I read your article on Tan Sri Lee Kim Yew and his success and philosophy.

While I agree with you that Country Heights Kajang and Mines were relatively a success, I am surprised that the article made absolutely no mention about his other not-so-hot project College Heights in Pajam, Negri Sembilan.

It involves many people, including myself, who were induced into parting with our hard-earned money buying a bungalow lot in Pajam (for almost RM200,000) with promises by the developer that it will become Country Heights 2, and which today, has been totally abandoned except for a handful of people who live there.

It resembles an empty overgrown plot.

Personally, we are still servicing the loan without any hope of returns or capital appreciation, or direction from the developer.

Why don’t you run a second part explaining what he plans to do with it to show us that he really has the qualities you mentioned and not just a get-rich-quick property developer leaving us to hold almost worthless pieces of property?

– Vani Dhakshinamoorhy

Response from Country Heights Holdings Bhd group MD Mark Victor Rozario:

The vacant bungalow lots in College Heights in Pajam, Negri Sembilan, which we sold in the mid-1995/96 are not worthless pieces of property. We are still selling there.

What has happened is that the land owners have not built the properties themselves. Like any owners of vacant bungalow lots, they are waiting for each other to build. When the 1997/98 Asian financial crisis hit, they did not build.

In the next one month or so, we will be offering the land owners a package. We are tying up with a contractor to build a minimum 30 units of bungalows at 30% discount compared to if they were to build on their own.

We are not making money out of this. The package includes getting the necessary approvals and the Certificate of Fitness but we need a minimum of 30 units.

The developer next door has built terraced-linked and semi-detached units and that project is now occupied. We hope the land owners in College Heights will co-operate with us.