Besides electronic voting,may be AGMs held on the weekend will have more attendance of Monday to Friday working owners.In my strata,quorum was achieved only once in 9 years and that too because strata’s both funds were in deep deficit.Otherwise,4-5 owners out of 253 owners turn up for AGMs if we exclude the EC members.
After living in a major developer’s building for 9 years, I feel the new reforms are missing the most important aspect : safety.Safety assumes more importance as apartment living is becomes the norm in most suburbs.
What I saw in my building is this : installers of fire dampers / sprinklers,stair pressure fans,child safety features and annual fire safety inspectors are one and the same company and they go wherever the developer / builder goes.So what happens.Even if the dampers are not there,not installed correctly,stair pressure not right, they go unnoticed or ignored as it is human not to acknowledge one’s / their own mistakes.And conveniently,they don’t take photos and the Councils don’t ask for photo evidence of their certificate, though it is cheap,while giving occupancy certificates.
Fire safety equipments,especially dampers,is a major defect and the developer / builder escapes liability after 2 years in the new strata legislation.In our case,we did not realise it for 8 years !
Most owners of apartments are inexperienced in building safety matters and these things go unnoticed for years till there is actual fire.
The reality in OZ : there are vested interests in the building industry.So what do we do ? We must ask the Councils,at the expense of concerned strata, to undertake the FIRST annual fire safety inspection through an independent certifier with photo / video evidence where possible.Also installers of these equipments should never be the certifiers for 3 years.