By Stephanie Sta Maria
PETALING JAYA, Feb 22 – Demolition work on the former Jaya Supermarket in Section 14 is scheduled to resume by the first week of March.
This comes almost a year after the the 35-year-old building partially collapsed on May 28, 2008 during preliminary demolition work, killing seven workers.
Demolition work ground to a halt as investigations were launched, leaving residents and business owners to suffer the eyesore of the abandoned structure and the inconvenience of road closures.
The Petaling Jaya City Council finally lifted the stop-work order last November. Work was expected to resume in early December but until today there has been no activity at the site.
Andy Yap, the chief operating officer of Pembinaan C.W.Yap, the contractor for the demolition job told FMT that work has in fact already begun on their end.
"We've spent the last few months going over the plans in painstaking detail with our team of consultants and professionals to decide on the best and safest way of moving forward," he explained.
He said that physical hacking would begin within two weeks and estimated that the job would take four months to complete.
Meanwhile Tan Boon Chin, the acting chairman of Dataran Millennium Petaling Jaya Joint Management Board, said he is looking forward to the main road leading towards Dataran Millennium being re-opened.
"The road closure means less customers and potential investors see our building. Although we can't quantify the drop in traffic, the road closure has definitely dissuaded people from passing Dataran Millennium unless they have a specific purpose for being here," he said.
Jaya Supermarket was in the process of being demolished to make way for a six-storey shopping mall and carparks when it suddenly collapsed in May 2008.
