Domkom
Our Office
There was a ring of the doorbell early one morning last week and I went to see who it was.
There, at the door, stood a young man with a folder in hand who introduced himself as being from one of the utility companies who asked for the “DomKom“.
Fortunately, I understood what he wanted …
Domkom is a portmanteau word that was so common in the Soviet Union, (and the American military), and derives from the phrase “Domoviy Komitiyet” – which roughly translates as “House Committee”
For the record: a portmanteau word, as Lewis Carroll put it, “has two meanings packed into one word” … blending two or more words to create a new one. It’s slightly different from a compound word – which simply joins together two whole words, like awayday, flatmate or schoolboy, website together to get a new word. A portmanteau word, on the other hand, usually uses just a part of the each of the original words to create a new one with subtle differences but deriving something from each of its components. Examples include brunch – derived from breakfast and lunch; guestimate – guess and estimate and motel – motor hotel. Carroll was particularly fond of them and amonjgst the ones that he coined were chortle – from chuckle and snort and galumph – gallup and triumph … and, of course, slithy – lithe and slimy.
Although there are individual houses, usually detached single storey buildings, in what is euphemistically called the “private sector”, much of the housing in Kyrgyzstan takes the form of apartment blocks where each apartment is owned by an individual, but there are some communal services which are shared between all the occupants. They have to be provided somehow and the DomKom is the organ for doing this.
Of course, my visitor didn’t want to see the whole committee, just the Chairman – the representative, (elected representative), of the association of tenants, who was responsible for the administration of anything to do with general issues affecting the building rather than an individual apartment, such as: communal lighting in the stairwells; cleaning the public areas – stairwells, landing and yard outside the building; water and sewerage, electricity, gas and central heating … and perhaps with telephone, internet providers and cable TV companies … although individual residents usually conclude separate contracts for the services that they use themselves.
It’s a bit like a Property Management company, which looks after the maintenance of the fabric of the building, maintenance of the technical equipment, concluding contracts with contractors, suppliers and utility services as well as with the residents in the building. As well as conducting regular maintenance tasks, they also deal with emergency situations as and when they arrive, such as burst water mains, like the one we had over the new year.
The utilities are responsible for maintenance of the delivery system, (pipes, cables etc.), to the site – but where they cross the boundary, then they become the responsibility of the DomKom. This guy was telling me that we had a problem with the piupes that carry hot water to the buildings and it was on our side of the boundary … so we had to deal with it. Fortunately, it wasn’t a critical problem which demanded immediate attention, but we should deal with it soon or else we could face an emergency situation.
This request for the DomKom presented a problem … as we don’t have one in our building.
It’s not the first time I have had to explain to one official or another that we don’t have one – and their immediate response is usually one of bemusement … “how is it possible?”.
It is customary here for multiple occupancy buildings to have a Residents Association and so, when they encounter one where there isn’t one they are not sure what to make of the situation. Indeed, many of the new high rise buildings that are being built in Bishkek these days have a Management Association already established and purchase of an apartment means automatically becoming a member. Occasionally you see a group of people gathered in the yard outside the building where a Residents Meeting has been called to discuss a particular issue and make a decision on some matter or another.
In Russia, there are a number of Property Management companies, (often going by the name DomKom), that have been established to oversee a number of different buildings.
The thing is, however, that we have a small building – only eight flats in total, (… actually, it’s only seven, but originally it was eight …), and rather than set up a company which had to be registered with the authorities, which would then have to submit reports every month, or quarter, the original residents when the building was privatized before we arrived, decided that they would sort things out between themselves amicably as and when necessary. When I moved in, someone explained the situation to me and I simply fell in line with everyone else.
That’s fine when everything is going well, however, it doesn’t always work out. Unfortunately we had one flat that remained empty for a while whilst the owners tried to sell it. When there was a problem with the sewerage system, they refused to contribute any funds for the repair saying that they clearly weren’t responsible because they weren’t living in the apartment. As a result we had to divide the cost between seven rather than eight.
Well, maybe it’s time to revisit that issue …
Bishkek