I REFER to the letters in my paper, 'School toilets dirty and smelly' (May 5), and 'Students avoiding dirty toilet' (May 7).

The Restroom Association (Singapore), or RAS, agrees with the concerns voiced by the writers.

As an advocate for clean public toilets and good toilet etiquette, we would be more than happy to collaborate with the authorities, such as the Ministry of Education, to spruce up all school toilets.

With the strong support of the National Environment Agency (NEA), we launched the Happy Toilet School Education Programme (HTSE) in 2005 to teach primary-school pupils and secondary-school students best practices with regard to toilet hygiene and etiquette.

More than 200 schools have participated in the programme.

Modelled after the HTSE, the Happy Toilet School Education Programme for Preschools was launched in 2007 to raise the hygiene and cleanliness standards of preschool toilets towards excellence and to reduce the spread of communicable diseases such as hand, foot and mouth disease among the preschool community.

More than 50 preschools have participated in this programme.

We recently collaborated with Initial Hygiene to launch 'model toilets' for five government schools located in the five districts (Central, North East, North West, South East and South West) of Singapore and one private school.

The model toilets will serve as exemplary toilets for other schools.

Initial Hygiene adopted the dirtiest male and female school toilets with the highest traffic for a makeover by performing a deep-clean hygiene treatment, surface-sanitation treatment and providing other fixtures such as hand dryers and soap dispensers.

RAS and Initial Hygiene will also conduct a hand-washing exercise for students, whereby they are constantly reminded to wash their hands the right way after using the toilet.

Three government schools - Yew Tee Primary, Zhangde Primary and Geylang Methodist Primary - along with the private DPS International School, have participated in the model-toilet programme, with two more schools from the North East and NorthWest districts to be adopted by Initial Hygiene.

We would like to invite like-minded people, such as the letter writers, to join us in fostering a gracious society.

The public can send e-mail messages to info@toilet.org.sg for volunteer opportunities, share their views online or download feedback forms from our website.

They can also write to mysay@toilet.org.sg or send an SMS t o 9770-LOOS (9770-5667).

Ms Tan Puay Hoon
President
Restroom Association (Singapore)

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