Design of sheltered walkway at Bukit Batok questioned

By: Forever Vagabond
Last week, it was reported that a sheltered walkway at Block 116 Bukit Batok West Avenue 6 collapsed after the crane boom of a lorry crashed into it (https://theindependent.sg.sg/sheltered-walkway-collapsed-at-bukit-batok). A car parked nearby the walkway was badly damaged.
A Bukit Batok resident commented on his Facebook that the incident happened right in front of Bukit Batok Zone 1 RC and that the walkway was built about 6 months ago.
He also asked why the walkway could be toppled so easily when it was bolted to the ground.
Today, another Facebook user Ong Sooi Eng uploaded pictures of the construction of a sheltered walkway outside the Ministry of Manpower at Bendemeer Road, to show the design of the walkway foundation. The walkway is supposed to connect the bus stop outside MOM to the MOM building.


The picture shows that each of the walkway supporting columns is fastened to the ground by only 4 screws. Then, supposedly, a thin layer of concrete would be poured into the shallow pit at the base of the column to solidify the base.
Sooi Eng then questioned the flimsiness of such a design. He thinks that if the base of the columns is really solid, when disaster strikes, the whole walkway column together with the base cement block would be uprooted. Instead, what we see happened is this:

Contractor Unknown
The tender for the construction of sheltered walkways at Bukit Batok is handled by The Jurong-Clementi Town Council.
Unfortunately, JRTC only listed its tender results up till Feb 2016 (http://www.jrtc.org.sg/newsroom/tender-results).
Earlier tender results cannot be retrieved and hence, it’s not known who was the contractor responsible for constructing the sheltered walkway at Block 116 Bukit Batok West Avenue 6.