By Tan May Ping and Ng Tze Yong

ON his last night at home, just before moving out of the flat where he has lived for more than 20 years, Mr Maswari Mohd looked more relieved than sad.

It was not hard to see why.

The place where the 25-year-old waiter spent his childhood is now little more than a ghost block.

In January 2003, Mr Maswari's block, Block 28, was one of four at Toa Payoh Lorong 5 and 6 which were chosen for the selective en-bloc redevelopment scheme (Sers).

Residents are compensated for their units based on the prevailing market price, and are given a 20 per cent discount on new flats allocated to them nearby.

Old friends and old neighbours started leaving one by one, from the 816 three-room flats in Blocks 28, 30, 32 and 33.

Every month, there are a few more padlocked doors and the estate grows a little more quiet.

Now, when Mr Maswari looks up the back of his block, there are almost no more laundry poles.

It's eerie to walk around the blocks.

You look down the long corridors, and you don't see a single slipper at a doorstep.

There are no television sets blaring from inside, no light at the windows.

Plastered on the doors are notices declaring 'state property - no trespassing', the type you normally see in fields.

Plastered to the doors, also, are streaks of red paint from frustrated loansharks.

The sad-looking blocks are a far cry from their glory days.

Toa Payoh was only the second new town to be built in Singapore when it was completed in 1970.

It stood as the proud showcase of a young nation moving its population from squatter settlements and kampungs into clean, affordable public housing.

Now, as these same residents move out again, life seems to have come full circle.

When the news broke, businesses here were the first to jump ship.

The 12 shops and a kopitiam at Block 30 started moving out about two years ago.

'That kopitiam was where people gathered. When it went, the neighbourhood went along with it,' said Mr Sim Keng Chye, a 64-year-old retiree.

Said Mr Maswari: 'Last time, you would see children roller-blading or skateboarding down the corridors. You could smell the cooking from downstairs.'

Now, at staircase landings all through the blocks, soft toys and massive wardrobes lie abandoned.

Fumed 30-year-old maintenance worker M Velu: 'These people... they leave everything here and then they run away.'

Downstairs, the letter boxes are overflowing with pamphlets.

The carpark is mostly empty but strangely, the wardens still come.

Among the last few residents remaining are 30-year-old Wong Xinbei and her family.

Like Mr Maswari, they cannot wait for their new flats to be ready for them.

The accounts manager, who is married with two children, bought the flat four years ago so that she could eventually move to one of five new blocks at Toa Payoh Central, where most of the residents are being resettled.

But it has been a long wait.

'It has been bad living here and I've been tolerating it. The place is dirty and hardly any maintenance has been done since it was selected for Sers,' she said.

Some residents will also be relocated to Toa Payoh Lorong 2 and Jalan Tenteram.

A Housing Board spokesman told The New Paper that although the site is currently zoned for residential use, the exact redevelopment schedule is still being reviewed.

Said retiree A H Goh, who is in her 60s and lives in a block that was not picked for Sers: 'Sometimes, I still bump into my old neighbours at the market.'

Amid the sadness, there is excitement.

Gushed Madam Goh: 'I've seen the new flats. They look very nice!'

This article was first published in The New Paper on June 11, 2008.