Extent of liability and responsibility of 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: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: K Law (General)
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/6511/1/Nu1.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/6511/; http://rimc.uum.edu.my

The power to alienate lands is given to the State Authority pursuant to the provisions under the Malaysian Federal Constitution and the National Land Code 1965 (NLC).There are cases that the alienation of lands for housing development have not been carefully and professionally executed by the State Authority.Due to this, unsuitable locations of land have been alienated to applicant housing developers.In the course of developing the housing projects, the developers faced a huge problem when they discovered that the lands are not suitable for housing development and that to proceed with the development to completion, they required additional substantial fund. This problem might lead to the abandonment of the project. Further, it is also evident that the State Authority have appointed certain unqualified and incapable housing developers to carry out housing development.Because of the developers' incapability the due progress of the project development might be affected and to the worst scenario, the project might be abandoned by the developers.The ultimate aggrieved parties are the purchasers themselves. They have to face all the calamities because of the housing abandonment.This paper aims to highlight this issue and problem 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 the legal research methodology and the social research methodology. This paper finds that the problems in the alienation of land for housing development projects may originate from the wrong and insufficient decisions carried out by the State Authority.Due to this, the State Authority can be said as having breached the fiduciary duties and the procedural and substantive legitimate expectation that it owed towards the public.In the final part of this paper, the author suggests certain approaches to overcome this problem.