LIFT UPGRADING PROGRAMME

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LIFT UPGRADING PROGRAMME: 16.

Dr Ong Seh Hong asked the Minister for National Development, in the light of the Prime Minister's announcement in making Singapore an elderly friendly environment, will his Ministry (a)

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consider giving residents in those HDB flats which failed in the polling of the LUP (lift upgrading programme) a second chance to vote for the programme; and (b) consider extending LUP to low-rise flats.

The Minister for National Development (Mr Mah Bow Tan): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP) was introduced in 2001 to improve the accessibility and mobility of our elderly and disabled residents. HDB blocks are retrofitted with lift landings on every floor. All high-rise HDB blocks built before 1990 and without direct access to a lift are eligible for the LUP.

As the LUP is heavily subsidised and funds are limited, the blocks will have to be upgraded progressively. To-date, the LUP has been offered to more than 600 high-rise blocks. More than 3,000 high-rise blocks are currently eligible.

The LUP is the most popular of all HDB's upgrading programmes. We will therefore focus on lift upgrading and do what we can to bring LUP to as many households as quickly as possible, within the resources available.

Blocks which have been offered but failed to meet the 75% €˜Yes' vote requirement are technically still eligible for the LUP. However, as there are many requests for lift upgrading, we need to consider giving a higher priority to those blocks which have not yetbeen selected for the LUP before.

Similarly, the Government will continue to give priority to high-rise blocks, where more residents can benefit from the programme. Nevertheless, as more high-rise blocks get upgraded, we will consider extending the LUP to low-rise blocks at some stage.

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Dr Lily Neo (Jalan Besar): May I ask the Minister whether there is an eligibility period for re-voting of LUP and whether he will give priority to cases where there are more disabled or elderly residents in a block and there is a high percentage of the residents of that block requesting for re-voting of LUP?

May I also ask the Minister whether such LUP projects will be costlier because, as they lose that priority, they will lose the economies of scale of larger projects as many of them will become stand-alone projects?

Mr Mah Bow Tan: **** To answer the second question, as far as economies of scale are concerned, I do not think the Member need to fear that as we go along, the LUP project will become more expensive. There is no reason for her to have this concern. As I said, we still have a large number of blocks which are eligible for LUP. Therefore, I expectthe economies of scale will be with us for quite some time.

As far as priority is concerned, first of all, I think, as the Member is aware, it really depends on the nomination of the particular block or precinct coming from the adviser. So, if the adviser feels that certain blocks should be nominated, ie, should take priority over other blocks for whatever reasons -whether it is because there are more elderly in that precinct, whether it is because there is a particular need, or whether those lifts are especially old and therefore need upgrading -then obviously the Ministry will have to take that into consideration.

But I would like to remind the House that, ultimately, there is only a limited budget available for upgrading. First of all, there is a limited budget available to my Ministry. Within that budget, I have to allocate a certain budget for housing. Within the housing budget, I have to allocate a certain amount for upgrading

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programmes. Within that, I have to allocate some money for lift upgrading versus other upgrading programmes. So, given the fact that resources are not unlimited, there has got to be prioritisation. We would have to be guided, to a large extent, by the Members' nomination. But, overall, having received all the nominations, we would then have to make another decision as far as priorities are concerned.

Dr Ong Seh Hong (Aljunied): Sir, would the Minister not agree that for lift upgrading - for those who have just failed - there will be still some economies of scale when you can tack on the existing project? That would also cause less disruption to the precinct. Because, if you come back later to do stand-alone blocks, you may create the same amount of disruption.

Mynextquestion is this. I would like to ask the Minister what is the plan to complete the LUP for all eligible HDB flats in the whole of Singapore and what is his Ministry's plan to speed up the project.

My thirdquestion is whether the Ministry will consider this issue. AlthoughLUP adds on a certain facility,this facility is not within the unit. Should it not be considered more like an IUP rather than a MUP and it should not be a co-payment basis? The reason why I say that isthe people who need them most - the elderly families - are the ones who are most likely to be less willing to pay because many of them are retirees, the unemployed orlower-income families.

Mr Mah Bow Tan: With regard to the first question, I think I have answered Dr Lily Neo just now. It is a question of prioritisation. It is not necessarily true that blocks which have failed to achieve the 75% 'Yes' vote are more economical to do than other blocks. In fact, there are

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over 3,000 blocks in Singapore which arewaiting in the queue for lift upgrading. So, really, I should put this question to the Member. Within his own constituency, he has to decide which precinct has got greater priority in terms of lift upgrading - the one that has just been offered and failed to get the 75% 'Yes' vote, or some other precincts which are just as deserving, if not more so. I think this issomething which the Member ought to think about. It is not just a matter of economies of scale. As I explained, it does not necessarily follow that those blocks which have failed are more economical to upgrade.

As far as his second question is concerned which deals with ---

Mr Speaker: Would you like to repeat your question, Dr Ong?

Dr Ong Seh Hong: **** My second point is, if you do it together, it causes less disruption to the area.

Mr Mah Bow Tan: As I have said earlier, it does not follow that there is economy of scale when you are dealing with those blocks which have just failed. There are many other blocks which are just as deserving on that score.

The third question is concerning the issue of co-payment - why do we require co-payment for the lift upgrading? Over the years, before 1990 when HDB was building many flats, it built many different types of flats. There was the traditional slab block (with common corridor) and then, subsequently, it went into the segmented blocks where there was no common corridor but there was more privacy. People felt that they needed more privacy. But the problem with the segmented blocks is that the lifts do not actually stop on every floor. To provide lifts for all thesedifferent types of blocks is a veryexpensive exercise. As I indicated earlier, there is a limitedbudget for upgrading and within this upgrading

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budget, we have to try and achieve as much as possible.

He asked how long it will take for us to complete. If you take the rate at which we are currently doing LUP, we have done about 600 blocks over the last three years, say, 200 per year. We have about 3,000 blocks left. So, a rough back of the envelope calculation, we will need another 15 years to complete, if we are able to do it at the same rate. We are now looking to see whether we canspeed up this rate of bringing the LUP to residents. Over the last few years, we have tried to skew the budget more in favour of lift upgrading as opposed to MUP. We have implemented a programme known as IUP-Plus where we have added the lift upgrading to the IUP programme; hence the "plus".Through all these measures, we hope that we will be able to speed up the lift upgrading. Because, as all Members of the House would attest, it is a very popular programme and it is definitely something which will become more and more necessary as our population ages. So that is something that we will be looking at actively.

But whatever it is, it is still a very expensive programme to do. And it is therefore very important for us to, first of all, be able to have some indication from residents whether they really want it or not. If we were to offer it as a programme which is free of charge, I think there is going to be a lot of pressure for us to do it all over the place, and I do not think the budget will be able to take it.

Secondly, through a process of co-payment, we will be able to actually speed up the programme faster because residents will be paying a certain part of the cost, although that cost will be kept to the minimum. The level of co-payment today, from the point of view of the residents, is, I would say, very reasonable. It ranges from 5-15%of the

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cost. So the total cost, say, for a 3-room flat issomething like $2,000. So it is very reasonable.

He asked what happens to those who are not able to pay, the elderly residents, for example. Here, I would like to assure him that there are many schemes that are available for such residents, whether it is stretching of the payment to as long as 25 years, the use of CPF, and even the deferred payment scheme, if necessary, if the resident is really unable to pay.All these schemes are available to make sure that affordability for those who are genuinely in financial difficulty is not an issue. If they are able to get the 75% 'Yes' vote, then that should not be an issue.