One of the main reasons for the creation of a residential association or RA is to hire and manage the security of the residents who are members of the RA. It is difficult to manage if the members do not pay the monthly fees to the RA for the security on time. Image source: Source Security
There is an ongoing “tussle” between the resident association committee members and some of the residents in my housing area.
The Beginning
When I moved to my new house, the developer provided their own security guards – standard practice in many new housing areas. However, most of these guards are found sleeping on the job, especially during the night and wee morning but then again, this arrangement suppose to be temporary until the residents can form their own association and then hire their own security guards.
Several months later, this temporary security service was pulled back by the developers but then again, this is understandable as it is a cost to the developer. Once there are no security guards at the main entrance to the housing area, the usual nonsense started to happen – cars & items on the porch get stolen and houses were broken into.
AdHoc Committee
So, a couple of the residents got together and decided to hire a security guard and for this very reason, a makeshift, adhoc resident association was formed with some of the “founding” members as the committee members. This got to a promising start – we had a proper resident gathering with representatives from the local authority and developer and even the local ADUN attended the gathering.
The resident association did some surveys on the security needs and then appointed a proper security service.
The security quality got better – with 24 hours security provided and loopholes to the housing areas fenced up, we were safe enough to leave the main gates open. At night, the security guards make frequent rounds in the housing area.
Security Problems
Then a couple of years ago, the resident association went inactivate – no meetings, no news, no updates – probably because everyone got too busy with daily work. At the same, the quality of security service was also dropping – the security company changed some of the guards from good ones to bad ones so to cut costs. Some of the residents confronted the resident association on these security issues but then they did not get a pleasant reply.
Other issues with the resident association cropped up and have come to a crossroads and the victim of this ongoing displeasure between the residents and the resident association is going to be the security service. Many of them had opted not to pay the monthly security fees in protest (there are unproven claims of misappropriation of funds flying around on the net).
Protest is one thing but this impacts the contractual payment to the security company. With less collection, the security company have started to make noise due to lower payments – they may pull out if the situation continues to degrade (who wants to work for free?). The good thing is a lot of other residents are “waking up” to the problem and have been raising their concerns. A big majority of residents want the security service to continue.
Presently the situation is at a stand-still. In the end, I guess we may “bypass” the current resident association and created own our resident association with a different set of committee members. And if you are thinking what I am thinking, you are right – it is going to end like another “2 MB, 2 Speakers” fiasco in Perak.
Whoever said buying a house was easy?