Technician Jumani Samat and his wife Mazuwina Mohamad noticed cracks appearing in the living room and bedrooms of their new Build-to-Order (BTO) flat at Waterway Banks in Punggol three weeks after they moved in, media reports said.
Upon calling the project’s building services centre, workers came by twice to apply plaster over the cracks. However, more cracks started appearing in their four-room unit.
“We are worried about safety,” said Jumani, who lives in the unit with his wife and two children.
It was reported that there were at least 15 hairline cracks on the walls and ceilings of the rooms, of which some were around two metres long.
“It’s very unsettling because it keeps recurring. You patch up in one place, and another crack pops up next to it,” said 34-year-old Mazuwina, a housewife.
Other residents shared that they also found cracks on their walls.
Responding to media queries, the housing board revealed that of the 850 households which collected their keys since last November, less than a fifth complained of wall cracks.
The cracks are ‘non-structural hairline cracks’ that may have been caused by shrinkage as well as expansion of building materials, or movement, like renovation vibrations, noted an HDB spokesman.
He added that the cracks do not affect the block’s structural integrity.
The latest complaints come after residents of other new HDB projects found defects in their units.
Residents of nearby development Waterway Terraces I complained of wall cracks and other defects in their units, while those living at Senja Gateway in Bukit Panjang complained of poor quality living room tiles.
Meanwhile, residents of Trivelis, a Design Build and Sell Scheme (DBSS) project in Clementi, found several defects including rusty dish racks and poor quality laminate flooring in their units.
Image: Artist’s impression of Waterway Banks BTO project. (Source: HDB)
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Singapore Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact him about this or other stories email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
