Councillors defend CF approval by local councils

The Star 10/7/2004

Several councillors have voiced their fears over the Government's proposal to do away with the Certificate of Fitness (CF) requirement for new buildings.

"Local authorities have house buyers' interest in mind where they hold back approval for CF," said Dr Kow Cheong Wei.

"Buyers will end up facing problems if developers are not forced to meet all the council's conditions.

"Local councils have often been made to look as though it was causing delays in issuing CFs when it is often the developers who fail to meet the requirements laid out by the council when their plans were approved," he added.

Councillor Datuk Lee Hwa Beng said placing the responsibility of approving new buildings solely on the shoulders of architects could be risky if some of the 'black sheep' in the business took advantage of the system and presented false reports.

"We have seen this happening in the case of two abandoned projects in Subang Jaya where the banks ended up releasing money for percentage of work that was not carried out," he said.

He said the architect's report had falsely stated that a higher percentage of work had been completed by the contractor.

"This caused problems in efforts to revive the project after it was abandoned.

"I am not saying that all architects are unreliable but all we need are a few bad apples to create a lot of problems for housebuyers," he said.

Councillor Datuk Liew Yuen Keong, said in the past the council had tried to allow approval of CF applications without the need for comments from Telekom Bhd and it backfired.

"Some of the developers took advantage of that and did not provide the needed cables and equipment needed for the buyers to have the service connected to the units after completion," he said.

"As a result, there are buildings in Seri Kembangan which do not have telephone lines even until now."

He said he was afraid that problems like this might recur if the requirement for CF was done away with, leaving the buyers as victims.

Council president Datuk Abdul Hakim Borhan said the council would continue to follow the existing exercise until it received a formal directive to do away with the CF requirement.

He said it was only a proposal now and the Housing and Local Government Ministry was to conduct a thorough study before it was implemented.

"If we are asked to present our comments we can highlight our views to the ministry," he said.