A community to learn from

If you are a person living in a gated community or in any high-rise apartment, you will surely realise the burden of maintenance charges. At least once in your whole life living in such a community, you might have gotten a thought like, “What is even the association doing with all the money paid by residents? Or, “What has it even done to increase the maintenance charge?” or “Is the management even efficient?”
When there are many such communities in Hyderabad whose presidents or association members are trying to enjoy the residents’ money and not do much for the association, we have a community in Hyderabad that is setting a new example for others to follow.
We are bringing this story to you, so you too, if you are living in a gated community, can learn from what this group is doing and question any wrongdoing in your association.
This is the story about SMR Vinay City in Miyapur, which has not increased its maintenance since four years. This is a 500+-flat high-rise gated community handed over by the builder in 2011. Since then, this community has been maintained by the management committee itself, and in the last four years, there has been tremendous visible change in the community.
Not only has it not increased the maintenance, but at the same time it has carried out a few development works like the installation of an open gym, VDM flooring in the children’s play ground, indoor gym modernisation, aroma and medicinal plants in the total community, a total club house revamp, etc. When we spoke to the residents of the community, they credited their president, his team members and their supervision for achieving this feat.
To know more about what the association has done in the past four years, the community’s president, K. Johnson, explained, “We also gave hikes to facility management office staff, all technicians, housekeeping staff, security guards, etc., while also introducing sports extravaganza and conducting all sports competitions for kids, youth, males, and females. I believe efficient management is the key to it. If you are determined to develop your community, you can find many routes to accomplish it.”
Sharing some tips on how maintenance can be controlled that other communities too can follow, Scowa VIII (their association name) General Secretary Prasad Gorantla shared, “We renegotiated AMC costs with vendors during COVID time, improved the efficiency of staff, cross-trained skills, and controlled unnecessary expenses in day-to-day repairs and regular maintenance works.”
Moreover, another interesting aspect to be noted here is that they have generated additional income from advertisement boards and screens. Apart from this, they have introduced a flat rental and sale service, which generates a good income. They have also installed printer services within the community to generate additional income. They have even switched to efficient LED bulbs to control the power bill. “We installed water flow control units and hence reduced the manual efforts and water and power wastage. We brought in block-wise WhatsApp groups to resolve resident issues as soon as possible. This helped with the speedy resolution of the issues and also allowed us to use manpower efficiently. Moreover, the government announced 25 KL of free water per house, which helped save on water bills. Not many people these days are utilising this offer. This saves a lot of money,” he concluded.