Dubai: Apartment owners of Skycourts, a mid-rise development in Dubailand, are crying foul over poor maintenance and upkeep.
A fire that broke out on October 26 in Tower B of Skycourts residences further raised concerns about the safety of the buildings and their surroundings. The Skycourts project has been developed by Skycourts LLC and consists of 2,836 apartments spread across six towers in Dubailand. The project was handed over to the owners in 2011.
“Luckily there was no major damage from the fire and everyone was safe. But a tent placed below Tower B was partially destroyed as debris from the fire fell on it. We have been requesting the developer to have it removed for sometime now, but it has not happened. Now, after the fire, we hope this will change,” said Rajesh Ranganath, a two-bedroom apartment owner in the F block.
Ranganath added: “The community is badly maintained and the service charge of Dh10.73 per square foot per annum is not appropriately allocated.
“From this fee, a good Dh7.70 goes towards just paying for utilities which includes Dh4.98 towards district cooling charges. A mere Dh0.13 is being spent on the community upkeep. How is that enough?”
Ratnakar Mallar, another two-bedroom apartment owner in F Block, said the landscape of the community has been deteriorating for some time. “Last month I had to call someone to clear out a pile of dried leaves lying around. I was afraid that if someone dropped a cigarette butt, it would cause a fire.”
He added that the building façade too has not been cleaned for some time. “I am a civil engineer and I can spot these things. I can see that the waterproofing under the landscape is defective,” said Mallar.
Records not sent
Ranganath also said Skycourts LLC does not share the maintenance records of the community. “We are asked to come to their office and see the records which run into hundreds of pages. Ideally they should be sending it to us regularly in an email,” he said.
Another concern with the owners of Skycourts is that despite paying high district cooling fees, the cooling in the building is not sufficient.
“The Skycourts development requires 9,000 tonnes of AC cooling. But what has been installed is only around 4,000 tonnes. How do you expect cooling to happen? In my apartment, even if I set the temperature to 22 degrees, the AC does not go below 24 degrees,” said Mallar.
“Also we do not believe that there is a district cooling unit installed in Skycourts. What there is, is a chiller unit which does not cool the buildings sufficiently. If we can control our district cooling fees, we will be able to allocate that money towards the community upkeep.”
After haggling with their developer and the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (Rera) – the apartment owners held their first Annual General Assembly (AGA) on October 29.
“There are a number of issues for the Skycourts towers that require immediate attention. The AGA was a good platform for owners to duly elect the right people to bring a positive change to the community,” said Mallar.
“We have a genuine interest in the development and we want to improve the community without raising the service fee that we are already paying,” he added.
Just ahead of the AGA, some apartment owners actively campaigned for the elections.
The owners have urged residents to elect ‘real owners’ and not developers’ representatives in the AGA.
“Maintenance of the community is very poor; the accounting is questionable and the current administration is one of the worst,” they said.
No comment was immediately available from the developers.
