Residents of Shiv Sneh housing society in Pratiksha Nagar, Sion, are stuck with scaffolding surrounding their premises. After structural auditors found that the building needed urgent repairs, the residents decided to use the Rs 80 lakh it had collected over 11 years, but it is now stuck at PMC Bank. With the money out of reach, the extremely critical repairs that the building requires may not happen.

The auditors had advised the residents to carry out structural repairs at the earliest to avoid anything untoward happening, society chairman Mahesh Adate said. "The building, which has 166 members over four wings, including 8-9 shops, was to undergo repairs for the first time since it was handed over by MHADA in 2008. The society had been collecting repair funds under monthly maintenance of Rs 1,800 from each member since then. A huge corpus of nearly R80 lakh was collected in the form of fixed deposits and other savings at PMC's Sion branch."