The National Environment Agency has said that the Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council (AHPETC) was simply deflecting the blame about the confusion regarding the cleaning of Block 538 Bedok North Market / Hawker Centre.
The confusion has been occurring since early this year when NEA emailed AHPETC telling them that the hawkers at block 538 would make the "necessary arrangements" for scaffolding for the cleaning exercise.
Following this, there were miscommunications about who was to foot the bill of certain cleaning expenses; whether it was the town council or hawkers themselves. In a press release on 1st June, the AHPETC clarified that no authorized TC staff told any hawker or anyone of any additional charges to be imposed for the cleaning.
After finally reaching a resolution last night, NEA issued a statement about who exactly was to blame for the failure to clean the ceiling of Blk 538 in March.
The AHPETC has pointed at the miscommunication between them and NEA for the hiccup:
"By way of email dated 7 Feb 2013, NEA informed the Town Council that “the Hawkers’ Association will make the necessary arrangements with their contractors on the scaffolding erection / dismantling during the spring cleaning period from 4-8 March 2013.” We leave it to the public to judge whether any reasonable person would take the sentence to refer merely to the provision of canvas rather than the erection / dismantling of scaffolding itself, as NEA now claims. The TC took NEA’s email in good faith and left the arrangement of the scaffolding in the hands of NEA and the hawkers’ association."
- AHPETC Press Release June 3rd
Regarding this, the NEA said in their statement last night that Hawkers are not responsible for the ceiling scaffolding and "this is a longstanding practice that AHPETC and its contractors should have understood perfectly".
The issues appear to have been resolved now following a meeting between the NEA and AHPETC yesterday, but the NEA appears not to be done with the blame-game.
Now that the issue is resolved, is this squabbling over 'who was to blame' still necessary? NEA seems to think so, as it released the statement just hours after it had resolved the issue with the Town Council.