SINGAPORE – A motorcyclist was injured in an accident between a motorcycle and a car at Empress Road at around 6am on Saturday (July 2), reported Stomp. 

Many passers-by reportedly came to help the motorcyclist who had grazed his forehead. 

According to reader Nana, who witnessed the incident, an off-day SCDF officer, who was wore a white shirt and sarong, came to the injured man’s assistance. 

The SCDF officer took some parts of his sarong and covered the man’s wound when he saw that there was a cut on his head. 

Apparently, the rider was in a daze and didn’t seem aware of his injuries. 

“He thought that his condition was ok, but it was not,” said reader who wrote into the citizen journalism website about the incident. 

The ambulance arrived about 18 minutes later, according to Nana.

Commenting on the off-duty SCDF officer’s effort to help, the reader wrote: “He did a great job.”

maryanns@sph.com.sg

A stout and jovial-looking Mr Dass Elangovan declared confidently: “A lot of people say the best porridge is the one at Block 527.”

The queue that stretches from his Shaik Abdul Kader Al-Jailani Makan Place coffee shop in Bedok North to the pedestrian walkway outside shows something special is cooking.

Every day during the month of Ramadan, hundreds of people come for the free porridge that Mr Elangovan painstakingly cooks and distributes for free. He has been doing this every year for the last decade.

“We’re happy to make this a multiracial event – Malays, Chinese and Indians can all come to enjoy the porridge,” said the 50-year-old, who spends around $30,000 each year on the project.

The recipe was given to him by an acquaintance to cook for his family, but he used it as a way to help others in the community.

Beginning with one pot of porridge, he now cooks three a day, which can feed up to a thousand people. It takes him six hours to cook all the porridge.

Parliamentary Secretary for Education and Social and Family Development Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, who helped to distribute the porridge to residents yesterday, said “it definitely has been successful in reaching out to the residents”.

There are plans to expand the porridge distribution by delivering it to the homes of residents, he added.

Residents such as Azrui Malarouf, 46, are grateful for Mr Elangovan’s efforts. “We can take the porridge for breakfast and it helps to build community ties between business owners and residents,” said the aviation refueller, who has been a regular since the start of the initiative.

Mr Muhammad Abdul Kadir, 69, a director of Mr Elangovan’s coffee shop business, helps with the porridge distribution.

“We’ll carry this on for as long as we live,” he promised.

This article was first published on Jul 03, 2016.
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When a gym pressured caterer Arissa Hee, 30, into signing a $6,000 package and charged the full amount to her credit card without her consent, she turned not to Singapore’s consumer watchdog but to “refund guru” Joel Kong.

Mr Kong, 31, a former legal executive, set up a business last November that helps aggrieved consumers get their money back from errant businesses which may have misrepresented their products or, as in Ms Hee’s case, used hard-sell tactics.

The role of his firm, Solutionalization – known formerly as The Refund Guru – may sound similar to that of the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case), but his tactics are anything but.

His modus operandi includes sending a letter of demand to the errant firm and phoning it daily.

If the firm still does not budge, he shares his client’s story on social media and other sites to shame it into responding.

“I’d send the link (to the online story) to the firm,” Mr Kong told The Sunday Times. “It can then either ignore, engage or negotiate with me. So far, nobody has ignored me.”

He said he has helped eight consumers successfully so far and Ms Hee is one of them.

The existence of such a firm – through which people take dispute resolution into their own hands – arises from weak consumer-protection laws, said branding specialist Samir Dixit, managing director of Brand Finance Asia-Pacific.

The current process for consumers to get help is “too lengthy… (and) simply has very little legal backing”, he said.

He added: “The extremely important aspect of any such dispute-resolution format is that it must remain neutral and unbiased… But this becomes a question mark with entities such as Solutionalization.”

Mr Kong said he was prompted to set up the business after seeing people get turned away by the law firms at which he worked due to the high costs of hiring a lawyer.

“I wanted to give these consumers hope that someone can help them,” he said.

Mr Kong charges his clients 10 per cent of the amount they want to claim. He said he “didn’t earn a single cent” in the first four months after starting the business. He relied on the income of his wife.

“I’ve always told my clients I’m not a lawyer, I have no legal qualification, I’m just there to provide assistance,” said Mr Kong, an A-level holder. He added: “I’m not undermining Case’s position.”

Ms Hee, who found out about Solutionalization through a Google search, said she did not engage a lawyer as it would have been costly and she might not have got her money back. She said she did not speak to Case first because she found Mr Kong more approachable and efficient.

“He didn’t have fixed office hours so I could contact him any time. He even accompanied me to the gym to speak to the operations manager,” she added.

Case also uses negative publicity by posting blacklists of errant retailers. But such tactics may not always work, said its executive director Seah Seng Choon.

“Consumers should be prepared for possible responses from the errant companies… (and) to pay for the cost of defending themselves if their activities end up in a civil suit,” he said.

He advised aggrieved consumers to approach Case before dealing with the matter on their own.

This article was first published on Jul 03, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

Mr Ajmal Khan is 26. Known as AJ to friends, he is lanky, has an easy laugh, enjoys computer games and Chinese food, and works in e-commerce. He has also been living with HIV for the last six years.

He is one of the increasing number of gay Singaporeans afflicted with the infection. Last year, 232 homosexuals were diagnosed with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus). That is a 27.5 per cent jump from 2014 and the highest since 2009, when there were 139 new cases among gay men. There are around 7,140 residents in Singapore with HIV.

AJ is now among the few Singaporeans to go public with his HIV status, alongside the likes of Mr Paddy Chew, who died in 1999 at the age of 39, and Mr Avin Tan, 30.

It was by chance that he found out he was infected. In 2010, he and his five friends were at a sauna on the same night that volunteer outfit Action for Aids had stationed a mobile HIV testing clinic outside. So they decided to get tested.

