rate similar to town land even though it is located in a village.

“For example, quit rent rate of RM0.60 per square metre is imposed on one petrol station that is located in a Malay reserve land in Jalan Changlun-Arau, while RM1 per square metre is imposed on another petrol station on the same stretch that is on a non-Malay reserve land,” he said.

State Chinese Community Affairs Committee chairman Datuk Chong Itt Chew, who was entrusted to attend to the complaints, said the state had formed a special sub-committee to look into the matter.