Marine Parade-Braddell Heights rolls out own indicators for estate cleanliness, pest management

SINGAPORE - Marine Parade-Braddell Heights town council has honed in on critical problem areas and rolled out its own performance indicators aimed at improving estate conditions by drawing on day-to-day feedback from residents and other data points.

Areas such as estate cleanliness, pest management and fire safety now have measurable targets, said the town council’s chairwoman Ms Tin Pei Ling on May 22.

But the town council is also looking to do more for residents by introducing innovations such as autonomous robots to clean block floors, and QR code stickers on bins.

“We put together a mini dashboard so that we can look at how we have fared over time, and this helps us to identify what are the more critical areas that we need to zoom in on and target our efforts,” said Ms Tin during a presentation to media on the town council’s efforts in the past year.

The town council spans six divisions, namely Braddell Heights, Geylang Serai, Kembangan, Marine Parade, MacPherson and Mountbatten.

Each division reviews the numbers to pinpoint the areas or blocks that require greater attention from the town council, works on improving those areas, and then moves on to the next one, she added.

Data is collected from residents’ e-mails, calls and concerns raised via the OneService app, as well as routine inspections and ⁠operations reports that are already part of the town council’s governance and audit structures.

These focused efforts and monitoring have yielded results.

In the six months spanning October 2025 to March 2026, feedback concerning rodents and pigeons dropped 17 per cent and 16 per cent respectively. Feedback on cleanliness dipped 10 per cent, while that on obstruction and clutter cases fell 11 per cent.

While rodent issues are not unique to Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC, Ms Tin noted that Braddell Heights and MacPherson had higher cases of pest sightings, and the town council subsequently put in place extra pest control measures.

In addition to switching to a new pest control contractor, the town council has stepped up engagements with hawkers and merchants selling food, as rodent behaviour has evolved, she said. Instead of just inhabiting burrows, rodents now hide in various locations, and can venture farther from food sources.

“It’s not just (about) catching or trying to bait rodents, but also working with the broader community to educate them, and to seek their support and to try to attack it at source,” she added.

In future, regular cleaning efforts by the town council could also be complemented by a cleaning robot that is integrated with HDB block’s lift systems – mirroring technology that has already been rolled out in hospitals, old folks’ homes and hotels.

To supplement cleaners on-site, such a robot is being trialled at a block in Eunos Road from May 22 to improve the estate’s cleaning consistency.

The robot, designed to clean each of the 19 levels in Block 37C Eunos Road 2 within 20 minutes, is programmed to cover every floor at least once a day. Equipped with sensors, it is able to navigate around obstacles, or wait for them to move out of the way.

The town council said it will assess residents’ feedback, how efficiently the robots perform and technical requirements before wider deployment in other estates.

More immediately, it has already rolled out a QR code reporting system for residents in Braddell Heights, Eunos Court and Marine Terrace. They can now easily report full rubbish bins to the estate cleaners by scanning the QR code displayed on them.

The town council’s assistant property manager Mr Abdul Rauf developed the system after noticing that residents sometimes faced overflowing bins during long weekends.

Instead of having to go through multiple steps to report cleanliness issues, this low-cost pilot can be implemented quickly and more widely, he said.

“It may seem like a small change, but making reporting simpler helps us respond faster and keep the estate cleaner for residents,” he added.

Each town council’s management – mainly their corporate governance – is audited annually by the Ministry of National Development through a points system.

MP for the Braddell Heights ward Seah Kian Peng noted that the new set of performance indicators is something that Marine Parade-Braddell Heights town council proactively implemented to set a baseline and hold itself and its staff accountable.

However, residents too, need to play their part, said Mr Seah.

“No amount of cleaning, no matter how much or how frequently (we) do it or how many people employ, it takes always takes two hands to clap... If we all take ownership in our own ways, I think we can all make our home environment a lot better,” he added.