SINGAPORE - The walls of two Tampines HDB blocks have been repainted white by the estate's town council, after residents in opposite blocks complained that the paint job cast an eerie glow into their flats.
The walls at the ends of two blocks near Tampines Street 44 were painted green or red in June as part of a Tampines Town Council initiative to liven up the estate, but some residents found that the wall colours reflected a garish red or green glow into their homes at certain times of the day.
Mr Y. S. How, 70, whose flat directly faced a red wall, said it cast a crimson glow into his master bedroom and kitchen.
"Some people say it's very ghostly. It doesn't look right and doesn't feel good," said the retiree, who has lived there for 30 years.
Other residents said it made their homes look garish or "like a temple".
The Tampines Town Council had painted the cluster of 13 HDB blocks with a motif that drew inspiration from aeroplane chess, a popular Chinese childhood board game similar to the western board game Ludo.
It is part of a series of nostalgia-themed blocks in Tampines North painted with designs inspired by Polaroid cameras, cassette tapes and tingkats (traditional tiffin food carriers).
Blocks painted with the aeroplane chess design had certain walls painted either red, green, blue or yellow.
The multicoloured design was chosen after votes were sought from residents in Blocks 472 to 484. Out of the 41 people who voted, 61 per cent selected this colour scheme from three different options.
The offending walls were painted on June 22, which led residents to raise their concerns with the Tampines Town Council and Tampines GRC MP Baey Yam Keng.
Some residents said officers from HDB had visited their flats to investigate their concerns on July 2. When The Straits Times visited on July 5, workers were repainting the walls white.
Residents were relieved that the issue had been resolved. Mr Neo, a 58-year-old retiree, was thankful that the town council was receptive to residents' feedback.
"They really do (pay attention) to feedback, whenever anything happens within our blocks, we give them a call and they take action," said Mr Neo, who wanted to be known only by his surname.
Mr Baey told ST that no extra costs were incurred by the repainting as the project is still ongoing.
"Nobody would have thought about this situation happening, so we appreciate the residents' feedback as we usually would not be able to go down and see from their houses," he said.
Mr Baey had earlier wrote in a Facebook post on July 4 that he had reviewed the situation with the contractor before deciding that the offending walls would be repainted largely in white.
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In his post, he also shared feedback from a resident who was unhappy with the aeroplane design. That resident wrote to him saying it gave the impression of "four missiles on target" or "dropped bombs targeting the block".
Explaining why the town council did not make changes requested by the resident, Mr Baey said the majority of people who voted had no issue with the selected design, and it would not be fair to change it now and incur extra costs.
He also pointed out that this particular resident did not live in this cluster of blocks.
"I just want to assure residents that when feedback is valid and there is something a lot of people feel for... the town council will definitely do something to help the residents," he told ST.
This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.
