8 April 2021
A low-income family has urged Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to intervene after claiming their bank unfairly auctioned off their home during the Covid-19 pandemic. Speaking to the media today after meeting an officer from the central bank, 38-year-old tailor M Moganah alleged that the interest rate for her housing loan was raised without due notification.
This resulted in an accumulation of overdue payments, eventually resulting in the bank auctioning off her low-cost flat in Taman Balakong Jaya, Seri Kembangan, Selangor. She claimed she only learned about the outstanding repayments when it was too late - after her home was already sold in October 2020. Moganah lives in the unit with her husband and two young children. She co-owns the unit with her mother - 61-year-old P Letchumy. They have been servicing the home loan for the past 17 years.
“We hope Bank Negara will help us get our home back,” she said, adding that she was not interested in any compensation from her bank. Malaysiakini is withholding the name of the bank pending a response to this story. Malaysiakini is also reaching out to BNM for comment. Elaborating, Moganah said she found an informal eviction notice on her door on Oct 7, 2020, from someone who claimed to have bought her flat.
She then visited her bank, where an officer informed her that her home had been sold a week ago in an auction. The officer also said that the bank had increased Moganah’s monthly housing loan repayment from RM268 to RM325 back in July 2018. She claimed she was unaware of this increase and thus did not alter her monthly direct debit amount. According to Moganah, the bank stated that the reason for the auction was their housing loan repayment was overdue by three months.
She said her bank blamed the lack of notification on her failure to update her contact number and home address. She refuted this, claiming her details were updated back in 2015. The buyer was alleged to have terminated the water and electricity supply to the unit on March 30. Moganah and her family are now temporarily living in another location.
Bank offers to resolve Moganah handed a memorandum of her complaints and requests to BNM this afternoon. She, Letchumy and several others also staged a small demonstration outside BNM’s Kuala Lumpur headquarters. They were joined by members from Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM), including its central committee member S Arutchelvan.
He urged BNM to intervene in the interest of homebuyers. “They have paid two-thirds of their housing loan and had just four more years left. But the bank went to auction their home. And this happened to a B40 family, we can't accept this [...] “Bank Negara needs to take responsibility because this is a power-play between a powerful, rich private bank and a B40 family,” he told the media. Arutchelvan also shared that the bank contacted him before today’s demonstration offering to resolve Moganah’s predicament. “We told them we want back the house [...] we asked them (to communicate) in writing. “We haven’t got anything by writing yet,” he said. The demonstration saw a light police presence.
Source: https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/569807