JMB - Roles & Duties ( an experience by a member )

This was sent in by Seng Teck Lim

It was advised by the developer that the committee shd appoint a mgmt agent to do the day to day business of running the place as the JMC members or at least the majority are all working people; there is no way the JMC can run the place. Who will run the office to prepare billing and collect payments during office offices, do banking, attend to residents complain or supervise the various suppliers of services (security, cleaning, etc)

However Subsection 11 (1) states that the JMC may perform the Body's dutes and conduct the Body's business on its behalf and may for that purpose exercise any of the Body's powers (one of which is appointing the mgmt agent).

We are in the second month of collecting payments without problems and paying suppliers prompltly as well as we have sufficient cash flow.

We have two accounts - one for maintenance charges and one for sinking fund and the authorised signatories are the 3 principal office bearers (Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer). We have rules for operating the accounts ie 2 signatories are required for amounts not more than RM2K and 3 signatories for amounts greater than 2K. The Day to day banking in of cash/cheque collections is done by the mgmt agent who put 3 staff in the office (Building mgr, an accounts/admin clerk and a technician) which shd be sufficient for a medium sized condo of about 300 to 400 units. Also the management agent is overall in charge of all other service providers like security, landscape/gardening, cleaning, lift maintenance and supervising engineer/chargeman etc.
Then the managment agent need to deal with certain statutory requirements like
-- licence from the energy commission on the LV/Genset
- licence for the lfits
- annual inspection of fire equipment to satify Bomba requirements etc
How will an average JMC member know what to do? It will only be prudent to appoint a mgmt agnet to handle it for you.

In 2 cases where i am a committee member, we find the fees paid to the mgmt agent were cheaper than what the two developers had been charging us for managing and maintaining the property.

But if your condo has lots of retired people who are willing to serve; you probably can run the mgmt office on your own but you need people of varied background/skills who are knowledgeable with not just the Building and Common Property Act but also other related Acts.


Of course the JMC must insure its building against Fire & related risks like landslide etc.
But there may be other insurances that you must think of such as public liability insurance etc. In the second condo where I was involved in, we found thatt he condo had fire insurance policy only, When queried, we found that other isnurances were covered by the developer's overall group insurance policies. So we had to buy these other insurances once the JMC was in effective control ( their group insurance will not cover us) as they are needed to protect the interests of all owners.Example you bring in a guest to the swimming and he slipped and fell and was badly hurt. He decides to sue the JMB for RM1M for negligence in not providing railing or non-slip flooring etc; what will the JMB do if you have not thought of public liability insurance. Then are at least 3 others that you shd consider.

There will be 101 things to think of if you want to manage on your own.

Anyway it had been an interesting and wonderful experience being a member of two such committees - 1 a MC and the other a JMC. A friend who is on JMC of his condo has asked me for some advice as well and I have learned some interesting challenges at his condo. I found that his committee basically did not know where to start and I gave him some of my notes to help him. Perhaps someone shd write a book for the many JMC out there trying to manage their property --- a layman perspective