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
