Adjournment motion on responsible use of HDB rooftop gardens

Residents have been putting up with the inconvenience and nuisance caused by visitors to the HDB sky gardens. These troubles are especially bad during weekends, festive seasons and public holidays. Besides the chaos, noise and rubbish that the crowds would bring, residents have to deal with overflowing dustbins, littering, illegal smoking and loud partying in the common areas. Volunteers patrol the sky garden after 10pm. After two years, they are exhausted. "Our current measures are insufficient and not working," said MP Joan Pereira as she highlighted these issues in an adjournment motion in Parliament on Tuesday (Nov 8). She stressed that the current state of affairs is "hardly building cohesive communities". She called for more measures to limit access to the rooftop garden at SkyVille@Dawson. She pointed out that the popular rooftop terrace on the 50th storey at Pinnacle@Duxton is "much more orderly" as non-residents have to register and pay S$6 to access the rooftop, while visitor numbers are limited to 200. She appealed for similar preventive measures to ensure the orderly management of public access to all other HDB sky gardens. Responding, Senior Minister of State for National Development Sim Ann said HDB cannot treat rooftop gardens as exclusive enclosed spaces. It can assist the town council and the local grassroots in signalling to visitors that sky gardens, while open in nature, are residential amenities and "not domestic tourist attractions", she said. She also highlighted ways in which HDB works with town councils and various Government agencies to put in place measures to address the issues. She added that the Government will study new ways to design sky gardens better to pre-empt disamenities, while keeping them open and inclusive.