BINTULU-The Finance Ministry have been urged to intervene into solving the delay of the
Bintulu Port Sdn Bhd (BPSB) staff housing project involving 500 units of houses which
have not been completed until these days.Bintulu Member of Parliament, Dato' Seri Tiong King Sing said the project had failed to
be completed although the developer was given an extension of up to 31 December last year
to do so.
"In the sales and purchase agreement, the project was supposed to be fully-completed by 10
September 2000. However, it was not completed until today and the developer was given a
notice to complete it the latest by 31 December 2001," he said when debating the 2003
National Budget at the parliament here recently.
Two types of houses were planned to be built under the project where Type A were tagged at
a price of RM165,000 per unit while TYPE B RM70,000, and a total of 215 units had been
purchased by the staff of BPSB.
Tiong added that a number of local financial institutions had been appointed by BPSB to
provide loan for the buyers at a rate of four percent, with the remaining interests of
between five percent to 5.25 percent borne by the company.
The delay in the project had created problems for the buyers and they had wrote to the BPSB
management and to Tiong himself to request for explanation over the delay as well as measures
to solve the matter.
He added that the company did reply to his query where they had disclosed that the project
would be completed by June this year. At the expiry of the month in question, he made several
queries with the company but failed to get the true explanations.
He told the Parliament that majority of the buyers were from the lower income group and some
were almost reaching their retirement age. They had been committed to pay for the housing
loan and at the same time, some had to pay rentals for houses they currently occupied.
"The buyers also had to pay the bank interest as well as the principal interest and this
situation had been going on for the last three years," lamented Tiong, while informing the
House that the fund the company had to allocate to subsidise the interests should also be
taken into account during the period.
In his initiative to find out the reason for the delay, Tiong said that he heard the developer
was complaining about not being paid by BPSB but the latter denied and stressed that they had
already did so.
He hoped the Finance Ministry, being the majority shareholder of BPSB would take proactive
measures to handle the situation as the matter was important in safeguarding the reputation
of Barisan Nasional as a caring government.
