Straits Times Forum 28 Jan 10;
CLEAN and green Singapore? Certainly not for some inhabitants as shown in Monday's report, 'Litterbugs turn public parks into rubbish dumps'.
Indeed, anti-littering campaigns held over the years have had little effect on litterbugs. Like all bugs, they have grown more resistant to treatment. Fines, unless they break the banks, no longer work as a deterrent. I suggest three ways to treat this public menace.
- First, the authorities should just leave the litter alone. Instead of sending out cleaners to clean parks and beaches every day, clean them once a month. These places are supposed to be the great outdoors anyway, so why clean them? Let the litter be. Eventually, if litterbugs persist in their bad and ungracious habits, there will be enough trash to make even them uncomfortable.
- Alternatively, set a limit to the amount of litter collected in a month. When the limit is reached, close the park or beach concerned for an indefinite period. Litterbugs need to be inconvenienced to learn.
- Finally, the authorities could consider making litterbugs cleaners in schools or institutions of higher learning, homes for the aged or pubic hospitals. Let them be cleaners for a week and discharge them only when they have done a good job. This way, there will be no need to spend more to hire cleaners, to clean up after people who should be punished. Best of all, litterbugs will learn that it is better to spend a little more time to walk to the trash bin than spend a week or more cleaning public buildings.
Grace Chua (Mdm)
