The Housing and Development Board (HDB) is “closely monitoring the progress” of discussions between itself and the developer of Pasir Ris ONE, the Design, Build and Sell Scheme flats in eastern Singapore.
The development has been criticised for defects and bad design since The Online Citizen (TOC) reported the case on Monday. (See here: “Pasir Ris ONE DBSS – yet another development under fire”)
These included uneven tiles, loose cabinet doors, the use of cheap material, bathroom doors installed awkwardly, room doors which leave big gaps between the doors and the floor, and so on.
One of the main complaints among the many points of unhappiness are the narrow corridors of the premium HDB flats there.
When TOC measured the corridors, it was exactly 1.2m wide.
This is the bare minimum allowed under the old Building and Construction Authority (BCA) rules, which have since been changed to 1.5m to cater to safety and evacuation purposes.
Under the rules, a clear passage of 1.2m must be maintained.
This, however, has put owners at Pasir Ris ONE in a conundrum. If they should place a shoe rack or a bicycle in their corridors, they could be breaking the rules, including those of town councils by-laws which prohibit obstructions in common corridors.
“My neighbours and I cannot even open our doors at the same time,” Mr Shaun Chew, a resident, told the Straits Times.
Pasir Ris ONE is a joint-project by developers SingHaiyi Group and Kay Lim Holdings.
“The designs and plans for this development have been approved and fall within all guidelines stipulated by the BCA, which were established with safety and comfort of residents in mind,” the manager and project administrator from SingHaiyi Group told the Straits Times.
He added that the developer took the feedback of residents “seriously” and will review them.
The residents themselves have created a private Facebook group to exchange information and for discussion.
The HDB, meantime, says it has been actively engaging the developer to address the residents’ concerns.
In another outcry over another DBSS development, this time over at Centrale 8 in Tampines, it is reported that the Minister of Education, who is also a Member of Parliament of the area, has set up a task force to address the home owners’ complaints.
The minister, Heng Swee Keat, will “supervise” the group which is made up of grassroots leaders.
Such problems in new developments have been reported by new owners of other DBSS flats at the Trivelis in Clementi and Centrale 8 in Tampines in the last two months, along with several other groups of owners of build-to-order flats, such as in Punggol and Bukit Panjang, in the last few years.
In its response to all these, the HDB said earlier in June that the defects were merely “surface imperfections.”
“This is due mainly to the inherent features of natural materials or the nature of construction works that are dependent on manual labour,” a HDB spokesman said.
