2 flat owners fined $700 each for high-rise littering under presumption of guilt clause

SINGAPORE - Two HDB flat owners have been fined by the State Courts for littering from their respective high-rise units, after they were unable to prove within a given time that they were not responsible for the offence.

The cases of a 63-year-old man and a 42-year-old woman are the first two convictions for high-rise littering under the presumption clause, said the National Environment Agency (NEA) on July 27.

The man was fined $700 on June 11 for throwing an object out of a toilet window from his unit in Bedok North Street 2.

The woman was fined the same amount on June 25 for throwing items such as food waste and unknown liquid out of the kitchen window of her Ang Mo Kio Street 52 unit.

The presumption clause came into effect on July 1, 2023, to prevent registered owners and tenants of Housing Board flats from throwing objects from their units.

The clause - first announced in Parliament on Jan 9, 2023 - is applied only when it is proven in any proceedings that littering from a residential flat has been committed, according to the agency.

The presumption can be retracted only if the owner or tenant can prove that they were not in the flat at the time of the offence, or prove that the act was committed by someone else residing in the flat.

NEA's surveillance cameras caught the two acts after they were installed due to several reports of high-rise littering.

The agency noted that the man and woman are first-time offenders of high-rise littering.

From 2021 to 2023, NEA investigated about 29,000 high-rise littering feedback reports.

Over the same period, the agency deployed an average of 2,500 cameras each year and conducted about 1,100 enforcement actions yearly on average against those who were caught for high-rise littering.

There were about 1,500 such enforcement actions taken in 2021, around 1,100 in 2022 and about 700 in 2023.

Those found guilty of littering from a residential flat face fines of up to $2,000 for their first conviction, $4,000 for their second one, and $10,000 for third and subsequent convictions.

They could also be made to undergo a Corrective Work Order, cleaning public areas for up to 12 hours.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.