Pay maintenance fees or lose your property, DBKL tells govt housing project residents

KUALA LUMPUR residents living in government housing projects owned by the city hall (DBKL) who haven’t paid the maintenance fees in a while are advised to settle what’s owed to their Joint Management Body (JMB) and Management Corporation (MC), or prepare to lose their property.

Four residents living in the Kampung Baru Air Panas People’s Housing Project (PPR) in Setapak, who owed thousands of ringgit to their JMB, discovered this the hard way when the local authority, via its Commissioner of Buildings (COB), had obtained a judgment debtor summons to collect years and years of unpaid maintenance fees.

DBKL has appointed an agent to enforce the judgment and confiscate goods and properties from those owing it money.

A DBKL spokesman told StarMetro that enforcement would be carried out under Section 86 of the Strata Management Act 2013, and was aimed at owners who had bought units in government housing managed by the local authority.

“It is getting increasingly hard to maintain and manage the properties if people don’t pay their maintenance fees, and there are people who have bought the units since day one but haven't paid a single sen in maintenance fee,’’ he said.

“The maintenance fee is less than RM100 a month, and yet people still find it hard to pay.’’

The spokesman elaborated that one owner owed over RM15,000 in unpaid fees.

But when the COB was about to enforce, the owner agreed to settle the day before they were about to confiscate the property.

Another case, the owner owed about RM8,688, and agreed to settle via a monthly installments of RM500 after receiving a judgment debtor summons.

“This shows that they can afford to pay, however they simply refuse to do so,’’ he said.

“We are going to carry out enforcement on 30 other stratified properties owned by DBKL which are in a bad state due to unit owners not paying their maintenance fees.

“Many of the PPRs don’t even have a proper JMB in place, hence maintenance collection is poor and the facilities there such as lifts are continuously breaking down,’’ he said.

“This is unfair to the owners who pay and also to DBKL.’’