Wooden planks being used to prevent the concrete wall from collapsing.
AFTER a four-year wait, a family can rest easy now that Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) is repairing a drain which has given way thereby compromising the perimeter fencing of their house.
Sundari Subashini Nesamany, 39, who owns the single-storey house in Section 22 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, said they had been following up on the problem for a few years and the delay had led to more damage and increased the repair cost for MBPJ.
“We lived in fear of the house suffering further damage.”
She said MBPJ was alerted about the cracks on the drain structure back in 2019.
“MBPJ repaired the drain by the side of the house in 2020, but not the one in front of the house.
“The reason given by MBPJ was that it did not have the budget to rectify the entire damage,” Sundari told StarMetro.
Over the years, the crack in the drain got worse, she said, noting that the concrete fence began to be affected.
On April 24, Sundari and her family heard a loud noise from their porch and saw that the crack in the drain had become wider and soil was exposed.
She and her sister covered the soil with canvas to stop further erosion and put wooden planks against the concrete wall to prevent it from collapsing.
According to Sundari, MBPJ said her house had some illegal renovations which could have contributed to the problem.
However, her family bought the house only in 1988 and they did not do any renovation.
“The housing area was completed in 1968, so the renovation might have been done by the original houseowner,” she said.
Sundari added that her neighbour, a civil engineer, checked the cracks and said the problem was with the drain built by the city council and that it did not have anything to do with the house.
An MBPJ spokesperson said the city council would bear the drain repair cost but the resident would have to pay for repairs to their side of the property.
Repair work on the drain started on Monday.
