CLOSE to 1,000 people were stuck outside their workplace in Aljunied on Monday morning when they were caught between the building's owner and its quarrel with the former anchor tenant.

A snaking queue formed around the seven-storey Olivine Building along Joo Seng Road as workers arriving for their shifts had to sign in their personal and company particulars before they were allowed in.

Six security guards, including two armed auxiliary officers, kept watch during the two-hour process.

'It looked like a coup d'etat,' said an operations executive who declined to be named.

The turn of events came about when the the landlord, a public-listed real estate investment trust (Reit), took over the building on Sunday morning, after booting out the anchor tenant, Olivine Magnetics.

Olivine Magnetics, a home-grown company which sold the building to the Cambridge Industrial Trust (CIT) in 2006, is said to have owed five months rent amounting to about $448,000.

Its chief executive officer Steven Ong said that the company had refused to pay rent because CIT had failed to repair and maintain the 15-year-old building as agreed when he sold it.

Under the agreement, Olivine Magnetics had the top two floors and sub-let the remaining space to 17 other tenants.

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.