SINGAPORE : Residents at a Build-to-Or BTO project in Bukit Panjang suffered a three-hour water outage last Sunday, the second water supply disruption since they moved in about a year ago.
The council has identified an electrical fault as the cause of the outage, but the Member of Parliament for the ward is pursuing the matter with the Housing and Development Board HDB and the BTO contractors.
When one of the residents, Connie Ong, turned on the tap Sunday at her Senja Ridges BTO unit, she found that the water flow had dried up.
At first, I thought my husband had turned off the mains by accident, said Ms Ong, 48.
She quickly discovered that this was a building-wide outage, corroborated by the messages on her block's Telegram group chat.
The water disruption to residents at 638 A Senja Close lasted from 11 am to 2 pm on Sunday.
The residents reported cloudy, yellowish and muddy water from 2 pm to 6 pm on Sunday before the service was fully restored, despite the fact that water was unavailable for a period.
The building suffered an electrical trip caused by a ruptured sanitary gasket at the control valve, said Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council HBPTC in response to TODAY's queries.
The water seeped into the electrical distribution board. The electrical system's safety features were thus disconnected as part of the power supply to the water pumps at the block, according to the council.
TODAY interviewed 10 affected residents who said they were frustrated or inconvenienced by the disruption.
In seven of the 10, seven indicated that this was not the first time that a water disruption had occurred in their block.
Hafiz Huzaifah, 33, said this was the third water disruption he had experienced after similar incidents in May 2022 and January 2023.
There were two outages for most of the world.
It was very inconvenient for me as I needed to shower before going out, and my plans were affected, said Mr Hafiz, referring to the incident last Sunday.
Other residents said they went downstairs to collect water using pails or watching their neighbours do so.
Ms Ong said her cooking plans were affected, and others sent pictures of water bottles via Telegram that they had purchased.
The family had been lucky on Sunday as they had already showered and eaten breakfast before the disruption, according to housewife Lina Mohamed, 34.
In January I was a lot less lucky, said Ms Lina. It happened past 7 pm and we had just come back, so the inconvenience was a lot more.