Examiner to submit Tah Ching Road lift mishap report by Oct 26: Tharman
The authorised examiner looking into the Tah Ching Road lift incident needed more time to do a thorough report, said Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam. Photo: Ernest Chua
SINGAPORE — The authorised examiner looking into the Tah Ching Road lift incident which left an elderly woman with her hand severed has until Oct 26 to submit the report on the case to the Building and Construction Authority, said Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam.
Sharing this today (Oct 18) on the sidelines of house visits in the estate, Mr Tharman, who is Member of Parliament for Jurong GRC, said the original deadline was Oct 17, but this was extended as the examiner “needed a little more time to do a thorough report”.
“We don’t want to constrain the authorised examiner...because we don’t want to spare any effort in getting to the root of the problem,” said Mr Tharman, who visited residents at Block 322 Tah Ching Road, where the freak accident happened on Oct 9.
Mr Tharman also added that the victim Mdm Khoo Bee Hua, 85 — who underwent two operations at the National University Hospital — is “recovering faster than expected”, and he hopes she can be transferred to the Jurong Community Hospital soon. “We will make sure that wherever she is, she is going to be looked after well. When she is back in the community especially, we will make sure that friends will look in on her often and make sure that everything is okay,” he said.
Asked if she will be compensated over the incident, Mr Tharman said the cause of the incident must be established first, but reiterated that Jurong Town Council takes responsibility. “We would like to help her and her family in every way,” he added.
Asked about the complaints residents have floated about lifts in the estate — one resident told TODAY her son has been trapped in the Block 322 lift several times — Mr Tharman said there are different problems with lifts at different times. “It doesn’t mean that all the problems are due to the same cause. And this is true across Singapore. … Whenever there are serious problems, make sure they attend to them promptly, take them very seriously. Don’t paper over problems at all.”
The lift in which the Oct 9 incident occurred is not in use. Jurong Town Council has said it has checked all the lifts in the same precinct and found all safety devices to be working.
