Urban Confusion: Each Building must have a Manager
Monday, 27 February 2012
MINA Breaking News
The Macedonian Government in their efforts to improve things, has embarked on an 'urban effort', which has resulted in anger among residents who live in hundreds of buildings in the capital city and elsewhere.
According to the new law, building residents will have to pay a "maintenance fee" to an appointed building manager.
Although each building in the past had a "council" whose task was to maintain the building, now by law, all occupants must pay a fee to a manager they will appoint themselves to manage their building.
Needless to say, many buildings have not yet appointed managers.
In Western Europe and the US, buildings are maintained by the builder for a fairly high fee.
In Macedonia, the builder builds and sells the apartments and then moves on. No maintenance fee!
In the past, the occupants organized themselves, appointed a council who would take care of the building. In reality, these councils were not functioning at all with less than 20% of the occupants paying any sort of fee while the buildings were in terrible shape (broken entry doors, broken windows, elevators not working for months).
There was never funds to call in an elevator repair company since almost nobody paid their maintenance fee.
Dusko Kadievski, the president of the Regulatory Housing Commission says people should not object to this law, but on the contrary embrace it.
"How many accidents we have seen and heard on the news of people dying and falling through elevator shafts, trippinig and falling on steps because it was pitch dark... With a building manager, none of this would happen. There will be funds to replace light bulbs, fix doors, fix elevators. The fees each family will pay are very small." says Kadievski.
Building residents disagree with Kadievski. They claim they have no intention of giving someone named a 'building manager' a salary which will more likely end up in his pocket than on fixing things in and around the building.
At this time only few buildings have appointed building managers. Knowing Macedonian's mentality, the number may increase during March, as they'd probably wait until the last day when this law is enforced.