KUCHING (Jan 13): The Sarawak Attorney-General Chambers has approved the establishment of a strata management tribunal to handle disputes related to buildings with strata titles, said Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Dr Sim Kui Hian.

He pointed out the State Legislative Assembly had previously passed the Strata (Subsidiary Titles) Bill 2019 and Strata Management Bill 2019 to better manage buildings with strata titles.

“With the amendments made to the strata ordinance recently, each apartment building now will have to appoint their own management committee and we only amended the state laws after studying the best practices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia,” he said.

The state Minister of Public Health, Housing and Local Government said this during a launching ceremony of TSW Group’s latest project, Joshua’s King service apartment held at a Sheraton Kuching Hotel here today.

Moreover, he explained improving the household income of Sarawakians is placed high on the agenda of the state government after Sarawak has been classified as a high-income state by the World Bank last year.

He further pointed out there has been a migration of Sarawakians from the rural areas to the urban areas, with the current statistics standing at about 634,700 Sarawakian families residing in the state and 821,500 houses have been built so far.

On the proposed free tertiary education initiative, Dr Sim said the state government aspires to provide free education at state-owned universities by 2026 and there are about 25,000 Sarawakian university students a year. The cost for each student is about RM30,000 per year.

On another note, he informed that there are 867 registered developers in the state and 99 per cent of them have successfully delivered their building projects.

“There were only few developers that had failed in completing their projects and leaving the buyers in limbo,” he added.

He also encouraged the public to carry out due diligence on the track record of a particular developer before purchasing any property via homeapps.sarawak.gov.my.