RWAs behaving like hostel wardens during lockdown: Residents

Niharika Lal | TNN | May 5, 2020, 01:00 IST

The battles between residents and RWAs are never-ending – they are fought over entry of guests, locked gates, feeding of strays etc. Residents often accuse RWAs of making inane rules while RWAs stress that the rules are for safety reasons. The coronavirus lockdown, that has been in place for over a month, has added a substantial amount of fuel to this already raging fire. Even though some restrictions are valid to tackle the pandemic and many RWAs are helping elderly residents and those less fortunate, the daily diktats and obsessive monitoring has earned some overreaching RWAs the tag of hostel wardens from residents.
Banning newspapers and deliveries and stopping people from going to work, even when they are in essential services, are some of the bizarre rules that RWAs have come up with.
An RWA member of a society in east Delhi says that he is monitoring the main gate through CCTV footage. “The SHO of every area is contacting RWAs to ensure enforcement of lockdown. Then why should we be blamed for it? I have told the residents that if they will go out for unnecessary work, I will inform the police,” he shared. Dhananjay Gairola, a resident of west Delhi, says, “I had to put the RWA WhatsApp group on mute because they share bizarre illogical COVID-19-related information. I couldn’t leave the group because I have to keep track of what service is being stopped by them next – the rules are insane and they change it whenever they feel like.”
Despite assurance from experts that newspapers don’t spread coronavirus, many RWAs jumped to ban newspapers too. A Vasant Kunj resident says, “Our RWA stopped newspaper distribution in the society last month, and we still don’t get them.”