First Residents’ Annual General Meeting

Attended my residential area’s AGM for its annual re-election of new committee and discussion of issues arises. This is my first time to be in this residential area as we had literally moved from one place to another each year. If not mistaken, me and my wife had move into this nice premise for around a year and so far the environment is good. In overall, the neighborhood are friendly and helpful as well. Just a few delinquent neighbours making some trouble but still in good hand.

Living in a common premise, in my case which is still not a landed strata development, so the Residents Association has lesser say in terms of maintaining the infrastructure within the residential area. This is due to the ownership of the roads, lights and even park are the local authority property. The local authority of the area I am in is the Municipal Council of Sepang or MPSp. Hence, all the maintenance of the road, trimming of trees, clearing of drains are all responsibilities of the council. Yet, the guard house and fencing of the premise is the residents’ responsibility as fencing up and set up security guard house is optional and will need the residents consensus to proceed.

In the annual general meeting, the three main parts are the delivery of report from the president about the overall performance for 2019 and 2020. The main concern by the residents is the safety of the premise whereby security firm are not putting up a good work to stay vigilant. Other concerns like lighting issues and tree branches affecting the houses structure. Then, the treasurer made his report about the earning and expenditure of the association. In the meeting, there are residents who raised questions like reason of security firm charged fee increase, justification of the spending in events like festive gathering. Thus, we can see that the residents would like to have a fair system where most of the residents can enjoy the benefit.

Another two concerns that noticed are about the nuisance caused by the neighbours and also failure to pay the maintenance fee. For the nuiscance, neighbours who parked their car without considering the traffic flow and blocking the side lanes that are supposed to be the fire access, it definitely something that most of the residents despised. Yet, little can be done by the association as the street in the premise does not belongs to the association but the state. Thus, the local authority will need to be informed with the lodge of report and only the local authority can take action on the delinquent. Another case is about noises like pets and vehicles. To me, this is quite hard to deal with as we have no right to ask them how to behave. As of now, the only thing is that the association can act a middle person to tell the misbehaved to buck up. There are also 4% of the residents not paying up their maintenance fee. With a 453 units residential premise, the committee had done a good job in collecting the maintenance fee. Failure of payment would result the inconvenience of accessing the premise due to access card. Then, for any renting out, the owner will be required to pay up before able to rent the unit out. This applies the same to selling the property as well. Therefore, I see this as a good avenue to maintain good collection. That would make sure that the association has enough sinking fund to do relevant upgrade like improving the fencing with anti climd feature.

As of all, it is interesting to be involved and contribute in the community as it directly affect how our living space will evolved with the proposed improvement. For the residents association, it is also a good time to utilize some tech help in order to make the management much streamlined and systematic. Looking forward to see more improvement coming up!