New MP Faced Her First Problem After Being Elected When Water Supply in an HDB Flat Was Disrupted

Many MPs have already started work by announcing their Meet-the-People Sessions (MPS).

Others have visited the residents who’ve voted for them.

And even before they’ve the chance to sit on the coveted seat in Parliament, one has faced a problem that she probably didn’t expect: a suddenly water disruption in an entire HDB flat.

Newly Minted MP Faced Her First Problem After Being Elected When Water Supply in an HDB Flat Was Disrupted

Meet Gan Siow Huang, a former Brigadier-General in the SAF and a new MP in Marymount SMC.

She’s so new, people who wrote her bio in Wikipedia even had a mix-up over her gender…

…and Facebook hasn’t even verified her Facebook Page with a blue verified tick.

But the new MP, who’s gained the respect of many as she’s fought alone in a constituency against a veteran opposition party member, faced her first problem (at least publicly) yesterday.

As someone who’s served in the army, she must be so used to forcing encouraging fellow soldiers to drink up that she might have ten jerry cans of water in her house. Fortunately, when water was disrupted, she knew what to do and didn’t distribute jerry cans to the affected households instead.

She wrote in a Facebook post that yesterday (18 July 2020), water supply to an HDB flat in her ward, Blk 281 along Bishan St 24, was disrupted due to an underground pipe burst.

Lest you didn’t know, what’s below the land we step on comprises many things, from power grids to sewage system to, of course water pipe. Every building is attached to these “things”, because last I know, water and electricity aren’t dropped from the sky.

Here’s a graphic by SP Group showing how crowded the underground world is:

Needless to say, if one pipe burst, shit hits the fan.

And that was what happened yesterday to that HDB block.

This rarely happened, though to the older generation, they’re a tad used to it as they’ve lived through a generation whereby water wasn’t readily available. Someone actually spoke about it:

According to the Facebook post, the water supply was restored after a while, but on a Saturday when everyone’s at home, “a while” without water isn’t livable, so a mobile water tank was activated for residents to collect clean water.

The MP was there, and even “helped a young resident collect water from the mobile water tank and shared with him a little lesson on ‘Water is Precious’!”

You can view her post here:

What she wrote lest you can’t read it:

Water supply to Blk 281 Bishan St 24 was disrupted today due to an underground pipe burst. Thanks to the fast response of our Town Council and PUB, the water supply has been restored. While waiting for the restoration, I helped a young resident collect water from the mobile water tank and shared with him a little lesson on “Water is Precious”!

Gan Siow Huang, The Warrior Who Walked & Won Alone

If you find her particularly familiar even when you didn’t even know that Marymount exists, it’s probably because of her “war cry” during nomination day.

During her introduction video, she doesn’t sound like a typical soldier, though she looks like she can stare into your soul.

But come nomination day, when she addressed the voters, Ms Gan reverted to Brigadier-General Gan.

Firstly, she didn’t walk to her mic. The mic walked to her.

And when she spoke, she spoke while on a strict “sedia” stance—her entire body was so straight and rooted to the floor, a wild boar would bounce back to Mars if it tried to ram into her.

And the way she spoke?

Classic.

The 45-year-old was so serious in her speech, she sounded like she was going to a war.

In fact, if you don’t understand English and watch this video, you’d think that the woman has just gone back to SAF and is preparing for a war with some dragons.

You can take the girl out of the army, but you can’t take the army out of the girl.

She eventually won with 55.04% of the vote, outdoing PSP’s Ang Yong Guan, a psychiatrist who previously took part in the 2011 General Election as part of SDP to contest for the Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, and in 2015 as part of the Singaporeans First party for Tanjong Pagar GRC.

Ms Gan is now a Deputy CEO in NTUC’s e2i after serving in the military for 27 years. The former soldier is married to a former Naval officer and is a proud mother of three girls. She had met her husband through the military in 1994 – he was a naval officer studying in Britain on a SAF scholarship. They got married in 1998.

You can read more about her here.