Welcome to the Iskandar Development Region

Those folks selling the IDR have their work cut out for them.

Pamphlets and media pompoms can only go so far; ultimately for the international audience, the best gauge is track record. Has the govt been governing? Are we a society with scruples? Are monkeys up there in the tree-tops (which is pretty) and not in offices and limos (which is ugly)?

Here's one for the record: 95 Singaporeans who own houses in a residential neighborhood in JB may lose their homes. These human beings had believed their families will move into a posh gated community complete with a swimming pool and tennis courts. So the pamphlets had promised. And so they drew out their life savings and banked in on the songs of birds in good ol' Jay-Bee.

Singapore newsportal Asia One reports:
Retired teacher Maimonah Mohamed is in danger of losing the home she bought in Johor Baru (JB) nine years ago.

Despite a six-year legal battle, she and her husband Ahmad Ahsan may lose her terrace house in the Taman Permata residential estate after a JB high court decision to allow the bank to auction off her home.

A similar fate also awaits 94 other Singaporean-owned units in the estate, many of the them owned by retirees who have paid for the houses in cash, often with their pension money, according to a report in The Sunday Times today.


The report does not elaborate how many Malaysians have been affected but rest assured our flers were equally hit.

The article reveals that the taman's developer, Focus Development Sdn Bhd, folded in 2000 without completing the project. All 136 houses had been built but not the common facilities such as the clubhouse and pool. Neither was there power supply nor roads. AmBank took over the project in 2001.

Now if that wasn't bad enough, the buyers later discovered their payments had gone into the errant developer's pockets and not to the bank, which Focus Dev. had secured a loan using the land as collateral. Despite the setback, the home-buyers collectively foot in another RM350,000 to get the main road and utilities on-site. They wanted their birdsongs and they will work at it.

But genuinely wanting a home and working at it isn't enough. They never had title deeds bearing their name. Last week, the state high court ruled that AmBank has the right to auction off the houses. No background was given in the report about the people behind Focus Development.

I fear they're out there somewhere, walking free, monkeys in pinstripes, talking the talk and selling nightmares in glossy pamphlets.

Fly-by-night developers are just one teeny blip in the radar of poor governance and administration in the land. Along with carjacking, snatch-thefts and corruption, such news get the highlights south across the Causeway.

And until episodes such as this are dealt with sternly, the Iskandar Development Region is as good as a lallang field three times the size of Singapore.

And you're certainly not helping it by leaving such news out of our mainstream media.