FREE MALAYSIA TODAY. 22ND OCTOBER: A group representing house buyers has questioned the disparity between the number of abandoned housing projects declared by housing and local government minister Reezal Merican Naina Merican and the figures on the ministry’s website.
Reezal told Parliament recently that 79 private housing projects were abandoned as of Sept 30 and that they involved more than 17,000 units and 11,000 buyers.
However, the ministry’s website lists 198 abandoned private housing projects and a ministry spokesman has confirmed that the list is accurate, saying the figures are solely for Peninsular Malaysia.
Speaking to FMT, National House Buyers Association (HBA) secretary-general Chang Kim Loong said he wondered why there was such a vast disparity. “Did someone play down the figures or was it a genuine mistake?”
He noted that the list did not even include abandoned projects in Sabah and Sarawak and those that were carried out by the government or its agencies.
Chang also said the statistics did not include those projects left idle and categorised as “sick projects” and “delayed projects”, which he alleged were nearly three times the number of abandoned projects.
Some of the projects listed on the website were abandoned in 1997 while the most recent ones were from 2019.
He said such buyers faced the “traumatic experience” of parting with their savings to own a house only to find that it would never be completed.
“And worse, they still have to service their bank loans.”