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Earlier this week my neighbor started renovation. Due to an unpleasant experience a few months ago with this exact same unit I made it a point to take a look at the HDB permit. Sure enough, no renovation work is allowed on Saturday, Sunday and Public Holiday. The permit is valid till 5th August. Alas, today (Saturday!) I was woken up at 9+ in the morning by knocking and machinery work. Thinking that maybe it would be a quick job I patiently waited for it to finish so I could fall back to sleep. Finally called HDB at 11.30am to lodge a complaint. There was just no use waiting. Clearly they were not going to cease any time soon. I was routed to EMS to make a report since HDB is closed during weekends. The officer I spoke to promised to get in touch with the contractor regarding them flouting the rule. I also messaged my friend to update him on the situation because the night before I was telling him that I was looking forward to sleeping in today after functioning on a daily average of 3 hours sleep for the past week due to the noise. He offered to follow up with the calls if necessary. The noise continued incessantly except for twice when the workers had a break. My friend made at least 5 calls in the next 6-7 hours and every time he was promised that an officer would come to check. You would think the officer was sent from somewhere in Malaysia? Or maybe HDB does not reimburse transport allowance to their employees so they have to walk? In any case, nothing was done at all for those agonizing hours when I was lying in bed like a zombie with a pounding headache! All that knocking and eeeeeee....eeeeeeee from the machine stopped only at 7pm! And to think that renovation has to stop at 6pm even on weekdays! I have heard many cases of NATO from government agencies over the years. Seriously, after my experience of countless empty promises today I must say that they are unfortunately very true! As for the reason why I paid attention to the permit this time is because this is actually the SECOND renovation in the past 6 months! Some time after Chinese New Year my nightmare began. Since renovations are nothing to be alarmed about I just tried to bear with it, even though I sleep in the morning. After about a month there were still stacks and stacks of cement in the corridor so I told myself to rough it out a bit more. By about 1.5-2 months I could not stand the nuisance any more (no respite during weekends also) so my friend and I went to talk with the owner. What shocked us was that he denied about the renovation even though we saw a worker carrying a bucket of tools emerging from the bedroom behind him. There was also another bucket lying on the floor in the living room. When we pointed them out to him he relented and promised to tell his workers to be aware of the noise level. However, there was no improvement and since there was no HDB permit I wrote to Town Council instead. TC "taichi" the case to HDB and I dropped it as there was no permit, which after so long I presumed was expired and taken down. Barely 3 months have passed when I have to suffer again. I can tolerate the weekday noise if I have to. But I will absolutely not stand it when I am entitled to some peace and quiet during weekends! What is the use of HDB issuing permits when they will ignore complaints when irresponsible contractors flout the rules? May as well save some trees! Who knows how long I have to grin and bear it this time? The previous renovation took about 2 months and I was severely sleep-deprived. But hey... I survived the god-awful, bloody frustrating knocking and knocking and knocking but I do not want to go through it again! Especially when they have no right to do a single knocking on weekends! Below is the offending unit #12-452 in Blk 824 Jurong West Street 81. (photo taken in April when we popped by to talk to the owner) Totally irresponsible contractor! Totally incompetent HDB! PS: Not only have both renovations affected my quality of life and well-being, the wall tiles in my unit have sustained huge crack lines from ceiling to floor in various places as well!