As Singapore’s high-rise noisy neighbour feuds turn deadly, is mediation the solution?
A fatal dispute, reportedly over noise, has sparked a debate on the existing rules and enforcement measures for community dispute resolution
“Whenever there’s a little noise – if someone’s high heels make clacking sounds, or if I drop something on the floor – he retaliates by banging on his ceiling,” he told This Week in Asia. “He does it every day, from day to night, it scares my mother to tears.”
Pang is far from alone. Singapore saw an average of 2,500 reports related to noise per month in the first half of the year, according to a joint statement issued by the law and national development ministries on September 27.
More than 80 per cent of the city state’s population live in public flats – a high-rise model adopted in the 1960s in response to limited land area and a rapidly expanding population.
For Pang, his worries over the years-long stand-off with his neighbour intensified after hearing about a recent tragedy in the north of the country, where a man reportedly killed a mother of two over a long-standing noise row involving the victim’s children.
Koh Ah Hwee, 66, was charged with murder last month after he allegedly stabbed Nguyen Phuong Tra, 30, to death in a communal a corridor of their flat block in Yishun. Neighbours said the two households had been at odds for years.
“When I read about the incident, I felt so worried. I’m scared that he will snap one day,” Pang said of his own neighbour.