Apartment owners of several blocks at Karunamoyee Housing Complex, who are letting their flats out to paying guests, are being asked for hefty sums of money by the residents’ associations.
An apartment owner of Karunamoyee G Block, who has let out her flat to paying guests, was asked to cough up Rs 6,000 as “development fees” as a one-time payment in addition to the Rs 1,400 monthly charge as maintenance fees.
The housing complex has several blocks — A, B, C, D, E, F, G and K, L and M.
“The secretary of the G Block residents’ association said I needed to pay the development fee as the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation doesn’t do anything inside the complex, be it road repairs, drainage clearing or cutting of bushes and weeds,” an apartment owner told The Telegraph Salt Lake.
An office-bearer of the Karunamoyee G Block association, Subir Kumar Basu, defended the move. “We take the one-time fee from those renting out their flats or letting it out to PGs. There is a lot of work that is beyond the ambit of the corporation. Recently we had to change a water pipe, for instance. We also have to lay our own brick roads within the lanes. The corporation doesn’t take responsibility for these and we have to raise the money ourselves,” he said.
Several residents who have moved away from the complex and have let their flats out said that this was not a problem pertaining to only G Block.
An A Block resident, who has let out his apartment to five college students, said he had been asked to pay a one-time amount of Rs 5,000 to the Karunamoyee Apartment Owners' Association (Phase I).
“The reason stated was that there would be a need for excess water in my flat. However, most families are similar-sized and I could not figure out why more water would be required,” said the resident, who did not wish to be named.
Sukanto Mitra, secretary of the Karunamoyee Apartment Owners' Association (Phase I), however, clarified that this was not a hard and fast rule and that the associations or block management committees could not enforce such payments.
“In Karunamoyee, there are many flats that have been let out to individuals who in turn have converted them into paying guest accommodations, running a roaring business out of it. However it is also true that buildings that have paying guest accommodations, where even 10-12 people stay, consume a lot of water and also put an extra load on our sweeping staff who have to be adequately compensated for their services,” Mitra said.
Officialspeak
Kakali Saha, councillor of the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation’s Ward 32, said the housing complex was under its jurisdiction and that the civic body was in charge of road repairs and clearing of main drainage channels, upkeep of parks, keeping weeds in check and maintenance of street-lighting systems inside the complex.
“Even a few days back, our civic teams used jet suction machines to clear out the drainage network of the Karunamoyee Housing Complex. We are also going to start road repairs soon. If anyone is claiming that the civic body does nothing is not right. However, taking care of personal gardens and maintenance of sewerage systems are not under the purview of the corporation,” said Saha, before adding that based on the situation and requests from residents, civic teams have also done the same on multiple occasions.
According to Saha, vector-control teams from the civic body visit the complex to spray larvicide and garbage from the apartments is collected by the corporation’s solid waste management teams on a daily basis.
“I don’t know who has made these claims and why. I think this could be a ploy to pocket the money. If any resident is told to pay up like this and claims that the Corporation does not do its job are made to justify the act, he must come and lodge a formal complaint with me. I will look into it immediately,” Saha told The Telegraph Salt Lake on Wednesday.
Like several other blocks in Salt Lake, Karunamoyee has come up on land provided by the urban development department. A senior official of the urban development department said that they had no duty to provide any kind of civic services to the housing complex.
Councillor Saha, however, clarified that like in almost every block of Salt Lake major civic services are expressly provided by the corporation. “Even the waste collected from individual flats is clubbed together and mounted on corporation-operated dumpers and compactor stations,” said Saha.
Situation elsewhere
In New Town, Sukhobrishti Housing Complex, that has several paying guest and tenants, has a similar fee charged but it is not done arbitrarily.
Mainak Kanrar, who stays at the complex and heads a residents' body there, said the sum is charged only if the number of heads occupying a flat exceeds the normal family size. “Only if we see that there are more than five people sharing a two-bedroom apartment do we seek a slight increase in the maintenance charges,” Kanrar said.