KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 25:

The 1,098 house owners of the Sri Rakyat Apartments, Bukit Jalil, claim they are often left in the dark over maintenance matters.

They claim that the developer and maintenance company, Bukit Jalil Development Sdn Bhd, did not inform them of important details on the purchase and upkeep of the low-cost units.

They bought the low-cost units in 1999 and received vacant possession and the certificate of fitness (CF) in February last year.

Sri Rakyat Apartments residents' action committee spokesman Leong Kin Yoon said: "The developer and maintenance company has not given us the breakdown of our monthly maintenance charges.

"Neither has it given us any details of the apartments' sinking fund." He said that the company recently lowered the monthly maintenance charges from RM50 to RM34, but removed the provision of garbage collection and security.

"We were happy about the reduction of maintenance charges, but we soon learnt that we would lose some services, and thus felt shortchanged." Leong said the company should provide copies of audited yearly accounts of maintenance expenditure to every house owner and paste the accounts on the apartments' notice board.

"This is a requirement by the Housing and Local Government Ministry which developers should follow," he said.

He said that while the house owners were happy to receive their strata titles, they were disappointed that the developer had kept them in the dark over the sub-division of their properties' titles.

"This is a must under the Strata Titles Act 1985, for the safety and security of individual titles," he said.

Another resident, Wong Wai Yan, said the developer should keep house buyers informed of the details of the insurance coverage which each of them paid for when they acquired their units.

"We pay RM75.78 a year for insurance coverage, but we do not know the extent to which we are insured," he said.

"We also want the company to tell us the scope of responsibility of the security guards. Of late, we have not been seeing them around our three housing blocks." He said that there were car thefts in the apartments over the last few months, and residents blamed this on the absence of security guards on certain weeks.

The residents brought up their complaints against the company to Federal Territories DAP treasurer Khong Chee Seng and its organising secretary Kuan Perk Siong yesterday.

Khong said that he and Kuan would meet representatives of the company today to forward them the list of grouses of house buyers.

"We are calling on the company to be sensitive to the problems faced by the buyers. We want an amicable solution to be reached," he said.