› Forums › Living in strata › Bankstown fire- a tragedy waiting to happen › Current Page
Juan Durection said
… I AM saying the old disclaimer: strata managers “can only act as instructed by the owners corp and their elected representatives” is starting to sound very hollow. As does: “This building was marketed heavily to the Chinese community and owners may have had limited appreciation of what their rights and responsibilities were.”
Surely an ‘expert’, such as a Strata Manager, should make sure certain things are done and in place and frankly it’s time, since some make a ton of money (if they weren’t, why is one getting so huge and ‘acquiring’ a lot of others), to stand up and stop wriggling out of the responsibilities they surely must have instead of taking the money and running, absolving themselves of responsibility by saying we can only do what we’re instructed to do.
Juan, it reads very much like you are blaming the Strata Manager. But as for Strata Managers only taking direction, I know plenty of strata managers who will sit with their ECs and say they need to do this and that but as soon as the cost comes up, all bets are off and nothing gets done.
Maybe we should have a system where the strata manager just goes ahead and does what he thinks is required by law. But I can hear the wails of complaint already. In this case I would look right down the line starting with the developer, council planning officers and everyone else in the chain who decided to build this block the way they did before I got to the strata manager
It sounds to me like the Strata Manager in this case organised the fire safety checks, as he is required to do, and they were carried out and orders were issued and they were complied with.
As for your objection to my reference to this being marketted heavily to the Chinese community, I’m not sure what your problem is with this. Is it with me mentioning it or the fact that it happened?
FYI: It seemss the sales material was at least partly in Chinese which suggests that many of the owners had English as a second language, at best. As we know from reading this website, plenty of native English speakers have problems getting their heads around the intricacies of strata living.
In my view the Asian community is being heavily targetted by unscrupulous developers who know they can get away with a lot more than they would if their customers were fully aware of their rights and responsibilities. Is it wrong to suggest that?