Landlord and Tenant #4: What if my tenant run away without settling his utility bills?

Can you imagine a tenant of a single storey terrace house owed the water authority for over RM3000 and get away with it? Howabout a tenant of a half an acre factory owed the TNB for over RM100,000 in few months time? Yes, they do happen to my clients.

Question arises here as to who is responsible for the owing? Many of you will tell me, the tenant, of course. Legally, you all got it right, but practically, it "may" be the owner's onus to settle the owing at the end of the day.

Say, Albert is the tenant of property owned by Tony. Albert left the building without informing Tony, and Albert owed the Tenaga Nasional Berhad for RM6000 electricity bills. The account is under Tony's name. The electricity supply was then been disconnected by TNB.

Two months later, Tony found himself a new tenant, and wanted to reconnect the electricity supply for the new user. TNB's officer will normally tell you this, "we can't reconnect the supply for you unless you have cleared the previous owning."

Two things you should take note here,
(1) TNB do understand that owning is made by the tenant, not the landlord,
(2) TNB has this policy saying that they cannot reconnect the supply to the same property until such time the owning are fully cleared. And they don't really care who's responsible for that owning.

So, in the end of the day, the landlord still has to pay up the owning made by the tenant in order to reconnect back the supply. Hey, wait! There is a court case few years ago telling otherwise! I hear people shouting now, yes, there is a court case which the landlord won, the TNB has to reconnect the supply because the owning are not made by the landlord, but the tenant. However, you need to take TNB to the court for this purpose, because TNB treats that particular case as an isolated case, which they will go on a case by case basis.

Henceforth, if you are facing this problem now, you either pay up the owing, and rent the property out right now, , or you can bring TNB to court for that matter. However, do yo know how long does it take for your matter to bring up to court? Can you afford to wait for the court's final decision and leave your property empty for months or even years? This is what i meant just now by saying, legally yes, but practically no.

My reminder to you all is, whenever you collect your rental from your tenant, please remember to obtain a paid copy of receipt for the utility bills at least on a bi-monthly basis.