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Tear your hair out
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Sun, Jan 06, 2008
The Straits Times
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A | READER who has had it with people who drop trash has a startlingly original solution. He would have habitual litterbugs punished by being placed at the back of the queue when applying for must-have assets such as HDB flats, university or polytechnic places and COEs for cars. The reader, Mr Toh Joo Khai (Straits Times Forum, Jan 3), would also have them given low priority should they apply for civil service jobs. Were things so simple. Even a no-nonsense government could not take liberties with individual and constitutional rights. But the reader's depth of feeling is well demonstrated. He has company. Many Singaporeans who make a virtue of showing civic pride in their city, and have respect for the living environment, despair over what more could be done to stop littering in its tracks. Everybody would know by now that it would look as if laws against littering do not apply outside of the Central Business District. Food centres and coffee shops in HDB towns are absolute horrors. Common spaces in HDB precincts would be silver medallists.
Policymakers and the National Environment Agency know they have hit a wall when young persons (students and working people) and educated families (to judge from their chatter) litter without a care. What have the years of campaigns taught? Last year a record 19,252 people were booked up till November, three times as many as in 2006. Corrective Work Orders and fines hold no terrors any more. We wonder whether hiring a private company to catch offenders can help much. Arguments, even fights, could break out when these plainclothes enforcers book offenders. If being spotlessly clean is a matter of cultural conditioning and attitude, Singapore has a way to go. People must hate dirt with a passion. It would offend their sensibilities. The bright young minds who think up policy options in the ministries should be given this assignment on a clean slate - marked 'must work'.
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