FILTHY CONDITION OF TOILET FACILITIES IN COFFEE SHOPS,EATING HOUSES, RESTAURANTS AND PUBLIC PLACES

Mr Lim Cheng Lock (River Valley): Mr Speaker, Sir, the subject matter I propose to raise today on the Motion for the Adjournment is not a pleasant one. But, nevertheless, it is a matter and a problem which most people face and suffer daily. I refer to the filthy and unhygienic conditions of the toilet facilities in most of the Republic's coffee shops, eating houses, restaurants and public conveniences which have been allowed to continue under such unhealthy conditions for such a long time. Mr Speaker, Sir, this will certainly not attract tourism. Are we to remain complacent and tolerate such filthy and unhygienic conditions indefinitely? It is acknowledged that we have one of the best standards of health in this part of the world. Are we not going to maintain and improve this standard? Toilet facilities are one of the essential items which is being used daily. Yet most coffee shops, eating houses and restaurant owners pay very little concern for their cleanliness. In quite a number of these establishments, the water closets have been deliberately jammed and spoilt in order to save water expenses. I need not describe the untidiness of the water closets in these public places. Members will undoubtedly have faced the situation. In quite a number of these public places, food is also being prepared for consumption adjacent to these filthy lavatories. So far the Public Health Division has had no effective control of this problem. It is appreciated that effective control may be difficult because it would need a large force to police these establishments. But are they not operating on licences issued by the Health Ministry under regulations with which they would have to comply? There is now a campaign to keep Singapore clean. We want to make Singapore a clean, fragrant and attractive garden city. A poster competition is being organised in conjunction with the campaign. Enormous sums of State money are being spent to level off roadside ways, plant trees and flowers to make the Republic attractive.

As from next year we were told that a $5 fine will be imposed on a householder not in possession of a dustbin. There will also be a campaign to select the cleanest, best-kept and organised community centre in the Republic.

Mr Speaker, Sir, health education and effective control is needed to remedy this problem. So long as filthy and unhygienic conditions of toilet facilities in coffee shops, eating houses and restaurants are permitted to continue, it is incompatible with the efforts now being pursued to make Singapore a clean garden city.

6.25 p.m.

The Minister for Health (Mr Yong Nyuk Lin): Mr Speaker, Sir, I am grateful to the Member for River Valley for raising this subject for debate and drawing attention to what he has called "the filthy conditions of toilet facilities" in licensed premises selling coffee, eating houses and restaurants besides public places. He has, however, been fair to indicate that it is acknowledged that we do have a fairly high standard of health in this country as compared with that of neighbouring territories - not that we should be satisfied and complacent with that statement, because we can always improve on present standards to bring them to a higher level.

I must, however, indicate certain difficulties which are being encountered in the Ministry of Health. Perhaps much more can be done and a higher standard of cleanliness can be maintained in Singapore if the social habits of our people are of a high order. I think it is well known that, unfortunately, such a standard of social behaviour is certainly lacking amongst large sections of the public. Take, for example, public places like parks, the Esplanade and places where people congregate together. There is a very shocking lack of dustbins in such places. We do not even see a single dustbin around. Nowhere else in the world does such a situation exist. This means that the thousands who do go to these places for entertainment are liter ally being invited to throw their litter and rubbish on the ground and make it a filthy place. If it is an accepted form of behaviour just to throw litter around, then when they go to the water closet, especially if it is a public water closet, they just do their business anywhere and care nothing about it. It is very difficult indeed to get public health inspectors prowling around parks to catch people throwing litter, or prowling near water closets to make sure that the man who has gone in to do his business will go on to do the needful.

I would say, Sir, that it may take some time to educate our population to behave themselves. Perhaps we will have to start off with our children in schools and teach them to have better health habits - habits of personal hygiene and good habits of not throwing litter around. Of course, we should have more litter bins, and this is going to be done very soon. We shall be placing at least 2,500 litter bins in bus shelters and in parks. That is the first lesson. We cannot provide 20,000 litter bins because the expenditure involved will be considerable. But we are making a start and it is very likely that very soon we will be able to maintain a campaign of higher standards of public health with poster competitions, with public health lessons being introduced into the schools curriculum and so on, so that ultimately we will have not only young children playing their part but they will be telling their elders who have filthy habits to behave themselves at home as well as in public.

All this will take some time. But that is not an excuse. If the Ministry's officials should be failing in their duties to inspect licensed premises, as stated by the Member for River Valley - here again there are problems concerning the volume of work involved. There are in Singapore today close to 1,900 licensed eating houses, restaurants and coffee shops. We have a Public Health Inspectorate of under 100. They are, therefore, expected to inspect licensed premises once a month. For the first eight months of this year, as many as 12,738 visits have been made by the Public Health Inspectorate. Of this number, on 344 occasions - three per cent of their visits - they did find that the toilets of the 1,900 licensed premises were in a filthy condition. It is then the duty of the Public Health Inspector to tell the proprietor to do something about his toilet, to keep it in a clean state, flush it, and so on, and to return a few days later to see that the work is done. It has been found that in most cases the proprietors do comply. It has not been found necessary so far to cancel any licence for failure to clean the toilets.

