A few floors down, workers scurry about setting up partition walls at the void decks ahead of a series of dialogue sessions residents will be having with government officers.
Now, they are hoping to stay neighbours when they move to the replacement flats at Woodlands Street 13 come 2028.“If we have the choice, we’ll stick together as neighbours again. It’s just that I’m not sure whether we’ll be able to choose the units we want.” In 1981, she moved into a flat for the first time with her husband and her three-year-old child on the seventh storey of Block 217 Marsiling Crescent.
The men mostly held various odd jobs while the women stayed home to care for their children or took on sewing and laundering jobs. “Back in the kampung, I could just walk out the door and climb up the hill to pick rambutans to eat. After moving to a HDB flat, there’s no space,” she said.None could tell how many of their former kampung neighbours were still living in the Marsiling Crescent and Marsiling Lane estate.