Fines and penalties in the housing sector will become a double-edged thing.
An old folk dream is coming true. Not only a variety of housing and communal services dealers, it turns out, can charge penalties, fine and bully people in every possible way with their recalculations and overpayment bills. It may soon happen that for all the arts and outrages, the “communal barons” will be fined for errors in calculations and late billing. Experts say that today at least 10% of calculations are regularly made with errors.
They made a mistake (as a rule, they allegedly made a mistake in the amounts, but for some reason always in their favor!), counted people too much – so you go pay them, and then wait for a refund, and even you won’t always wait!
Unfortunately, there is not a word on this topic in the Housing Code today, which is a great injustice. At least because, for example, the responsibility of payers, as well as the types of penalties for violations of payment deadlines, are described in quite detail. And if there is a break in the provision of services, when due to accidents, repairs or preventive maintenance, houses can remain without water, light, heating, gas, and from several hours to several days or even weeks? Why are only consumers responsible for this in rubles?
Apparently, having finally understood the human aspirations and requests, a group of deputies is submitting to the State Duma a bill on the possibility of revising charges for housing and communal services.
“As a result, there should be at least some responsibility of management organizations, homeowners’ associations, housing cooperatives, resource supply organizations and other legal entities or individual entrepreneurs who are being paid for incorrect calculation and subsequent increase in payments for expired periods is not fixed at the legislative level in any way. We could not calculate on time, we made a mistake, we do not need to shift it to the citizens,” the deputies say.
If the deputies implement their initiative in the form of a law, the responsibility of the Criminal Code and resource supply organizations will increase. They will have to monitor the adequate operation of their online services and specialists in payment centers much more seriously. Which, by the way, is long overdue.
Evgeny Alexandrov.
Photo: Pixabay.com
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