Extent of liability and responsibility of the state authority in the alienation of lands for housing development projects in Malaysia: A case study of abandoned housing projects

• Main Author: Md Dahlan, Nuarrual Hilal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malayan Law Journal 2014
• Subjects: K Law (General)
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/11720/1/Nu1.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/11720/

The power to alienate lands is given to the state provisions under the Malaysian Faderal constitution ('FC')and the National Land Code ('NLC').There are cases where the alienations of land for housing development have not been carefully and professionally undertaken by the State Authority.Due to this, lands that are unsuitable have been alienated to applicant housing developers.In the course of developing the housing projects, the developers face a huge problem when they ultimately discover that the lands are not suitable for housing development and that to proceed with the development until completion, they would require substantial additional funds.This problem might lead to the abandonment of the project.Further, it is also evident that the state authority may have at times appointed housing developers that are not qualified and are incapable to carry out housing development projects.The incapability of the developers then adversely affects the due progress of the project development and the worst scenario is that the project might later be abandoned by the developers.The ultimate aggrieved parties are the purchasers themselves who will have to face all the calamities because of the abandonment of the housing project by the developer.This paper aims to highlight this issue relating to the problem in the alienation of land for housing development by the state authority.The research methodology used in this paper is a composite of legal research methodology and social research methodology.The sources of the legal methodology are the provisions in the statutes and case law.Apart from these, government circulars and directives are referred to.The social research dimension, meanwhile, entails sources from file reviews, observations and interviews with related parties.To complete the social research method, secondary sources are also referred to enrich the social research data collection and analyses.In at ii short, this paper is a result of a socio-legal research undertaking.It finds that the problems in the alienation of land for housing development projects may originate from the wrong and insufficient decisions made by the state authority.Due to this, it is submitted the state authority has breached the fiduciary duties and the procedural and substantive legitimate expectation to act fairly and reasonably towards the public in alienation of lands for housing development projects.In the final part of this paper, the author suggests certain approaches to overcome this problem.