Abandoned projects to be revived
27/05/2008 The Star By Elan Perumah, Lim Chia Ying and Salina Khalid at the Selangor State Assembly in Shah Alam

ABANDONED projects in Selangor will be confiscated for redevelopment if a proposal from the State housing committee gets the nod from the state government.

State property, housing and maintenance committee chairman Iskandar Abdul Samad said the move was aimed at salvaging the abandoned projects.

Iskandar: This is the best we can do since some of the developers have not only abandoned these projects but have also absconded.

He said most of the projects could be rescued if the state was allowed to seize the affected land and hand it over to a new developer.

“This is the best we can do since some of the developers have not only abandoned these projects but have also absconded.

“Otherwise such projects will remain abandoned increasing the misery of buyers especially that of residential projects,” he said during the winding up session by the government representatives.

Iskandar said the Housing and Local Government Ministry has the power to confiscate such land and hoped the state would also be given the authority to do so.

Abandoned housing projects, Iskandar said, had created a lot of problems for housebuyers especially financially with banks coming hard on them.

He said the state had issued letters to the affected house-owners so the banks would show some consideration.

“We hope the banks will allow the housebuyers to reschedule their loans and postpone the repayment period until the projects are revived,'' he said

He said a special task force led by Hulu Klang assemblyman Shaari Sungib had been formed to revive the abandoned projects.

Iskandar said there were a total of 140 abandoned projects in the state of which 108 were housing projects .

He said so far the state government had revived 30 abandoned projects.

“This was done with the close cooperation of the existing and new developers and the government agencies,'' he added.