I sympathised with her predicament. But I personally felt that her town council has done the right thing.

Aesthetics is a small part of the whole problem. The bugbear is the obstruction that it will cause if residents are allowed to dry their laundry along the common corridors.

Bamboo poles and their stands, clothes lines, etc, will be left along the common corridors before laundry are laid out and after they collected. Falling bamboo poles and their stands may cause injuries to young children walking or playing along the corridors.

I would not want to imagine how a common corridor will look like if every resident is allowed unfettered use of it to dry their laundry.

The common corridors are designed for ease of the residents to move around during normal times. A clear common corridor free of obstruction will be of paramount importance during emergencies, such as a fire outbreak.

The recent Hougang fire which claimed the lives of a brother and his sister due to the corridor being cluttered up by shopkeepers bore testimony to its importance to be obstruction-free. The incident had led to a slew of enforcement actions against shopkeepers which is evident during this Chinese New Year. It has brought back some sanity along the common passageways fronting shops.

I hope the towns councils will continue to take action to ensure that common corridors are not cluttered up and continue to be 'common'.

Her other complaint of small three-room flats being occupied by huge groups of foreign workers has highlighted another problem - overcrowding.

I wonder how the one (or two water closets) in the flats is adequate to cater for such huge groups. Are they using spittoons to do their business in the morning? Or are they defecating onto newspapers in the rooms?

It may lead to indiscriminate urinating and defecating in and around the vicinity, especially in the morning when everyone is rushing to go to work.

It may also lead to an outbreak of infectious diseases typical with overcrowded housing conditions. Perhaps the relevant authorities should look into this matter urgently,

Soh Ah Yuen