Urbanco on Tuesday, June 20, confirmed that it will not relax the fine ordered on the Hiyaa Flat tenant who breached regulations.

Earlier, Urbanco became aware that one of the tenants in the Hiyaa Flat towers had breached regulations by removing the partition wall between two apartments to transform it into a larger four-bedroom apartment.

After Urbanco learned of the breach to its housing regulations, it had fined the proprietors of the apartments with MVR 100,000 each. The authority demanded the tenants to settle the fine within five days from the date of the announcement, which however was not complied by either of the tenants. Following non-compliance from the tenants, Urbanco announced its decision to terminate the tenancy agreements.

Urbanco issued a 14-day notice on May 18 to the tenants to vacate the apartments. Although the owners of the apartments sought an interim injunction to stop Urbanco from evicting them after the notice period expired on June 1, the Civil Court declared that there was no room to issue such an order.

The proprietors then requested from Urbanco to grant a three-month period to reconstruct the partition wall. Urbanco however, demanded the owners to complete the partition wall by June 14 which expired last Wednesday. Besides requesting a period to reconstruct the wall, the tenants also requested leniency on the fine.

Urbanco however, declined to provide any leniencies for the fine and claimed that the corporation’s strict adherence to such policies were to discourage similar instances in the future.

The apartment was constructed to high-end contemporary standards while many claim that close to MVR 600,000 would have been incurred for the contentious upgrade.