Marked, “Top Urgent”, a notice has been issued by Nakheel to owners of Discovery Gardens, forewarning them of utility and third-party service disruption due to non-collection of accrued service charges.

In a notice, posted across a number of buildings in the master community on March 7, Nakheel said: “This is to inform you that a number of unit owners in your building failed to pay the building service charges thus accumulating outstanding building service charges (covering the billing period up to September 2011).”

It added: “Payments made for the building service charges by unit owners who paid on time were paid to the utility service provider.

“However, due to the accumulation of the unpaid building service charges, payment has not been made to utilities and service of certain billing period(s), which may result in disruption of service as well as services provided by third party suppliers with no fault of Discovery Gardens Co LLC.”

The first warning was issued by Nakheel in December 2011, which called on owners to pay their outstanding service charges by January 25, or face legal action to even being restricted from accessing their buildings.

The January notice read: “Kindly note that service charges should be cleared/paid on or before 25th January 2012, failing which will take legal action against the defaulters which may even result in restricting the access to the building.”

On January 30, a company spokesperson told this website that the company had not yet decided on what action it was planning to take against defaulters and were evaluating all their options.

The March 7 notice further said “failure to pay the building service charges on time is a violation of law to which the unit owner is fully liable for all consequences”.

It directed owners to pay the outstanding building service charges immediately and without further delay.

In February, interim Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Manchanda said that Nakheel had not cutback any services across any of its master communities despite the number of service charge defaulters ranging between 60 and 70 per cent.

“As a service provider, as a developer, I have a responsibility not only towards the community, but also towards the population of the country.

“We are making every effort to provide quality service at a cost which we believe is competitive and that is verified and validated by Real Estate Regulatory Agency,” he had said.

The company was also endeavoring to reduce service charges for year 2012 by a further 15 to 20 per cent compared to 2011.

In addition to building a retail community centre, for which a tender has been issued of late, Nakheel is seeking contractors to supply, installation, programming and maintenance of card reading access control system and CCTV system at Discovery Gardens.

The master development consists of six themed communities inspired by garden living, and includes Zen, Mediterranean, Contemporary, Mogul, Mesoamerican and Cactus courtyard gardens.

The development spans 26 million square feet and has 291 buildings.