Why is the information different from the real thing? / Script

Apartment building in Riga, Kalnciema Street 9a, built about 10 years ago. There are 53 apartments in the building, and Zane, a resident of the house, said that the residents are worried about the public information that last year, even before the heating season, the debt of the house to “Rīga heat” reached several tens of thousands of euros.

“Although the payment discipline of the residents of the house, in our opinion, is good, that’s why we suspected that the manager simply uses these funds for some other purposes and makes payments somehow at his own discretion. Some part of the debts were paid, but we’ll see, again in March and April, we are again among the biggest debtors in Riga, and fines have already been calculated for about 1000 euros. why this practice, is it legal and what can we do to end this practice?” asked Zane.

The building at Kalnciema street 9a is managed by the company “Civinity”, which is the largest private manager and manages 600 buildings in Riga and Jurmala. Gatis Roze, the head of the residential building management department of “Civinity Homes”, said that currently the house debt is 6,500 euros and part of the debt is the time lag between issuing the invoice and paying it.

“You have to take into account that this data has a time lag. If we look at the overview of how many payments we have made in the last four months, it is 15 payments. Right now, let’s say, we will collect data for May 1, 2, how much has been paid to us for the previous month, and then the entire amount is transferred to “Rīgas siltums”. In turn, the data is updated to the first date. There may be a situation where nothing has been paid for the first date, a large debt appears for the publicly available information , but the next day, the next day, we pay all this collected,” Roze explained.

The residents of “Rīga utmas” currently owe around 3 million euros, but some of the bills will still be paid by April 30.

Tatjana Kulešova, the head of the commercial operations department of “Rīga heat”, said that currently the debt of the house at Kalnciems 9a is less than published on the website – almost 23,000 euros.

“At the moment, it is April 24th, and the debt is currently 9.4 thousand euros, because the payment deadline for the March bill will only be on April 30th. So, at the moment, there is a debt for that house only for the heat energy supplied in February. The Payments Act stipulates that the manager the funds that they have collected from the apartment owners must be transferred immediately. And the apartment owners can also request information from the managers, why the debt has arisen and what it is – is it the debt of the apartment owners or the manager has not done something completely,” said Kuleshova.

The representative of “Rīgas udes” Sandris Vanzovićs said that in general the residents currently owe the company 2.8 million euros

and 77% of debtors delay payment for up to 60 days. The debt of the apartment building on Kalnciema street 9a is currently 1,449 euros plus a fine of 115 euros.

“It’s all kinds of things with managers. There are such very honest and diligent managers who pay for everything immediately and on the same day, even basically crediting their residents whose payments may not have come to them yet. There are also those who use these payments sometimes, maybe also for other purposes, for example… maybe a leaky roof or something like that, so there are also such situations. But to say that someone is special would stand out in a negative sense, you can’t say that,” said Vanzovic.

It seems that the communication of the manager “Civinity” with the residents is stuck, because the residents have to be informed about the total debt of the house. Their representative stated that, for example, in the houses managed by them in Jūrmala, residents make direct payments themselves and settle with heat and water companies.