Yishun elderly residents forced up stairs for weeks as lift renovation cuts off entire floors

A lift renovation at a Yishun HDB block left residents on multiple floors without direct elevator access for over two weeks, forcing elderly residents to climb stairs and cross corridors just to reach the remaining two working lifts. The affected block, identified as Block B, has three elevators in total, but the closure of one since the 13th of the month created a cascading inconvenience: only residents on the sixth and eleventh floors could transfer directly to the other two lifts, while those on the third, fourth, eighth, and ninth floors were forced to walk two to three flights of stairs before they could even reach an elevator. A 75-year-old male resident told Shin Min Daily News that the daily stair climbing left him breathless, while a 70-year-old woman on the fourth floor reported knee pain severe enough to require medication, and said she had cut her daily outings from two or three trips to just one. Residents criticised the construction arrangements as poorly planned, arguing that the inconvenience could have been mitigated with better scheduling or phasing. Following the complaints, the town council responded and announced that the construction timeline would be shortened, with elevator service set to resume on the 28th of this month — earlier than the originally posted completion date of the 7th of next month.