PETALING JAYA: Jaya Shopping Centre, more popularly known as Jaya Supermarket, was one of the city's earliest shopping malls.
The well-known "blue" landmark, strategically located at Section 14's bustling commercial centre, was established in 1974 as a lifestyle shopping centre.
It was one of Petaling Jaya's longest-standing icons, which became a popular shopping haunt and a cool place for teenagers to hang out in the mid-1980s and early 1990s.
In the early 1990s, the mall was embroiled in controversy when it flouted the law by extending its car park to 10-storeys, four-storeys higher than what was approved by the then Petaling Jaya Municipal Council Building Department.
The 12.6-sq-metre shopping centre had four-storey retail units, five-storey office units and a multi-level car park. The building was vacated to make way for a newer and modern shopping complex last year.
Until its closure, Jaya remained a neighbourhood shopping centre that housed the Cold Storage supermarket as its anchor tenant with a number of family restaurants such as Cable Car and Jaya Noodle House, pharmacies, bakeries and kiosks selling trinkets.
In August 2007, tenants were given six months to move out. Feb 6 last year was the last day that Jaya's tenants were allowed to trade.
Most of the shop owners and tenants were relocated to Jaya 33, just opposite it.
Redevelopment of Jaya involves the demolition of the existing structure and the construction of a new yet-to-be-named mall that offers bigger retail space.
Fourth body in Jaya mall disaster found
 The body of the third victim, Muhammad Maskor, being removed from the rubble by search and rescue personnel yesterday. |
PETALING JAYA: Police yesterday recovered a fourth body from the collapsed portion of the former Jaya Supermarket, amid fading hopes of finding the three other victims still trapped inside alive.
He said the search party located the third body, at the basement of the building at 3.30am, but retrieval attempts were made difficult by layers of concrete above it.
"We had to drill a hole in the concrete before the body was taken out at 2pm," he said yesterday.
The third victim was identifed as Muhammad Maskor, 31, while the fourth, retrieved at 4pm, was identified as Anwaruddin, 38.
The machine is among three others perched on top of the debris, while five were buried in the rubble.
Arjunaidi said 541 search and rescue personnel, including a Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team were on duty at the disaster site, along with three sniffer dogs.
"We limit the use of heavy machinery at the site to avoid further collapse from the vibration it creates."
Arjunaidi, who is also the operation commander, said police believe that the remaining three workers are also trapped near the spot where the third and fourth bodies were found.
The building, which was about to be demolished, crumbled suddenly just as nine workers, all Indonesians, were unloading scaffoldings at the site at 4.45pm on Thursday.
Fifty workers were at the site in different sections when the incident occurred, but apart from the nine, the others were unhurt.
Two of the nine -- Sale, 48, and Suryano, 32 -- were injured and taken to the University Malaya Medical Centre for treatment.
The first body -- Al-Shuki Nahru, 31 -- was retrieved at 6.30pm on Thursday while the lower half of the body of an unidentified victim, was brought out at 10.20pm.
The Selangor government yesterday issued a stop-work order on the project site, to facilitate investigations by the Department of Occupati-onal Safety and Health and Public Works Institute of Malaysia
"The stop-work order is for seven days beginning from today (yesterday)," said Menteri Besar Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim in a statement.
Source: New Straits Times 29 - 30 May 2009
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