PropCare, Mantri's maintenance wing, may well continue to run our show after April, under contract with Mantri Apt.Owners Association. And I understand PropCare offers two payment options - 1) per sq.ft rate (which is likely to be significantly higher than the present Rs.25 per sq.ft.annually; and 2) a fixed management fee plus the actual expenses on upkeep, security, water, and diesel for back-up power etc. Most apartment owners associations don't opt for this because of book-keeping hassles. What we need right now is a registered association, hopefully, with duly elected office-bearers in place,latest by mid-March; to be able to take over charge from the Mantri project team; and talk terms with PropCare.
Question is: What are we doing about it ? We have in charge a core committee of apartment owners - comprising Mr T P R Nair, Mr Vasudevan, Mr A Chakraborti, and Mr R Gopal. This committee, we understand, has been at work on the registration process. We also understand that the fine print of our contract (correct me,if I am wrong) says, Mantri management would facilitate formation of the apartment owners association, and also conduct its first office-bearers election.
As residents, we have been pretty much in the dark as to what has been in the works since Dec.25. That was when we had an eventful, if futile, general body meeting, second within three weeks. Our first general body meet, Dec.11, didn't produce a quorum. The core committee doesn't seem to consider it necessary to keep association members informed about proceedings of their meetings. That they don't have e-mail ID of all apartment owners can be a convenient excuse, and even a valid reason,if we don't take into account other means of communication as the CommonFloor and OMR Resident, or computer print-outs pasted at the clubhouse notice board and grocery stores.
It is time we found answers to the following:
1)What is holding up the association registration ?
2)Do we have a problem with Mantri management in putting an association in place ?
3)If so,can we get it done without Mantri's guidance, and still retain PropCare as service provider?
4) It has been seven silent weeks since we heard from the core committee.Isn't it time they convened a clubhouse meeting of apartment owners ?
A general body meeting is the need of the hour, if only because we have today lot more apartment owners in residence than we did seven weeks back. Any move that the ad hoc committee might make on the strength its Dec.25 mandate may satisfy legal requirements. But it would be neither fair nor transparent.
Related reading : How to form an apartment owners association
There are certain issues which need to be resolved. Since we have a committee, ideally they should take those up with Mantri and reach a decision after discussion.How are the residents supposed to get in touch with the committee members in this regard? Should we use this blog or Commonfloor or e-mail them personally? I think the committee members should let the residents know their contact details and how we may reach them. In case they are holding any meeting, the MoMs should be published either on this blog or Commonfloor or paper print-outs should be circulated.
ReplyDeleteAppreciate your prompt response. Which,in itself, reflects your faith in the usefulness of interactive communication. Would like to mention here a few points. Unlike a registered Mantri association, which needs to be of apartment owners only, an interactive website I believe should be inclusive, in the sense all residents, PropCare officials, and others who form the wider Mantri community should have access to the website we set up (there can be pages in this site, with restricted access through registration). When this point was raised with Admin. of Mantri Synergy page in CommonFloor, I was told that the site was exclusive to apartment owners. This was one reason I created OMR Resident blog (which is not the official Mantri residents site).
DeleteAnd then ApnaComplex web portal offered to set up a site for Mantri residents (with access to owners and other residents) in Sept. last. Though very keen to try out their site,I couldn't take decision, which is now pending with our ad hoc committee.
Here is the link to ApnaComplex initial communication - http://omrresident.blogspot.in/2011/09/mail-from-apna-complex.html
I agree, a decision of this magnitude would require some time to arrive at. It would be great to have meeting setup over the weekend to go over the maintenance issue. If we can restrict the meeting to a couple of hours (to ensure we dont go overboard with tackling too many issues @ the same time), we can include a couple of priority issues which effects all of us. My proposal of the agenda would be
Delete1. Maintenance for 2012-2012
2. Electricity outages
Another key part as recommended by Madhumita Mdme, MoM's helps residents who are unable to attend these meetings and still be in the know of important decisions taken by the Committee.
Regards
Pravin
My assumption that maintenance deposit charged by the Mantri's runs out on March 31 (after which maintenance charges are in for revision) is apparently not valid in respect of all apartment owners.Mr T P R Nair, ad hoc committee president, has a different take on the issue. He cites the case of his sister who moved in October, and he maintains she has been charged maintenance for a full year.I heard someone else who shifted in November telling me they were charged maintenance deposit till March-end. Isn't there a uniform cut-off (March end) on maintenance deposit for all apartments, irrespective of their date of possession of apartment ?
ReplyDeleteWe've moved in Mantri on Dec last week and as far as my knowldege, the maintenance charges are till March 2012 end. The date is uniform for all the owners irrespective of when they move in.
ReplyDeleteThe cut-off date is a pointer that the maintenance charges are in for revision. Thank you, for the info. do look up my next post.
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