FOR 15 minutes on Saturday, a construction worker dangled precariously from a gondola seven storeys up when one of the cables holding it up went slack.

Rescuers from the Singapore Civil Defence Force worked above and below him to get him safely down Block 4, Sago Lane in Chinatown, where the worker was fixing windows as part of upgrading works.

One team pitched a ladder to reach him from the fourth floor concourse. They secured him to a rescue rope which was lowered by another team working out of an eighth floor apartment.

He was pulled into that flat through the kitchen window.

The China worker in his 30s who only wanted to be known as Mr Zhang, said he was fine.

'The cable didn't break, the gondola just tilted to one side. I stayed on it for a few minutes, then I was rescued,' he said.

Read the full story in tomorrow's edition of The Sunday Times.