Singapore's cleanliness obsession
Since the outbreak of SARS in 2003, personal and environmental hygiene has become an even more serious issue in an already cleanliness-conscious Singapore. The country, long-known for its tough penalties on littering, chewing gum and spitting in public, is now getting tougher on public toilet contractors and food stall owners. This is the last in a series of five articles prepared by The Jakarta Post's Damar Harsanto who took a look at the city-state's most recent sanitation drive following his visit to the country at the invitation of Far East Organization Ltd.
"Sorry, sir, just wait a minute. I'm still cleaning the toilet," a woman cleaner in her 50s at the Harbour Front Mass Rapid Transit Station, told The Jakarta Post, whose representative was waiting to use the toilet.
A notice board on the men's room door notified would-be users about the cleaning times, four sessions a day.
The free public toilets also have a notice with the cell phone number to call a "Mr. Latiff" -- but it's not for a good time. Latiff is the station employee in charge of cleanliness, who customers can contact with their comments about the loos -- something completely foreign to Jakarta's smelly pay-per-loo public restrooms where many people wishing to spend a penny have to do just that, forking out between Rp 500 and Rp 2,000.
In Singapore, unlike Jakarta, regulations exist and they are followed; they also keep the cleaners busy. An advisory to public toilet proprietors provided by the National Environment Agency requires restrooms at small business premises to be cleaned at least once a day, loos in condominiums twice, and four times during weekends.
Receptacles around street-stalls, meanwhile, require cleaning every 30 minutes during peak hours. With an estimated 40,000 public toilets in the city, that is a lot of work, and 10,000 cleaners are employed in the city each day.
Keeping eating places hygienic is another of the government's main battlegrounds.
The Post observed that most food centers or hawker stalls in the central city were clean and tidy -- the Newton Food Center near the Newton MRT station and the Harbor Front Food Center the obvious stand-outs.
Most cooks were seen also regularly donning aprons and plastic gloves when preparing food.
The National Environment Agency requires cooks to keep their fingernails short, avoid sneezing or coughing near food, and advises against any hand contact with the eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair or skin when handling food. Sick kitchen staff are a complete no-no.
The concern for environmental and personal hygienic reached new heights in Singapore the aftermath of the SARS outbreak, which killed 31 residents during the first three months and hit tourism hard.
To stop such an outbreak from occurring again, the government is focussing its campaign on the grubby Singaporeans -- the 3 to 5 percent of the 4.2 million population it estimates whose lax personal or public hygiene puts the rest of the island at risk.
The government says that between 120,000 and 200,000 Singaporeans regularly despoil their environment; throwing things out of apartment windows, littering, expectorating on the street and even urinating in lifts or stairways.
The government believes that some 3 to 5 percent of the city state's population of 4.2 million do not observe good personal hygiene nor cleanliness in public places. This puts the health of the entire population at risk.
To clean up after the 120,000 to 200,000 Singaporeans who are said to have such bad habits as throwing rubbish out of their apartment windows, littering in public places or spitting or urinating in lifts or stairways, the government employs a battalion of about 10,000 cleaners, both in the public and private sectors, every day.