A corporation paid tens of millions of dollars to keep Victoria’s most hassle-plagued public housing estates turned into repeatedly awarded authorities contracts, notwithstanding being fined multiple times for “negligent” service.
GJK Facility Services has held six contracts since 2007 to clean public housing throughout Melbourne. Its trendy settlement was quietly extended for another year in 2018.
The relatively profitable business closing 12 months ago helped the corporation – owned by two humans – turn over a revenue of $128 million and publish a profit of $5 million.
However, documents released via a Freedom of Information request show GJK was frequently chastised for its work, especially at South Melbourne’s Park Towers estate.
The FOI request was initially denied by the Department of Health and Human Services and only released to former Liberal MP Margaret Fitzherbert after a legal mission.
The highlight fell in this 30-stage excessive-rise estate tower following an unsolved killing there remaining December.
Four years of emails between the department and the cleaning corporation show that filthy conditions at Park Towers and different public housing residences were frequently neglected by GJK. Branch personnel overseeing GJK contracts frequently reach a boiling point, causing frustration.
“To some degree, I must decide whether GJK is negligent, incompetent, or uncaring. Perhaps all 3. Negligent in reality, as to the alternative time will inform,” reads a 2013 email from a property management employee.
Another email from 2014 reads, “I am swiftly losing self-belief in GJK’s capability to reliably and professionally perform the works it’s been shriveled for.”
A September 2014 email information a host of grimy areas, clutter, and “spit marks” on corridor partitions.
In early 2015, the branch issued 3 $500 fines to GJK for breaching its contractual responsibilities, including putting off difficult rubbish, purchasing trolleys and graffiti, and scrubbing common regions.
GJK’s contracts incorporate dozens of pages of specific directions for every cleaning and maintenance challenge required in common areas, including the removal of urine, excrement, blood, and syringes, which must occur day by day.
One note from 2013 states: “The natural brown matter at the wall of the general public lavatory has been gift [for] at least [six days]”.
Although the email exchanges imply cleansing improved at times, threats of financial consequences from the branch continued through 2015. “While the cleansing services at this block are common of appropriate fine if your operator does now not begin cleaning the vertical tiling inside the not unusual areas, there may be repercussions,” one email reads.
Despite the slew of court cases regarding GJK’s negligence, the business enterprise won tenders for accessible public housing across Melbourne’s west, north, and south. Over the years, those contracts were worth nearly $82 million.
The most current contracts show that the cleansing price range just for Park Towers—the most prominent public housing tower in Victoria, with 310 apartments—is $14,000 a month.
Read a sample of the emails here.
In a 2017 email, the head of Park Towers Housing Tenant Management Association, John Lowndes, complained about GJK’s cleaning and threatened to take the agency to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to sever the contract.
Mr. Lowndes, who has lived in Park Towers for thirteen years, said GJK’s cleaners had never done the task well. He said they’d have a hard time because the towers were dilapidated, but it was now not proper that they frequently failed to carry out their obligations.
He said he had seen everything from human and canine feces in stairwells to used condoms left for days in commonplace regions.
“We have quite a few households here now with young kids, and they just shouldn’t be positioned up with the grime,” he stated. It’s genuinely outrageous they keep getting contracts.”