NEA Central Regional Office and Central Singapore CDC invited 3 representatives from Mayflower Secondary School to attend the 6th Central Singapore Public Health Forum 2010 held on Saturday, 26 June 2010 from 1.30pm to 4.30pm.













It was held at the Singapore Islamic Hub, 273 Braddell Road Singapore 579702. The Guest of Honour was Mr Heng Chee How (Minister of State, Prime Minister's Office) and the host was Mr Zainudin Nordin, Mayor for Central Singapore District








Our students learned some interesting facts about littering in Singapore from attending this forum.








Here are their reflections.

Ng Lin Jie

After attending 6th Singapore Public Health Forum, I felt that something must seriously be done to ensure Singapore's reputation of being a clean and green city.

Through this forum, I discovered that 4 out of 10 people in Singapore litter. This is a serious problem as the figure shows that 40% of people in Singapore litter which means that 2 million out of the 5 million living in Singapore litter.

With this statistic, we Singaporean need reflect seriously as this suggest that if we do not have any cleaners, we would be living in the condition worse than that of a squatters or a slum.

Just imagine Orchard Road being dirty. Would anyone still like to shop there?

My friends also litter. They said that it is the cleaner’s job is to clean, so by littering, they are helping the cleaners to keep their jobs.

But do they know that $30million are spend every year to keep Singapore litter-free?

Imagine if we do not hire these cleaners for 10 years, we would have had $300million by now. We could have spend these on heath care or education, which to me are more important.

I learned in this forum that there are more Singaporean litter-bugs than foreigner litter-bugs which means that Singapore cannot entirely blame the foreigners for littering in our city.

We should learn to stop littering as hiring cleaners is only a short term solution. When India become more develop, the workers would be unwilling to sweep the floor for us, just like how Singaporean are unwilling to sweep the floor even in our own country.

Therefore when the time come, we can only depend on our self. As Singaporeans and as human beings, we should play a part in keeping our environment clean as we must realize that we are not the only species that are living in this world. The other species did their part by not littering, with the exception of letting out some poo here and there. Every living thing in this world deserves to live in a clean environment, so we should also play a part in letting this happen.

Jeremiah Chan Kok Li

In order to solve our littering problem, we must first find the source of it before we can rectify the problem.

One of the problems identified is the failure of the parents to instill good habits into their children’s life for example throwing your litter in designated rubbish bins. This is probably because most of our parents born in the 60’s era were brought up with the mentality that it is alright to dispose their rubbish anywhere they like. At the same time, it may not be a culture in some foreign countries to dispose their rubbish properly. As the saying goes “Like father like son”, the children follow after the footstep of their parents, be it good or bad.

Therefore, to rectify this problem, we must first educate the public about the serious health hazards that can be brought about by improper disposal of rubbish and the serious consequences that follow after it in order to maintain a clean and green Singapore.

Dennis Tan

I found today event was very entertaining and enriching. Today's presentation focused on Anti-Littering. It aim was to prevent littering in public places by adding more bins employing more cleaners to clear the litter. However, the problem still persist, therefore, today a new Anti-Littering campaign called "Do your part don't be a litter bug" was launched.

NEA’s target is to Increase more bins and improve the design of bins. For example, ash tray have been incorporated into the design of the bin as smokers have a hard time finding ash trays in various places to throw and so they litter out of inconvenience.

In addition, an even stricter enforcement will be implemented such as the corrective work order and targeted education so as to educated younger generations about the problem with littering.

There was a short debate session involving students from AJC and the theme was "Singapore is clean because of its army of cleaners".

From this event, I feel that the education of the young generations is also vital in changing the mindsets of our young citizens so that they do not become litter bug.