I have been approached by a reporter from a local newspaper to obtain contacts for MINORITY OWNERS. They want to do a piece on the plight of minority owners and need our help.
For her own record, the reporter will need your personal details but these can be kept out of the newspaper piece (ie you can be relatively anonymous to the public; but the reporter needs to know her sources). So here's your chance to voice your plight about the enbloc madness that has gripped the country. Interviews can be done via phone or email.
If you are interested, please contact me - enblocsingapore@hotmail.com - and let's talk first.
When you email me, let me know why you are/were a minority owner first - your situation and plight. I'll compile a list of potential interviewees for the reporter and she can then choose who she wants to interview and subsequently incorporate into her piece. Suffice to say she has done substantial coverage of enbloc sales in Singapore, but largely from the point of view of the success stories. Since then, there's been an increasing sense of helplessness, anger, frustration, by minority owners that she has been alerted to, and would now like to do a piece on.
Let's not let that opportunity disappear. For those who have been evicted from their homes, who felt that they have lost their individual rights to their homes, who have been bullied and threatened into signing their homes away, etc, please.. contact me. There must be THOUSANDS of people who have disagreed with their development's enblocs by now, and have no recourse but to accept their fate.
Give the public your voices.
Dr Minority - enblocsingapore@hotmail.com
ps. I'll leave this post on the front page for a week. Then I'll resume my posts.
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7 comments:
It's great that ST wants to do an article from the Dissenters' Viewpoint.
However, I gather that the ST reporter will only write the article if enough of you dissenters speak up.
So do Stand Up and Be Counted ... in any case your identity will only be known to Dr Minority and ST (not your neighbours).
Otherwise, at the next National Day celebration, you will be singing:
This is my country.
That was my home (en bloc block).
Please also check out CONDOsingapore.com
There is also a substantial anti-en-bloc reader population over there.
Thank you to "Anonymous" for the tip-off on the CondoSingapore site. I'll check it out.
I'm just starting to build my blog-site ... yeh, finally, after some cajoling. As a newbie, I don't know how to do some technie stuff. Do check it out:
www.singaporeenbloc.blogspot.com
But it'd be good to get Dissenters' Viewpoint on ST to have even more "reach" as that is still the main paper in Singapore (like it or not). The only hold-up now is that ST will feature Dissenter's Views only if they can verify their sources AND if enough of you speak up. So pitch-in where you can lah!
It's great if ST really wants to do this article but I am getting more impatient by the day as my condo is already at the stage of convening an EGM, thereafter to apply to STB for approval.
I am a minority owner and have sent in an email on 23 March. To date, I have not heard anything.
In my situation, even some of the majority owners are unhappy with the process but are "stuffed" because they had signed the CSA.
I think it all boils down to the fact that many people don't understand what collective sales entails and the fact that there are risks when there are no regulations covering the Sales Committee, who are often given too much empowerment (terms in CSA).
To Chuko,
Changes, unless it involves profits, takes time... I share your angst as ours is at a similar stage of starting the STB application.
It never hits the government that there's something wrong, when most or even almost all enblocs have to go through STB, which means 100% consensus was not achieved. And of course, given the tight definition of what can be legally counted as a contention against enblocs, most minority/dissenters cannot do anything (unless they can prove financial loss).
Still the point is that there are now thousands of minority owners who disagreed with enbloc sales and we really need to make enough noises so that the government realises something is flawed in the way enblocs are done in Singapore.
I feel down too, when I heard we achieved 80% consensus, like all the blogging and alerting expats the dangers of renting in enbloc flats are all for nothing. What's the point of making a stand when its all going to go to hell anyway right? No, because if I don't, and you don't, and every other minority owner just keeps quiet, then it will really continue and thousands more will be affected by ruthless agents, owners and developers.
Don't be a typical citizen who does nothing. Even if ST doesn't publish your letter, there's other avenues of complaint (even if it's too late for your estate). Keep on making noises until someone in the government realises how many people are negatively affected by the enbloc sales.
To Dr Minority,
Thanks for the encouragement. I do hope that with your sharing my contact with the ST reporter, it will help to give a voice to the minortiy owners (and portion of majority owners in our case).
Actually, there was article published in Lian He Zao Bao on 28 march under the Finance section, that's us leading the way on trying to air the views about pitfalls in en bloc sale.
Thanks for having this blog.. and giving me another platform to make noise... keep up the good work.
To Dr Minority,
Thanks for the encouragement. I do hope that with your sharing my contact with the ST reporter, it will help to give a voice to the minortiy owners (and portion of majority owners in our case).
Actually, there was article published in Lian He Zao Bao on 28 march under the Finance section, that's us leading the way on trying to air the views about pitfalls in en bloc sale.
Thanks for having this blog.. and giving me another platform to make noise... keep up the good work.
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