Sers Residents Approve Consultancy Exercises

Source : The Business Times, January 8, 2008

EFFORTS to build more cohesive public housing communities seem to have paid off. Most of the 500-plus households involved in two recent consultation exercises deemed them effective, encouraging similar exercises in the future.

The consultations, announced in July last year by the Forum on HDB Heartware, were with selective en-bloc redevelopment scheme (Sers) residents on providing common facilities and enhancement of the joint selection scheme under Sers.

Ninety-four per cent of respondents felt the exercise was a useful and effective way to promote a closer-knit community and a greater sense of ownership of the new precinct.

In the first initiative, residents of selected blocks at Silat and Henderson roads were surveyed on a replacement site in Kim Tian Road to re-house them. HDB also organised a mini-exhibition and two briefing and feedback sessions.

Residents were given the opportunity to choose the name for the new precinct - Kim Tian Green - and discuss locations for facilities such as a family playground and an activity court.

The second initiative enables joint selection of replacement flats for neighbours on the same floor or related families for up to six Sers households instead of the current four.

The lessees of Blocks 9 to 12, 9A and 12A Ghim Moh Road will be the first to benefit from this.

Minister of State for National Development Grace Fu said the results of the consultation exercises were encouraging.

'Consultation on the provision of common facilities will be carried out in future Sers replacement sites to enable residents to develop a precinct they can call their own,' she said.