The Country of Abandoned Projects

Selangor, Malaysia

If you live there for a while, you can’t help notice that Malaysia is littered with unfinished and abandoned buildings. I have not done an in depth study, but I suspect that Kuala Lumpur and Selangor are strong contenders for the A.P.E. (Abandoned Project Excesses) awards. The level to which such massive housing (and commercial) projects are allowed to fold is out of hand. In today’s Malaysia, billions of ringgit molder away in unfinished monoliths!

Let me give you some examples. If you traveled from KLIA on the main freeway and looked to your right at the USJ tollgates, a massive double towered thirty-odd story monolith stood in totally abandoned decay. Will it ever be finished? I often asked my friends and all I ever got was an uncaring shrug. Did anyone care?

I am sure those who invested in it cared. In 2009, figures cited in The Star claimed that Selangor alone had over 140 abandoned projects involving well over thirty five thousand units. That’s a lot of units, and a lot of families who had lost money. Did they borrow from the builders? No, they borrowed from the banks, and the banks weren’t going to feel sorry for them.

So people were required to continue to pay off their installments and for what?

Buildings that would probably never be completed! It was all very sad. But I should not be too harsh on Selangor. Travel up north to Rawang. (What? It is in Selangor as well? Whoops!) When I first drove through this area, I turned off the freeway at the Bukit Beruntung exit.

‘That sounds like an auspicious name,’ thought I. ‘Lucrative hill! Wow.’

My jaw dropped. Without exception, the developments I drove through were all dirty, dumped, discarded, derelict and decaying, end on end all the way from the motorway to the old town of Rasa. A few families huddled together in the odd street here or there, but the estates were, to all intents and purposes, abandoned.

I often played golf at Lembah Beringin, a golf course to the north of Rasa. The sight of the community that was intended to thrive off that particular golf course was depressing indeed. It too had decayed into depressing dereliction. Maybe these areas would make great sets for post-apocalypse movies. After all, they were already in ruins. Mould ruled and rats thrived (and those were just the owners!)

If something like an A.P.E. award ever took off, Selangor might well win. It would be a toss up between Puchong and Rawang as to which area within Selangor State would earn the specific honors. Puchong too was littered with stalled or abandoned projects: Lestari Permai, Putra Perdana, Lestari Perdana, Lestari Puchong and Saujana Puchong to name but a few. Construction on these and many other projects ground to a halt.

Some were not even half complete. Some were almost complete. All remain abandoned. There is little hope that they will be resurrected.

With so many decaying buildings, abandoned projects, unfinished roads, why not rename Selangor? How about Selangour? There’s a certain languor about it!

Mind you, for me, the grand daddy of all white elephants was in Subang Jaya not far from the prestigious Saujana Golf Course and the old airport. The public housing towers that stood by the Subang Jaya tollgates to the NKVE take some beating. They still stand there complete. Painted a ghastly slushy orange pink, they look ready for occupancy, but they have been empty for years.

When I asked about them I was told that there is a health risk because they were built on a rubbish dump. Toxic waste? Possibly. Rumor had it that such wastes could be cleared away by recycling brown envelopes, preferably well stuffed, but it was just a rumor.

In November 2008 I collected some Singaporean friends from the Star Terminal at Pelabuhan Klang. We drove away from the ferry terminal along the pot holed Persiaran Pelabuhan Barat. Their first sight of KL was rows of abandoned shops to the left of the road. It made for a depressing introduction to the Klang Valley.

When I dropped them back to the ship, after they had expressed some negative comments on the urban decay that had greeted them, I decided to explore the area round the terminal. Like Bukit Beruntung, the island on which the west port is sited, is also euphemistically named: Pulau Indah. I have yet to visit a less beautiful island. And it is a crying shame.

The contractors trying to establish Malaysia’s Finest Riverside Community (according to the advertising hoardings on the SKVE) had tried hard.

They had done a commendable job building parks, fishing platforms, children’s playgrounds and recreational facilities in the isolated developments scattered randomly in the mangroves along around the island. Precious few residents had moved in. The ubiquitous blue tarpaulins over front courtyards sheltered pathetic attempts to make a little extra cash.

As for the planned Free Trade Port, the less said the better. To this day, a four-lane highway complete with massive and rarely used overpasses ends at a spectacular series of customs control gates, set below a gigantic modern glass and concrete office building. It still stands totally abandoned.

How did this disaster happen? The Malaysian Housing Development Act dictates that the buying and selling of houses are to be based on the sell-then build (STB) system. That system enables developers to sell their products and start collecting payments as soon as buyers sign on the dotted lines—even before the houses and condos are built!

All is well if the dream materialises, but what if the developers fail to complete what they have sold for which they have already collected partial payments? The affected buyers are left with devastating financial nightmares. House buyers progressively pay the developers when they start building. In other words, developers use their customers’ funds for their capital requirements. If the developer fails and the houses cannot be completed, who is left in the lurch?

In 2008, over 45,000 units of abandoned houses made for a hell of a lot of houses. That makes 45,000 buyers plus their dependants who suffer along with them.

And these figures only represent the state of Selangor. Add in commercial properties, and then add the other states and the situation is horrendous.

A variant of the build-then-sell (BTS) system called the 10-90 system (pay 10% upon signing and then the balance 90% upon house hand over) was put in place during the Housing Development Act amendment of 2007. It was not made mandatory but was left as an option for developers. Like so many laws, on paper they look good, but they are a waste of time and a smoke screen for the government to claim that it did its best.

Unless the 10-90 system is adopted and omits the house buyers from the risk equation, thus leaving developers and banks to deal with the success or failure of their business ventures, nothing will change.

Like so much in Malaysia, good intentions are like children crying in an auditorium. They are best when carried out.