The Member for River Valley has indicated that there has been deliberate jamming of water connections in water closets. When this arises and if a specific report is made to us, we shall be able to follow it up and put matters right. But where the coffee shop or eating house is situated in a strategic place, like being close to a bus-stop, or near public places of entertainment, there is a tendency for gross over-use of the toilet facilities, because members of the public just walk into the shops concerned and relieve themselves but do nothing about it, and therefore mess up the place. So some shopkeepers have become so desperate that they have decided to lock up the water closets. When this was brought to our knowledge, we naturally had to tell the proprietor that he could not just lock up the public convenience and that he should open it. It is possible that in certain cases, the proprietors were so desperate about the over-use of their water closets that they thought that by closing the water connections the toilet would be so filthy that people would not make use of it. But l am afraid that is not exactly what is happening, because people still do their business and make things worse.

I would prefer that this question be tackled in a different way. It is no use just making a sweeping statement that everything is filthy and what can we do about it, and so on. Naturally, the answer will be, "Of course, we will try to do the best we can." But surely the problem can be tackled in this way. If a Member of Parliament or a member of the public knows of the filthy conditions of a particular shop, he can just give us a note to that effect, and we will be able to follow it up and rectify the situation. We will then be tackling specific instances, whether it is in the River Valley Constituency, Punggol Constituency or Jurong Constituency, and so on.

An hon. Member: What about Geylang West?

Mr Yong Nyuk Lin: Geylang West is very well behaved, because it is the first constituency that has had its hawkers licensed and resited. Hawkers on the five-foot ways have been cleared. About 200 hawkers over a stretch of 100 yards outside a market in Lorong Taha dispersed of their own accord. They took down their unauthorised structures and got everything nicely reallocated in Lorongs 5 and 7. The drains were cleared; mosquitoes got less; there were less flies. Surely Geylang West is now a model constituency for any Member of Parliament to come along to see!

There is one little correction which I have to make. The Member for River Valley has said that there will be a $5 fine for a householder who has no dustbin. I am afraid he has got it all wrong. The penalty will not be just $5 - it will be very punitive. What we say is this. We expect every householder, whether he stays in the kampongs of Sembawang or urban areas like Geylang West or Anson or Tanjong Pagar, to provide a dust-bin of his own. But should some householders be found without a dustbin, we will have to give them adequate notice saying, "Look here, we find that you have no dust-bin. Can you please provide a dust-bin within seven days, let us say, or else we will provide you with one and charge you for it? It might be $5, or it might be $10 for the dustbin." But we are going to amend our legislation so that there will be a very heavy penalty for people who just throw rubbish from their houses on to the roads and into the drains. The first offence will be $150, not $5 which is chicken feed. The second offence will be $500. The third one will be $1,000. The social habits of our people - mainly the hawkers - are bad because they are irresponsible, and that is what is happening today. Hawkers are only interested in making money. We like them to be able to earn a livelihood, but the way in which they throw their refuse on to the roads and into the drains is a ridiculous state of affairs which has got to be stopped. When we go along the streets, we see people sweeping refuse into the drains as if the drains are dust-bins. We have to stop this nonsense.

So with this new legislation, we will be able to bring home to our people the fact that they have to learn how to dispose of their refuse properly, by placing it in a dust-bin with a proper lid. Our workers will then be expected to perform a daily cleansing service, and if that does not come about, please give us a report and disciplinary action will be taken against the particular cleansing worker who fails to do his duty. We will therefore have, as a first stage, to get our workers in the Public Cleansing Department to do their work. I think we have reached that stage now. The second stage is to get the public to do their share of putting their refuse inside proper dust-bins, failing which we will have to be a little hard on theni if they cannot behave themselves. There is every possibility that within the next few months, things will be tightening up and that there will be more cleanliness around the city. In fact, it must be admitted that things are looking better than before. The city is certainly much cleaner now than before the February strike. As we begin to tighten up supervision of our work force - whether in public cleansing or even in the Public Health inspectorate who go round inspecting licensed premises - we should be able, with the co-operation of the public, to bring about a situation to which we are all looking forward, that is, our Singapore can be a garden city.

I am grateful, therefore, to the Member for River Valley for having brought up this matter so that I am able to impress upon the Public Health Inspectorate that they must do much better than what they have done in the past. We expect them to make more frequent visits, more than just once a month, and to maintain a much cleaner atmosphere not only in the lavatories of eating shops, coffee shops and restaurants, but even in the premises themselves. By next year, we should see less flies, less mosquitoes and breathe less smell.

Mr Bernard Rodrigues: Mr Speaker, Sir, can I ask two questions for clarification?

Mr Speaker: What are the questions?

Mr Bernard Rodrigues: One is, what about the private streets to which the workers do not go? The second question is, many a morning, workers of the Cleansing Department do not handle the public dust-bins with care. When you get up in the morning, very often you find dust-bins in the drain.

Mr Speaker: Mr Rodrigues, your questions are irrelevant to the matter raised and do not properly come within the ambit of the Adjournment debate.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

That Parliament do now adjourn.

Adjourned accordingly at Eighteen minutes to Seven o'clock p.m.