AJ, having tested negative seven months before, was not worried.

“My friends were all flashing their negative test cards. But when mine came back, it was positive,” he told The Sunday Times in his first interview to any newspaper.

“We were all like, nah, it can’t be. So I repeated the test. The second one came back positive as well. Everybody just stopped talking; it was very quiet. I just went numb. A couple of my friends started to cry.”

A year before, he had come out as gay, after dropping out of polytechnic. “I was young and a bit naive. I had this invincibility mindset.”

He admitted he was reckless, but at the same time said there was no one he could turn to for advice.

Volunteer groups such as Action for Aids and Oogachaga have called for more targeted outreach efforts towards youth.

Asked why he did not use protection, AJ said: “I had to figure it out on my own. It is a very awkward topic to bring up, especially during one-time encounters. I just didn’t think that it would happen to me.”

Asked if he knew who had infected him, he replied: “It could have been anyone.”

It was only two years after his diagnosis that he finally told his mother about it. He blurted it out while they were watching TV.

For Madam Honey Bee – she said her name was a result of a mistake when her birth was registered – that was the worst day of her life.

” I thought he was joking. I asked: ‘Really?’ He said yes,” said the 55-year-old administrative assistant. “He went out and I broke down.”

AJ is the second of her three sons. She brought them up almost single- handedly after divorcing her husband when AJ was only three and her youngest child was an infant.

Not all her relatives are supportive. “But I’m tired of pleasing everyone; I don’t want to hide any more. If my son wants to (go public), I agree with it,” she said.

In 2013, AJ finally decided to start anti-retroviral therapy. He realised it meant a lifelong commitment – stopping the drugs could mean the virus coming back stronger.

According to Professor Roy Chan, president of Action for Aids, the infection is no longer a death sentence. “Anti-retroviral drugs have revolutionised the treatment and management of HIV,” he said. “With optimum anti-HIV treatment, a person with HIV infection can live as long as those without HIV.”

But patients must adhere strictly to the medication. Otherwise the virus could multiply and become more drug-resistant.

AJ now takes a cocktail of five pills daily. They cost $400 a month after subsidies. His current HIV viral count is undetectable, meaning the virus does not show up in blood tests.

People do react awkwardly when they learn of his HIV status, asking him if he is going to die, and if that is the reason he is so skinny. They also worry about sharing food with him even though HIV does not spread via the sharing of dishes.

AJ said his current employers are accepting, but hunting for a job was not easy. He got only one call back for every 20 applications he sent out “just because I said that I have a medical condition. I did not even say what it was”.

AJ hopes that by putting himself forward and giving the infection a human dimension, he can dispel such myths and stereotypes.

His mother said she has found comfort in people who tell her that AJ’s openness has given them strength and that they, too, have friends and family with HIV. She added that the diagnosis has made AJ a “much, much better boy”.

AJ said: ” The irony is that HIV has made me appreciate my life and family a lot more.”

This article was first published on Jul 03, 2016.
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After getting the keys to her studio apartment in Punggol in January, Madam Carol Khoo, 61, was looking forward to living in her new place. But it has since been flooded twice by sewage and she cannot imagine living there any longer.

“You don’t know when it will happen again,” said the part-time security officer, who wants a replacement unit from the Housing Board.

The first incident was in April, while she was on holiday in South Korea. She received a call from the HDB saying that water was seeping from her flat. “I couldn’t believe it. I asked, ‘Are you sure it’s my unit?'” she recalled.

When she returned five days later, she found her 45 sq m flat flooded with dirty water. The cause was later found to be plywood blocking pipes carrying toilet waste. This had caused sewage to overflow from the bathroom drain, she said.

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

Carol Khoo

Replying to queries, the HDB said renovation contractors are not allowed to put unwanted materials or debris into the waste pipes.

If a contractor is found to have done so, enforcement action – such as financial penalties and demerit points – can be taken against it, under HDB’s Registered Renovation Contractors Scheme.

In general, when the HDB receives reports of choked pipes, it investigates and parties found responsible will have to carry out rectification work and bear the costs.

“However, it is not always possible to identify the source of the debris as it could have moved down from higher floors,” it said.

Madam Khoo’s contractors cleaned up the April mess. Over the next few months, they replaced the skirting, re-grouted the tiles, repainted the walls and replaced the water-damaged built-in wardrobe.

But on June 23 it happened again. The mess was cleaned up the same day, thus causing less damage. However, for Madam Khoo, enough was enough: “I have a phobia of it happening again.”

She hopes the HDB will offer her a replacement unit, adding: “I am really desperate for time.”

She has already made plans to sell her old four-room flat, with the second appointment with the buyers being on July 19. The HDB said it was ” looking into the resident’s request for a replacement flat”.

In the latest incident, Madam Khoo said workers found cement and cloth blocking the pipes.

To prevent such incidents from happening in their block, all homeowners should do their part by engaging responsible contractors, said renovation firms.

“As a common practice, all contractors or interior-design firms will remind sub-contractors not to dispose of any hard objects in sewage pipes or floor-trap holes,” said Mr Dean Lim, director of Ciseern by Designer Furnishings and treasurer of the Singapore Renovation Contractors and Material Suppliers Association.

Mr Lim Kok Huat, who runs Giro General Construction, said such incidents happen when workers are not properly briefed to wipe cement or plaster off their tools before running them under water.

Mr Ron Foo, director of JSR Design & Renovation, said consumers should engage HDB-certified contractors and, if possible, those with further certifications such as a Building and Construction Authority licence or CaseTrust certification.

“Fly-by-night outfits will neither take the trouble to apply for such accreditation, nor will they be able to get it,” he said.

janiceh@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on July 3, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.