“Neighbour from hell” has been smoking at resident’s front door for past 2 years despite NEA warning

SINGAPORE: An angered resident from Punggol took to Facebook to express her frustration about her neighbour, who has been smoking outside her flat for the past two years. Fang Fang, a resident of 406C Northshore Drive, took a video of her neighbour through the peephole of her door, who can be seen smoking outside her front door.

“This neighbour from hell will not stop smoking at my front door corridor for coming to 2 years. Causes my whole unit with cigarette smells even though the NEA officer had come to advise him many times,” Fang Fang wrote in her Facebook post.

Under the NEA’s Smoking (Prohibition in Certain Places) Act, smoking is not allowed if you are within a building, including the common corridor, lifts, lobby, void deck, and stairwell of any residential building. You are only allowed to smoke inside your own house.

“The worst is he will throw his burning cigarettes downstairs from level 13,” she added, exposing that the man even litters from above.

Singapore is very strict in its littering laws and has a strong anti-littering enforcement regime. In 2020, NEA issued approximately 19,000 tickets for littering offences. According to the Environmental Public Health Act (EPHA), any person found littering is liable to a court fine of up to $2,000 for the first offence, $4,000 for the second and $10,000 for the third and subsequent convictions. The court may also impose Corrective Work Order (CWO).

In 2021, a Singaporean man who faced his eighth conviction for littering was fined $3,600 and sentenced to 12 hours of CWO for throwing a cigarette butt in public. He would have been liable to serve ten days’ imprisonment by default if he did not pay the fine.

The Independent Singapore has reached out to the resident and NEA for comment but is yet to receive a response.