05:55 AM Jan 14, 2010
by Neo Chai Chin
SINGAPORE - Her newly-renovated flat was featured in the MediaCorp reality television programme Renovaid just last week.
But on Monday, Ms Ng Kim Kee returned home to find her front door splashed with black paint.
Shaken, Ms Ng, 61, called her flat's interior designer. She also called the handphone number scribbled below "O$ P$" along the staircase.
The loan shark told her in Mandarin to cough up $1,000, or else she should await "funeral arrangements". Her protests that she had not borrowed money from loan sharks fell on deaf ears.
Ms Ng initially thought it was her tenants who had borrowed money, but found out from the loan shark that the borrower was likely to be the former flat-owner's son.
From Feb 1, it will become tougher for loan shark borrowers who use wrong or out-of-date addresses and evade tracking by moving into rented rooms.
Flat-owners who sub-let their rooms will have to register with the Housing Board within seven days.
But meanwhile, there are innocent victims like Ms Ng, who is unmarried, unemployed and walks with a limp due to stroke in 1994.
"I'm scared to go out now," she said in Mandarin. "I'm afraid someone will rush into the house when I open the gate."
Ms Ng bought her Boon Lay Avenue flat in 1999. It was picked for the Renovaid reality show, which gives needy or deserving HDB dwellers a complete free makeover.
Her two tenants are bus drivers who leave for work before dawn and return at irregular hours. All three had moved out of the flat for two weeks while it was being renovated, and moved back in mid-December.
"Maybe (the loan sharks) saw that the house was nicely renovated and so came to splash paint," said Ms Ng, who has little money to spare.
The $400 monthly rent she collects pays for groceries and her medical bills, as she suffers from for intestinal and heart problems, as well as osteoporosis.
She and one of her tenants have called the police who confirmed investigations were ongoing.
Copyright 2010 MediaCorp Pte Ltd | All Rights Reserved
Ms Ng Kim Kee's front door was splashed with black paint by a loanshark on Monday. by Neo Chai Chin
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