Calvin Cheng quotes Lee Kuan Yew in Facebook post, addresses cleanliness in hawker centres

Singapore — Former Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Calvin Cheng quoted Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew on the topic of cleaning up after oneself.

“Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they’re educated and they’re properly brought up, then you don’t have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It’s like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it’s got to leave, go outside to pee and defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts,” Mr Lee had said.

He said this with regards to cementing Singapore’s standing as a First World country. Mr Lee established that building the infrastructure was not the difficult part, but rather convincing people to modify their habits so they behaved more like citizens belonging in a First World country.

Mr Cheng expressed his disappointment that decades later after Mr Lee’s quote, Singaporeans have to be faced with the threat of fines to take initiative and return their own trays and clean up after they dine outside at hawker centres. He ends the post by calling such behaviour shameful.

A netizen suggested implementing other forms of punishment such as Corrective Work Order in order to deter people from not clearing their trays when dining outside.

Some lamented the fact that Singapore had to resort to taking legal action.

Some netizens also expressed that it was a disappointment that attempting to educate the public did not work which led to the government enforcing new laws to take legal action against those who did not clean up after themselves. 

However, some disagreed with Mr Cheng’s last statement and said that the new initiative should not be a shameful one. They interpreted it as a course of action that would help to improve Singaporeans’ habits and subsequently, environment and well beings.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) announced on May 14 that enforcement action will be taken against diners at hawker centres who do not clear up their trays, cutlery, and litter on their tables from Sep 1.

First-time offenders will receive a warning letter while second-time offenders will need to pay a fine of S$300. Subsequent offenders may face court fines instead.

You Zi Xuan is an intern at The Independent SG. 

/TISG