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When they opened the main door of the unit in Block 64 Lorong 5 Toa Payoh, they knew they were going to have a long day.
The one-bedroom rental apartment on the ground floor was so full of garbage that none of them could even get into the unit.
Entering through the back door, the group of volunteers were greeted with an even more unpleasant sight as they began cleaning the place last Sunday.
“The big cockroaches would be over,” Ms Fion Phua, founder of the Keeping Hope Alive volunteer group, told The New Paper yesterday, adding that the apartment was also infested with rats.
The smell was so pungent that volunteers, who donned personal protective equipment (PPE) that included a mask, a face shield and two layers of surgical gloves, had to apply medicinal ointment to support it.
But the group of about 35 worked in shifts and in groups of five – due to social distancing rules – to clean the floor in about seven hours, throwing out more than 30 garbage bags and other items such as fans, bicycles and televisions. .
Phua, 50, said her group, who visit rental apartments every Sunday, met the man who lived in the apartment two weeks ago.
They were visiting the man’s neighbor and found it strange that the man, who is hard of hearing, wore dirty clothes, walked barefoot and slept on cardboard sheets along the hallway outside his apartment.
Identified by the Chinese night newspaper Lianhe Wanbao as 81-year-old Mr. Chen Yongfa, the man said he had no intention of accumulating garbage.
Living alone in the flat for the past four years, he said he collected discarded items and sold them for a living.
But he had to keep the items at home after Covid-19 hit, as he couldn’t sell them and was too old to clean up the mess.
With the help of Keeping Hope Alive volunteers, who worked hard from 8 a.m. M. At 3 p. M. Last Sunday, Mr. Chen now has a new bed and his empty apartment will soon receive a new coat of paint.
He told Wanbao: “Now I can finally sleep comfortably in bed and not in the company of rats and cockroaches.”
Phua said the pandemic has been tough on his volunteers.
“The difficult part is that when you wear PPE, there is no ventilation. It is hot, there is humidity and it is very difficult to breathe.”
But it has been even more difficult for seniors living in rental flats alone, especially in the beginning, he said.
“Imagine if you can’t go out, you can’t have visitors, you don’t have phone calls or connections. It can be very frustrating.”
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