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SINGAPORE: The Housing and Development Board (HDB) received further reports of “social inconvenience” during the COVID-19 “circuit breaker” period, State Minister for National Development Sim Ann said in Parliament on Wednesday (4 May November).
From January to March, HDB received around 600 cases of comments on social inconvenience per month. This increased to 2,100 cases per month between April and July, Ms Sim said.
This is because more people work and study from home due to the measures of the circuit breakers, he added.
“From August 2020 onwards, probably due to the return of children to school and more employees to workplaces, the number of comments per month has dropped to around 1,500,” he said.
Ms Sim was responding to questions from Popular Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament Melvin Yong about the number of neighboring dispute cases received by HDB in the past five years, and whether there has been an increase in such cases. due to teleworking agreements.
The Prime Minister of State pointed out that the authorities do not register the number of disputes between neighbors in the HDB apartments.
Figures on social inconvenience are the government’s “closest proxy” to the number of disputes between neighbors, Sim said, adding that it is a “reasonable inference” that changes in the way Singaporeans live and work would affect the number of such cases. .
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Ms Sim added that between 2015 and 2019, the Government received around 3,400 reports on social inconvenience per year.
Responding to opposition leader Pritam Singh’s question about what constitutes social unrest, Ms Sim said that this includes cigarette smoke, noise problems and bad smells.
“The reason they are a little different from disputes between neighbors is because complaints are sometimes filed, but the complainant may not be able to identify which unit originated these problems and therefore it would not be a case where we can identify specific neighbors and then it may not be a case of neighbor dispute per se, ”he said.
Looking ahead, the government will more closely follow disputes between neighbors, Ms Sim said, as authorities “recognize that we have now developed an ecology of different methods to promote a harmonious life and also strengthen the norms of our community. “.
This includes what HDB branches and grassroots volunteer partnerships, the Singapore Kindness Movements, the Community Mediation Center and the Community Dispute Resolution Court are doing.
COMMUNITY DISPUTE RESOLUTION COURT
On the number of cases progressing to mediation and the Community Dispute Resolution Court, which hears complaints between neighbors, Ms Sim said “it is not an exact follow-up” of the cases of disputes between neighbors.
However, there were 380 applications to the court between 2015 and 2019, and two-thirds of these applications were “resolved amicably,” he said.
In response to Yong’s supplemental question on whether HDB is seeking to foster better neighborly relationships, Ms Sim said the Housing Board has issued a series of warnings to make residents more considerate of one another.
REVIEW OF THE COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK FOR DISPUTE MANAGEMENT
In a question addressed to Minister of Culture, Community and Youth Edwin Tong, PAP MP Yip Hon Weng asked when a timetable for the review of the Community Dispute Management Framework will be available.
Mr. Tong said that an inter-agency committee periodically reviews the framework.
“Our guiding principles remain, A – Strengthen the neighborhood to minimize upstream disputes as much as possible. B – promote mediation between neighbors to amend relations as far as possible and, finally, as a measure of last resort, legal recourse for cases that may be intransigent, “he said.
The government said in April that it will consider a protracted case of neighbor dispute in Bukit Panjang, which resulted in the court issuing an exclusion order for the first time, when it reviews measures to address disputes between neighbors.
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As far as possible, the government tries to take the process “upwards,” Mr. Tong said.
For example, community mediation centers work with the Singapore Police, HDB, city councils, the National Environment Agency (NEA), the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) and the Municipal Services Office (MSO) to equip front-line agents with mediation skills.
In the past four years, the centers have also trained more than 1,500 grassroots leaders in basic mediation, he added.
The centers also sometimes visit residents who refuse mediation, he said, to try to persuade them to resort to mediation.
