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To Upgrade or Not To Upgrade?

Last night, some guys from the resident committee and the town council informed us that depending on the outcome of the voting, a new lift will be built at the corridor just outside our flat. It is part of the lift upgrading for our area. As our flat is along the lift landing level, it was just for info and we will not be voting. We were informed about the lift upgrading earlier by letter, and I did not expect that they were actually planning to build a new lift!

Our block is relatively small compared to the other blocks in the area, with a total number of households of 50. The new lift will stop at every level, which means that other than the serving even levels as the existing lift, it will also serve the two corner units at the odd levels, and 8 units at level two. The existing lift is at the other end of the block now, where there are no units at odd levels, therefore to serve the odd levels units, the new lift has to be built at our end of the block.

I am not very supportive of the idea. According to the RC members, the rationale of building the lift is that they may be old folks who are wheelchair bounded, not staying in levels with lift-landing, so having lift will be more convenient for them. But they failed to recognise the fact that, unlike the other blocks in the area, our block is relatively small and less than twenty years old, the residents are also mostly young families.

I am not sure about the exact among every family will have to pay, but I think it is around 10% or $1K+ for Singapore family and about $10k for PR family. Since there are only 18 units are eligible to vote, that means only 18 families will pay, which also mean that our block will need to be heavily subsidised as well?

I think my block is eligible for new lift as our area on the whole is undergoing such lift upgrading, so since the rest are doing, our block will be given a chance to do so too. But do we really need lift upgrading? The good thing is that there will be a poll, so the upgrading is not compulsory. If we need 75% to vote for, then we will need just 4 units to vote against, and there will be no lift upgrading. I am quite confident that will be the result. It is not difficult to realise that it is not worthed paying $1k for the lift when you are living on the 2nd storey.

Maybe the authorities should rethink the idea of having lift upgrading for every block in the area and come up with other ways to upgrading which will better benefit the residents. In fact I think it is not necessary to have upgrading for the block itself, improving the surroundings, like building a linkway to the bus-stop which I mentioned in my earlier post, will be useful to us as well! Of course there are many other ways to improve our lives and I think our MP and grassroot leaders have a crucial role to play in identifying them. For me, I am rather satisfied and thankful, and not asking too much. Why don't we use this money to help those more needy people?

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