“SOMEBODY IS SUFFERING”
By March last year, however, Mr Syed’s family had reached the end of their rope. They decided to turn to the “last resort” of filing a claim with the CDRT.
To do so, they had to prove a bonafide case against their neighbour, which meant sharing with the tribunal their dozens of audio recordings and pages of correspondence with authorities.
A neighbour dispute claim was then filed for a fee of S$150.
Claims are typically served within 14 days to the neighbour, who has another 14 days to respond or settle the matter.
If this doesn’t work out, parties will have to attend a pre-trial conference, followed by mediation or counselling, said Mr Razeen.
If matters are still unresolved by then, parties will have to attend a hearing where a court order is given.
The CDRT can grant various orders including an injunction for a neighbour to cease certain activities, or for a neighbour to apologise or pay for damages.
In Mr Syed’s case, the tribunal in August last year ordered the younger of his neighbours upstairs to not cause excessive noise including shouting and knocking; and to take all reasonable steps to ensure his elder brother also does not cause excessive noise.
Still, the noise continued for months, leaving Mr Syed pondering the even more nuclear option of applying for an exclusion order.
This temporarily bars people from staying in their homes. Since it was formed in 2015, the CDRT has issued just two exclusion orders – in December 2019 and January 2021.
An exclusion order “is intended to deal with the most serious cases”, MinLaw told CNA, and can be issued if the CDRT is satisfied that the person has failed to comply with the tribunal’s orders on two previous occasions.
Before making up his mind, Mr Syed asked the younger brother to go with him to a meet-the-people session in June this year.
“Tonight I go see MP, u want to come? Cannot like this day and night, shouting and knocking. People need rest, to go to work. Situation is getting from bad to worse,” Mr Syed texted.
There was no response.
At the meet-the-people session, a lawyer with the constituency team advised Mr Syed to go ahead with the application.
“I told them we are taking a court order, this court order is not very good because he will be evicted from the house and all that. Where is he going to live?” Mr Syed recounted.
“To me, it’s cruel. Somebody is suffering there … You want me to take action and make life more difficult for him?”
Mr Syed added: “Despite what he has done to me, I still want to help him. The thing keeps on happening, which I do not blame him for because he has mental problems, he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know.”
Mr Syed applied for an exclusion order the same month.
Stressing that it was a tough decision to make, he said: “I also don’t want people to think like ‘this fellow is helpless, you take legal action, you want to bully him’. I know people will think like that … But then how?
“We waited until so long. And we (didn’t) want to do it. We did it because it became worse and worse and worse … Something must be done.”
At a hearing, the judge asked Mr Syed if he wanted to proceed with the order against his neighbour. “Do you want him to be out of the house?”
Mr Syed replied: “I don’t want to, but I have no choice. I need to sleep … This is not one night, two nights. This is every night.”
At the next hearing on Sep 13, the younger brother was present, along with a mediator who sternly advised him to send his brother to a hospital for treatment.
The brothers disappeared the next day, and the house upstairs has been quiet since.
Concerned for their safety and whereabouts, Mr Syed tried reaching out to the younger brother as well as their social worker.
He believes they are either receiving treatment or have moved in with other family members.
CNA understands the brothers were admitted to the Institute of Mental Health after the September hearing, and one of them was discharged the next month.
The younger brother stopped by the unit once at the end of October, but Mr Syed has not seen him come home since.
The parties returned to court on Nov 16, where the younger brother was asked if he was confident enough about his elder sibling’s condition, to bring him back to their home in Tampines.
The younger man said he was not, and that he was monitoring his brother’s progress.
Until a pre-trial conference in December, the younger brother will be working with a court counsellor and social workers to find a long-term solution.
For now, with the clamour and racket of the last 30 years giving way to some semblance of calm and quiet, Mr Syed and his family are cautiously hopeful that their new reality endures.
“I was reading on my phone and I dropped it – because I fell asleep. Last time, cannot,” he chuckled.
“I feel much, much better. It’s very peaceful.
“Now, it’s like a real home.”
