thanks guys for all the useful (and some useless) inputs.

some of you wondered (and even blamed me as the "lazy landlord") on how have I neglected the fact that my tenant raked up the electricity bill outstanding up to RM30k.

the tenant has been with me for almost 4 years, running the place as a mamak. all payments were made swiftly and cleared without any issues during the entire tenure save for the period beginning from November 2019 - they started to fall behind on everything.

the account for supply is registered under my name because i want to monitor their usage. there were actually several occasions that I texted my tenant to remind them to pay the outstanding because I received notifications from TNB's smart phone application that TNB is going to terminate/suspend the supply but surprisingly enough, TNB never seems to carry out the termination/suspension.

it was partly my fault for going easy on the tenant (considering the fact that they have been a good paymaster) when they told me they were facing financial predicaments but when I started to realize something was amiss, i figured that I have to be "pro-active".

i emailed TNB, called them and even went up to their outlet to inquire why there was no termination/suspension (at the time, the outstanding was around RM20k) and TNB gave me the standard reply of "will lodge an official report for you". weeks passed and still nothing happened.

i even received a call one afternoon from TNB's technician claiming that he was there but the place was closed - feeling suspicious, I had my dad went over, the place was open but no one from TNB was seen present - that's when i suspected that TNB's people actually DID went to the place and threatened to terminate/suspend the supply but was somehow persuaded not to.

the tenant officially vacated during the CMCO period and the supply was terminated/suspended almost immediately.

i brought up the entire matter with the chronology to TNB and as usual, they don't care - their reply suggests that i should take care of my own property and they conveniently ignored the fact that i expressly requested for the supply to be terminated/suspended and implied that TNB does not "work for me".

so that's that.