Condo residents fear for safety, question DBKL’s silence

 

Chandra Ramprakash shows the cracks on the car park driveway wall of Scott Sentral.

KUALA LUMPUR: Residents of an apartment building in Brickfields are demanding answers from City Hall (DBKL) over a nearby high-rise development, and say their complaints since 2015 appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

The residents of the Scott Sentral complex say they fear for their safety after the complex began to suffer damage eight years ago.

They blame the damage on construction work at the development, which was revived in 2021 by a new developer after the original plans in 2015 were scrapped.

A spokesman for the residents, Chandra Ramprakash, said they have been sending protest letters to DBKL since 2015 after finding out about the proposed project from a notice in the classified advertisements.

“But we have never received any response,” he told FMT.

He said a signboard on the development was erected in 2016 and residents insisted on a meeting with DBKL and the developer but there was no resolution from that meeting and “things went silent” after that.

He said the project was cancelled out of safety concerns and revived in 2021 by a new developer.

FMT is withholding the name of the developer and the project pending a comment.

Close-up of the cracks on the car park driveway wall. Chandra says residents are worried the wall will collapse.

Chandra said the construction on the project had led to cracks on a wall at Scott Sentral’s car park. He feared it could collapse at any time. “To completely rebuild this would cost us roughly half a million ringgit,” he said.

He said the construction work on the new housing project had also damaged the pipes below their building.

Another resident, who only wanted to be known as Maya, said property values at Scott Sentral had dropped since work on the nearby project began.

Chandra said the residents hoped DBKL would put a stop to the construction as it was not only damaging their units but would also cause major traffic problems once completed.

DBKL corporate communications director Zurida Hashim told FMT the project was not halted because there was no court order to do so.

DBKL did not see a need to issue a stop work order “because DBKL finds that the construction work is in compliance with the conditions under the earthwork plan approval”, she said.

Zurida declined to comment on claims by the residents that their complaints had been ignored.

FMT has sought a response from the developer. - FMT