By Story and photos by ELAN PERUMAL| Apr 22, 2011
elan@thestar.com.my

Numerous housing projects abandoned in Jenjarom

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Wasted: The property is nearing completion only to be abandoned by its developer.

Kampung  Batu 9 Kebun Baru near Jenjarom in the Kuala Langat district is surrounded with abandoned housing projects and its villagers are fed up.

Over 10 years, the area between Jalan Kebun in Klang and Jenjarom, has attracted numerous development projects; sadly, most of these projects have been left unfinished.

Villagers said they kept stumbling upon new housing projects which were eventually abandoned after a period of time.

As for the village itself, they said, it had not seen much development.

A check by StarMetro showed the village has several abandoned housing projects especially along the branch roads leading to Jenjarom.

The projects ranged from as small as 30 units to over 100 houses and the prices were between RM100,000 and RM300,000.

Most of the projects comprised single-storey terrace houses while some were single-storey semi-detached houses.

A number of the projects were 50% and 70% completed while others were abandoned after some structural works.

Some projects had notice boards with information of the proposed development.

Villager Azman Yusof, 39, said the village had more abandoned houses compared with the number of occupied houses.

He said there were too many abandoned projects in the village and the residents had become fed up of seeing such projects in the area.

“The abandoned projects have become part of our village’s identity and this is not good for our image,” he said.

Another resident Sani Ahmad, 40, said most of the house buyers were from outside the village.

In the past, he said the village used to attract a lot of people during the weekends.

“The house buyers used to visit the projects to see the progress of the development, but they gradually stopped coming after realising work on their houses had been abandoned.

“Most of the projects took off in the mid 90’s and some in the beginning of 2000. Except for a few, the rest have not been completed,” he said.

Sani added most of the projects were carried out by individual landowners through joint ventures with developers.

He said it was sad that hundreds of house buyers had been left feeling cheated as they had not only paid huge sums on deposits but also forced to service monthly bank instalments.

“I hope the government can do something to revive the projects in order to help the victims,” he added.

State housing, building development and squatters committee chairman Iskandar Abdul Samad confirmed there were eight abandoned projects in the area.

He said the state had placed several of the projects under its Abandoned Project Task Force.

“Work on some of the projects have started and we are still involved in negotiations with a few of the developers.

“We are also faced with the challenge of not being able to locate the developers in most of the cases,” he added.