Town councils should reclaim responsibility for lift maintenance from contractors

Following the decentralisation of estate maintenance, it has been difficult for individual town councils to enjoy the Housing and Development Board’s (HDB) previous economies of scale in lift maintenance.

The HDB was able to employ a team of mechanical and electrical technicians to test lifts, ensure that lift contractors do robust preventive maintenance and troubleshoot problems. Now, town councils must depend on their contractors’ expertise in lift maintenance.

For obvious reasons, contractors do not share their expertise freely. This has eroded expertise and institutional memory at the national level, and without suitably qualified engineers employed full-time to supervise the contractors, the standard of preventive maintenance has fallen.

Hence the spate of lift accidents in HDB estates (“PAP town councils to set aside S$45m to boost lift safety”; Dec 6).

We have seen and suffered the ill effects from years of neglect in the preventive maintenance of our trains. After five years, our train operators are still struggling to put things right.

It therefore behoves town councils to reclaim responsibility from their lift contractors. Alternatively, the authorities should consider centralising the work and make all HDB lifts safe again.