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SINGAPORE – For nearly 15 years, an architect and his wife illegally occupied 144.2 square meters of state land next to their three-story house at Jalan Tari Zapin in Seletar, which was built in 2005 but had been empty since.
The front door, driveway, two boundary walls, and a fence to the house effectively annexed the parcel of state land, which was larger than a five-room Board of Housing flat, as part of the couple’s property. . Part of the pool also protruded from the fenced-in ground.
The invasions were discovered in 2013 when the national water agency PUB implemented a drainage improvement project to alleviate flooding in the area.
After numerous requests and demands from the authorities, the offending structures were finally withdrawn in December 2019.
Tan Teck Siong and his wife Cheah Mee Poh, the first people to be prosecuted for trespassing under the State Land Invasion Act, have been fined $ 4,000 and $ 3,000 respectively for their crimes.
The offense carries a maximum fine of $ 5,000 or a jail term of up to six months, or both.
Tan was fined another $ 5,000 under the Building Control Act for making false statements in December 2005 that the building work did not deviate from approved plans.
According to a written judgment released this week, Tan, 62, and Cheah, 60, have been the registered owners of a parcel of land in Jalan Tari Zapin, a 999-year lease with an area of 546.6 square meters, since 2001.
They had planned to build a house on the land as a gift to Tan’s parents.
Between 2002 and 2004, the couple obtained the necessary approvals from the authorities to build the house, and Tan was appointed a Qualified Person for the project, who is responsible for ensuring that the works on the house are carried out in accordance with the regulations of building.
The house was left empty, as Tan’s father died shortly after construction was completed in 2005 and the property was too large for his mother to live alone.
In 2013, the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), while inspecting the site for the PUB project, discovered the encroachments.
Authorities wrote to the couple asking that the encroachments be dropped.
The couple claimed they could not reposition the gate as it would block the only vehicular access to the property. They were also reluctant to cut the pool wall.
Meetings were held and correspondence exchanged, but none of the proposed solutions resolved the deadlock.
PHOTO: ST FILE
In the meantime, the PUB started its work but did not improve the 95m drain that runs alongside the property. It also incurred around $ 24,000 to devise temporary flood measures.
The matter chilled for two years until June 2019, when the SLA issued a lawsuit to the owners to remove the encroachments. The owners finally agreed to comply.
In December 2019, citations were issued to the couple for trespassing on state lands.
They were sentenced last month after pleading guilty to the charges.
When convicting them of trespassing, District Judge Clement Tan found the level of harm caused and the couple’s level of guilt to be moderate.
The judge noted that no damage was caused to state land, although the PUB was prevented from carrying out its project in a timely manner.
He noted that the couple enjoyed exclusive access to the invaded land for about 15 years, although they did not live there.
Defense attorney Mahesh Rai argued that some of the structures already existed when the couple took over the property and the couple simply renovated or replaced them.
Judge Tan accepted that an old gate was already installed when the couple took over the property, but said this did not legitimize the invasion.
“What is clear and indisputable is that Tan and Cheah had erected a new front door to the property that effectively cut off any public access, thereby ‘privatizing’ the driveway that is actually part of state land,” he said.
However, the judge said a jail term was not warranted as there was no damage to the land and there were no reports of flooding during this time. She discovered that Cheah, as a layman, was less guilty than her husband. Prosecutors had requested a fine of $ 5,000 each for the couple.
As for the false statement, the judge called Tan’s conduct “exploitative” rather than malicious or nefarious, as the architect believed that the chances of being discovered were low.
“In fact, Tan’s gamble would have been worth it if PUB had not embarked on its drainage improvement project,” the judge said.
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