46 more housing projects in dire straits

KUALA LUMPUR: The housing and local government has already fully revived 12 housing projects and is in the midst of rehabilitating another 90, but there are still 46 abandoned projects on the books.

And according to Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Seri Kong Cho Ha, these projects are "difficult to revive".

"Some of these projects are not commercially viable anymore due to the time factor or financial reasons," said Kong at the Parliament lobby today.

"For the ministry, our priority is to help the low-cost and medium-low-cost projects as these projects concern the lower income group. Since the bulk of the remaining 46 projects belong to the high-cost group, it’s become difficult to revive the projects," Kong explained.

Kong told reporters that of the 148 abandoned housing projects involving 49,913 houses since 1990, 12 projects have been fully revived.

"The certificates of fitness (CF) for these jobs have been issued and 2,262 of these houses have been given to 1,459 buyers," he said.

Another 49 projects involving 23,082 houses and 16,634 buyers are currently undergoing various stages of rehabilitation.

"These projects are currently revived by white knights or the original developers. But we won’t classify them as revived until the CFs are issued."

Another 41 projects involving low-cost and medium-low-cost housing is currently being revived with the RM200 million fund allocated during Budget 2010, he added.

These projects involve 12,925 houses for 7,275 buyers.

While the ministry is working on reviving these projects, a list of blacklisted developers has also been put up at the ministry’s website.

"There are 1,245 blacklisted companies and 4,569 blacklisted directors on the list," said Kong.

Besides being blacklisted for not completing their housing projects, the offenders were also cited for late submission of reports, he added.