By DERRICK VINESH | Sep 7, 2009

Council gets tough

THE Seberang Prai Municipal Council will not hesitate to drag some 57,000 housing and property owners in Seberang Prai to court for defaulting in their assessment arrears totalling RM77mil.

Municipal councillor Soon Lip Chee said so far 520 legal notices had been sent to defaulters in Seberang Prai since the beginning of the year.

“The council’s legal department is presently discussing with the seven law firms, which the council appointed last November, to track down the defaulters,

“The council had been too lenient with these defaulters. Many have not settled their dues for nearly 20 years,” he said in an interview recently.

Soon, however, said the defaulters still had time to come forward and discuss with council officers or municipal councillors on a formula to settle the dues in instalments.

He said if the defaulters failed to reply to the lawyer’s first notice of demand within 14 days, they would be given seven more days to reply to a final notice.

“If the council still does not hear from the defaulters after the two notices are sent, it will proceed to charge them in court.”

Soon said out of the 520 that received legal notices, only 20 defaulters came back to the council to settle their dues, noting that the response was very discouraging.

He added that the council might have to engage more lawyers to help proceed with legal action against the remaining defaulters.

The high number of defaulters, he said, was partly because some of them were bankrupt and the bank was in the midst of auctioning off their units.

“Some of the owners are abroad and they either chose to ignore paying the assessment or they failed to receive their assessment notices.

“There are also those who refuse to pay up because the project in which their housing or commercial units are located have been abandoned by the developer,” he said.

Fellow councillor Oon Neow Aun said some house and property owners also felt that if they were unable to find tenants to rent their units, they need not pay assessment.

“However, if they can show proof that efforts were taken to attract tenants and they failed, they could apply for a 50% rebate on the assessment amount from the council.”

He said they could send emails to the council at warrant@mpsp.gov.my to provide options on how they planned to settle their dues.