Residents of 50-storety HDB flat, Pinnacle@Duxton, were reportedly made to climb the stairs after their lifts stopped working for more than an hour twice on the same day. There were no lift access from 9.10am to 10am in the morning, and 5.30pm to 7.15pm.
According to residents, they were informed by Tanjong Pagar GRC Town Council last Saturday (Mar 18) that there will be power outage for the day but two lifts would remain operable.
However, Tanjong Pagar GRC Town Council defended that there the two period of power outage for the lifts were because the lift technicians were replacing the power connection with that of an alternative power generator in the morning, and swapping it back to the main power generator in the evening. According to residents interviewed, they were not informed of the down time or how long the replacement work would take.
The PAP Town Council added that they had to switch off the power for the day to conduct repair work because they initially replaced Japanese circuit breakers with those made from India:
“The town council had been replacing Block 1E’s air circuit breaker, which protects an electrical circuit from damage caused by excess current. Despite the component being less than 10 years old , it was in critical condition, which could cause power failure. Both Block 1D’s and 1E’s failing circuit breakers were from L&T India. They have since been replaced with Mitsubishi ones. The newer model should be able to last for a minimum of 10 years.”
Pinnacle@Duxton is the most expensive HDB flats ever built in Singapore, with a 5-room HDB flat going for at least S$977,846 on average.