Housing Board finally finally to fix concrete problems in opposition wards

The cost of opposition: You'll wait to get your housing upgraded.
Asiaweek report Jan 17, 1997

BY Tan Hsueh Yun

THE Housing Board will extend its scheme to repair spalling concrete in HDB flats to the two opposition wards, Potong Pasir and Hougang, from tomorrow.

The board said yesterday that the two constituencies are in the eighth and final batch to be included in the Spalling Concrete Repairs Assistance Scheme, which started in August 1995.

All the other 81 wards held by the ruling People's Action Party have been covered under the scheme.

The last batch of repair works was offered in August this year to residents in Bukit Gombak and Nee Soon Central, the two former opposition wards recaptured by the PAP in the January General Election.

In the one-off programme, HDB flat-owners who want their peeling concrete repaired have to submit their requests to their respective HDB branch offices before July 31 next year.

Residents will have to pay a share of the costs. HDB pays 70 per cent for four-room and smaller flats, and 60 per cent for five-room and executive flats.

Flat-owners who have very serious spalling concrete problems will not have to pay more than $300, it said.

HDB said that, as at Sept 30 this year, it had received about 16,400 applications to repair spalling concrete. Repairs to 13,600 flats have been done.

It added that about 82 per cent of flat-owners covered so far paid less than $50 for the repairs, and the average subsidy was $100 for each case.

Parliamentary Secretary (National Development) Koo Tsai Kee has said before that spalling problems are due to physical deterioration of flats as they got older, and are not a construction defect.

Mr Low Thia Khiang, the Workers' Party MP for Hougang, was not in Singapore and could not be contacted for a response.

But Mr Chiam See Tong, MP for Potong Pasir, said yesterday that judging from feedback, his residents would welcome the scheme, if HDB did it free of charge or at a reduced fee.

The Singapore People's Party secretary-general said: "Since Singapore is able to lend US$5 billion to Indonesia, they should offer the scheme for free."

If not repaired, he added, spalling concrete was not only aesthetically unacceptable, but also dangerous.

He said: "In my view, if the HDB does not take the initiative to carry out repairs on spalling concrete, the risk of someone getting hit by a piece of falling concrete will be greater."

He cited the case of a Potong Pasir resident who was called out of the toilet by her husband.

As she walked out, he said, a chunk of concrete almost 16 cm long and four cm wide fell from the ceiling, and could have hit her on the head if she had not moved away when she did. Mr Chiam, who was voted in as MP in the ward in 1984, said: "The flats in Potong Pasir estate were hurriedly built to be in time for the 1984 General Election, and they are generally poorly built and all the poor materials used are showing now, in the problem of spalling concrete."

He noted that there were many cases reported recently, along common corridors and inside flats.

Published in the Straits Times. November 14, 1997