Residents oppose hike in maintenance charges

Tribune News Service

Mohali, July 4

Residents of ATS Casa Espana in Bar Majra (Sector 21) today held a protest against an “arbitrary” increase in the maintenance charges by 34 per cent.

The residents, after exhausting all other means of redressal, raised black flags in balconies of their flats last week.

The protest march in the complex was peaceful. They held banners and flags demanding rollback of the enhanced common area maintenance (CAM) charges.

The protesters alleged lack of transparency and unethical conduct by ATS Maintenance Services, a company of ATS Infrabuild Ltd. ATS Maintenance Services had arbitrarily jacked up the monthly CAM charges by a whopping 37 per cent (from nearly Rs6,000 to over Rs8,000 for a 3+1 bedroom flat) in the middle of the pandemic, when a host of facilities such as clubhouse, gym and swimming pool have been shut for well over a year now, the residents alleged.

However, Nath, the manager of ATS Maintenance Services, said some of the residents were protesting while a majority of them had agreed on the increase in the CAM charges. He said they had shown documents to the residents and had increased the charges due to the increase in maintenance expenditures, including the salaries of the security guards and other maintenance staff.