Letter from Dr Tan Chek Wee
Today Online 23 Jun 09;
I have lived in a Housing and Development Board (HDB) estate all my life.
I am aware of the state of cleanliness, or rather the lack of it, in an HDB estate. I know the estate cleaners. I am in contact with the town council as I am part of the "cat management" team in my neighbourhood, who not only trap stray cats for sterilisation, but assist the property officers to look into complaints about cats.
The cleaners and the town council officers work very hard to keep the estate clean but it is an uphill task. The reason is simple. The majority of us, i.e. the residents, just do not care about our environment. We are only selfishly concerned with our own conveniences and can't even be bothered to walk even one metre to discard our rubbish into the garbage bin. We can not only boast of having the world's highest density of garbage bins, but also our "bochap" ("couldn't care less") and "boh hew" ("couldn't be bothered") attitude.
We have a well-established "complaining culture". As we become more educated, we are able to complain even more - not only through the usual channel of phone calls but also through emails, letters to the press, in Internet forums, etc. Some town council officers, in the belief that the speed at which a complaint is "resolved" equals efficiency, will resort to knee-jerk but ineffective solutions.
One clear example is the poisoning of pigeons when a complaint is received about a flock that gathers at foot of a block of HDB flats because some "bored" residents have thrown food down. It requires harder work to identify the culprit and to educate residents in general about refraining from such irresponsible deeds.
Repeated calls for residents to be engaged in the management of the estate is met with poor response. One reason could be that town council officers are so used to complaints as a basis to work from, that they do not know how to respond to residents who wish to be engaged in resolving communal issues.
One example being issues about cats. I am in the network of residents involved in "cat management", where residents volunteer their effort, time and money to reduce the stray cat population through sterilisation.
I have heard of "bad" treatment of some "cat caregivers" by some town council officers who view their effort as obstacles to resolving a complaint quickly - especially if the complainant is a "big shot" or has been "aggressive" by culling the cats in the vicinity of the complaint. Culling of cats is another knee-jerk solution.
My worry about recent calls to assess town councils will result in more "knee jerk" solutions being applied to resolve as many complaints as possible, and as quickly as possible. Never mind if the problems keep recurring.
Until we can treat the world as our home, and not just care about our physical homes, and develop a sense of respect for our environment and all other creatures that share it, our selfishness is only to be blamed for our poor state of hygiene.
