No. of Complaints for Smoking & Noise at Home Increased Due to Circuit Breaker As Everyone is at Home

Singapore (and many other countries in the world) is probably experiencing one of the largest mass cases of cabin fever it has seen.

Stress, restlessness, anxiety, irritability, and many other symptoms plague us all now.

As this article from gov.sg points out, some of the best tips to combat cabin fever are to keep up daily routines and engage in hobbies or pick up new skills from online videos.

Well, turns out some of these tips when carried out has some adverse effects.

Noise Complaints Through The Roof

Aside from increased friction between family members due to having to see the same face(s) 24/7 now, things aren’t the best between neighbours either.

There has been an islandwide surge in noise complaints according to Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Gan Thiam Poh.

In Hougang Street 51, a woman named Mrs Tang complained that her family has been at the receiving end of the endless hammering and knocking noises from their next-door neighbour.

Hope ‘hammering’ wasn’t meant to be an innuendo.

According to Mrs Tang, her neighbour can start hammering as early 7am and go on till 2 to 3am, causing a lack of sleep and difficulty for her children to concentrate on studies.

Maybe the neighbour is picking up a new skill as suggested? But then pick a quieter one lah.

Despite having made reports to both the police and the HDB, nothing is able to be done due to on-site inspections being prohibited due to the circuit breaker.

Smoking Complaints On The Rise

Noise isn’t the only issue for many neighbours, as cigarette smoke has been on the rise.

Perhaps to keep up daily routines as suggested by gov.sg or due to the increased stress, people have been smoking in their homes a lot more.

Due to circuit breaker restrictions, smokers may not leave their homes simply to engage in their fifteen-minute breaks as it is not considered ‘essential’.

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However, much like the noise complaints, there isn’t much the MPs can do about this.

All they are able to do is advise smokers to refrain from smoking at their windows and for the neighbours to shut their windows.

Be Considerate

“I am sure nobody wants to disturb his neighbour, but sometimes unconsciously, you may have created the noise,” MP Gan Thiam Poh says.

As everyone is going through a tough period and we have to do everything we can to help ourselves cope, it is important to stay considerate of our neighbours.

He also added: “At this time, everybody needs to support one another.”

Well said.

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