The cost of living in apartments located in surrounding municipalities has skyrocketed of late, with maintenance charges for flat occupants rising by 300 to 400 per cent.
Besides the recent hike in power tariff and that of diesel effective Thursday midnight, inflated water bills served by the Water Board and GHMC’s recent upward “revision” of property tax have thrown household budgets off track, many residents from these areas said.
Even the private elevator operators have raised the annual maintenance and servicing charges, residents said.
“We used to pay Rs 950 as monthly maintenance charges till just two months ago. But it has now gone up to Rs 4,200 per month,” said Sukanya Ram, a resident of Raghav Ratna Apartment in Alwal.
“We were shown an item-wise increase in charges in a recent meeting of the apartment welfare association. While there’s no denying the need to increase salary of the watchman, the Water Board is now sending inflated bills.”
V.B.J. Rao Chelikani of United Federation of Greater Hyderabad Resi-dent Welfare Associations said, “We are getting regular complaints from association members living in these areas about inflated water bills, wrong billing and bills not being served for months together.”
According to people living in areas such as Malkajgiri, Sainikpuri, Alwal, Kapra and Uppal, in many cases domestic water tariff is charged from people living in high-rises, instead of the apartment-category tariff.
Sources said inflated water bills are primarily a result of lack of coordination between the Water Board and GHMC.
Water Board chief general manager D.S. Rami Reddy said consumers can bring their complaints to the Board, and appropriate action will be taken if they are found authentic.