Kota Kinabalu: All subsidiary titles (strata titles) registered at the State Land and Survey Department are valid, according to the Sabah Land Ordinance, and thus can be mortgaged, transferred, placed under caveat and used as legal tender in any lawful dealing.Its Director, Datuk Osman Jamal, said this in response to reports Wednesday in which Kota Kinabalu MP Dr Hiew King Cheu claimed owners of apartments at Chanyai Villa in Likas here have sought his help to resolve problems involving their subsidiary titles which they claimed were invalid.
Hiew said the owners claimed the titles for the 145 apartment units where they have resided for more than 20 years could not be used as legal tender by legal firms, financial institutions and local authorities.
He said this was because the titles, which were issued in 2003 for every apartment, were found to have a terrible mistake on the location plan of each unit. The Land and Survey Department could have checked thoroughly before issuing the titles to the developers and owners, said Hiew.
"Actually all the said 145 subsidiary titles are valid since registered by the Registrar of Titles on Nov 27, 2004, which means they can be mortgaged, transferred and even placed under caveat. This also means our department had actually carried out its responsibility to issue the subsidiary titles to the developer concerned," said Osman, here, Thursday.
Explaining that the 145 subsidiary titles were issued under the name of the developer Inprofit Development Sdn Bhd, he said the subsidiary titles were issued based on the Index and Storey Plans supplied by the licensed surveyors appointed by the developer concerned.
And before these are approved by the District Surveyor for the purpose of producing titles, he said they must be certified by the licensed surveyor and counter-certified by the developer.
Osman said the developer and its appointed licensed surveyor had jointly certified the index and storey plans for the Chanyai Villa apartments to be used in making the subsidiary titles on May 26, 1998.
And the subsidiary titles were registered by the department in November 2004, he said, adding this was done after all the conditions were fulfilled.
"(This shows) the mistake occurred actually not on the part of the department. Since November 2004 the department had fulfilled all its duties and responsibilities according to the State Land Ordinance and the Land Subsidiary Enactment requirement," he said.
"The department will not make a silly mistake. No, (because) we are professional. The mistake was made by the developer itself during transfer of ownership to the apartment unit owners based on the sales and purchase agreement," explained Osman. He further explained that the developer had mistakenly written the subsidiary title numbers in the Memorandum of Transfer (MoT).
And the developer submitted the MoT and Memorandum of Charge (MoC) to the Land Registrar, the titles inserted in the MoT did not match (or according to) the actually lots which were occupied by the apartment owners.
"It is not the department's fault. So it is unfair to simply accuse or blame the department just when you only have one side of the story," he said, advising those who intend to help house owners who are in difficulty to at least provide the actual information so as not to put anyone or any party to shame.
"It is not a silly mistake made by the department. Because it was done by the developer during the submitting of the MoT and MoC to the Land Registrar," he said.
Osman said the apartment owners had actually written a letter to inform the department about their problem and that the worst thing was they were being charged for the titles at which they were not staying.
"So when we see they are facing problems, definitely we must assist to rectify the mistakes, which are not done by the department," he said.
Osman said they held a meeting at the department's headquarters on March 11, 2009, chaired by one of its senior officers, Yusri Abdullah, and also attended by the Land Registrar, where they decided to rectify the problems.
"This means the developer and land owners must apply to the department, through the Assistant Collector of Land Revenue Kota Kinabalu, to do a rectification on the land title under Section 117 of the State Land Ordinance," he said.
He said the rectification will put right the land ownership status, by inserting the name of the actual owner to his/her actual property but "this will involve a long process because the department will have to do a land enquiry to make an order on the titles one by one."
"We cannot make an order on all the 145 subsidiary titles at once, Ébecause we dealing with a legal matter, where we need to have a land enquiry whenever we want to change anything in the land title," he said.
He said only the department's Director through the collector of land revenue, through a land enquiry, as well as the High Court are authorised to do rectifications on a land title.
"In this case, the actual issue is to do a rectification on a land title that was already legally registered to the actual owner/occupant, following the mistake made in the application submitted by the developer for a land title," he said.
"The other option, besides to do a rectification on the already registered titles, would be to transfer back to the developer but to transfer we are afraid the owners would not be willing because they are already being charged by the bank," he said.
As published in the Daily Express on Friday, September 25, 2009 
