http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/tin-pei-ling-goes-after-resident-who-throws-sanitary-pad
The following article had apparently attracted some interest and views. I would like to share the context of what happened as well as my own thoughts on this matter.
First, it was a confluence of events that led me to “discover” the pad. I certainly was not on stakeout! On that day, two juveniles had attacked an elderly uncle, and I had rushed on site to check on the situation and to offer help (uncle was later sent to a hospital and thankfully, has now recovered). That was when I noticed the soiled sanitary pad lying on the floor. Because of the structure of the particular block, the culprit has to come from one of the 7 units just above the spot it landed on. As this was not the first of such incident at this particular block and the pad was relatively “fresh”, my RC manager, Constituency Director and I decided to visit the 7 units. The visit was in part to determine who the culprit was, but it was also to send a signal that we take such high-rise littering seriously. I understand that one resident whom I visited later informed the reporter while he/she was being interviewed about the assault case, so Shin Min Daily News did a piece on it as well.
I believe that such inconsiderate acts of high rise littering are committed by only a handful of “black sheep” among us. But this small group of inconsiderate individuals can cause and has caused much grief to other residents. Acting against high-rise littering, or just littering, is not a “glamorous” part of the job, but it is certainly important. It requires constant supervision, and the preparedness to confront the perpetrators.
The way I see it: if I as the MP of the area see this and turn a blind eye, then how can I expect the various groups of people tackling the littering challenge – NEA, town council and local grassroots volunteers – to work hard on this. Those who have confronted people who litter will know that it is unpleasant.
I am not saying that MPs should do everything ourselves or to do it all the time, that would be unrealistic. We have good people around to do the job but once in a while, it is not a bad idea to gain first-hand experience.
Finally, many have highlighted public education as the key to sustaining a clean and green environment – to a large extent, a civilised society as well. Indeed, I agree with this and we have a series of initiatives carried out in the community. As part of an overall drive to build that awareness and culture, we have distributed flyers to households, put up posters, banners and even billboards. We have appointed litter-free ambassadors who spearhead initiatives, conduct roadshows and reach out to residents, shop owners and even general members of the public who happen to be around. We had also tried out new ideas such as having a monthly game-cum-campaign to ask residents to guess where a particular clean-and-green message board is located, to try and pique the interest of residents and raise awareness.
We should work towards a clean Singapore, not a cleaned Singapore. All of us should take a stand to say NO to littering and dirtying common spaces, say that they are not right and not acceptable. But often times, just saying it is not good enough, we need to act on it too.