What's Going On Here?

About 3 days ago, as I was walking back home, I noticed 2 blue stained stairs at the HDB walkup section of the Tiong Bahru Estate.

Initially, I thought someone had spilt paint all over the stairs.

After I walked all the way up to level four to investigate, I knew it wasn’t an accident anymore.

"Maybe someone was just fedup with the stairs and wanted to beautify it", I thought to myself.

And since those residents living at that 2 affected stacks did not complain about that ugly blue stains, I should just mind my own business.

But as I was walking around the estate today, what I saw made my heart sank as I immediately knew that those blue stains were not that innocent mistakes after all.

It seems that the Tanjong Pagar town council is repainting all the stairs at the post war section of Tiong Bahru!

The finished product has erased (maybe covered up is a more appropriate word) all those lines and imperfection of these beautiful cement stairs.

The newly painted stairs looked so smooth and it does feels a lot more slippery.

And the dirt on the floor are magnified a lot more....especially those stairs landings that have plants around them.

Do we really need to spend money on this?

It is strange because no budget* was allocated to replace those rusted bamboo pole holders but there are budgets allocated to "uglified" these stairs.

I wonder what other unnecessary things our town council will spend on next.

*(I was asked by the NEA to ask HDB to replace my unused bamboo pole holder as it had rusted to a point where I cannot cover it and rain water might be collected in it. And HDB told me to wait as they will replace it during the repainting exercise. I called back to check on the progress and was told that they will not be doing it as they have no more budget!)