MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT

The Ministry of the Environment will tackle the problems of pollution, to protect and enhance our environment, to increase our water resources, and to maintain high standards of public health. We need never face the high degree of danger to public health that is threatening some of the polluted cities of the industrial countries. But we must deal, now, firmly and rationally with pollution. National development and pollution control must go hand in hand.

To keep up the quality of the environment in the face of industrialisation and urbanisation means considerable planning and expenditure on anti-pollution. As incomes go up, so does consumption. There will be more high-rise flats, more cars, buses and taxis, more refuse and garbage from each household, glass bottles, plastic containers and other waste. More electricity will be generated for more factories and homes, i.e, more sulphur dioxide belching from power stations and soot and chemical dust from factory chimneys. There is increasing pollution from the expanding oil refineries, both in the southern islands and on Singapore itself.

We must take steps now to prevent a deterioration into a Tokyo-type situation. The air we breathe must be clean. The noise of traffic, radios, television, and rumbling machines, must be cut down. Most important of all, the pollution of our water through domestic or industrial waste running into open drains must be stopped, as soon as is technically and economically possible. Rain water must be collected unpolluted for domestic consumption. Several big, new impounding reservoirs are in the course of construction. The costs are high. But they cannot be avoided. We cannot have our reservoirs filled up with polluted water. Every factory has been, and is being, given enough time to install measures to cut down the deleterious substances that they discharge either into open drains or into sewers. The sewerage network will be expanded rapidly to all built-up areas. Hard detergents will go, to be replaced by soft ones. All domestic waste water from kitchens, from the washing of clothes, and from bathrooms must go into sewers, and not into open drains. Over 6,000 pig sties and chicken-runs in the catchment areas of Pandan, Kranji, Bedok and Seletar reservoirs will have to be reconstructed so that waste from pigs and other animals will go into sewers and do not pollute the rain water that falls in the catchment.

We must do this for all of us, not for any sectional or privileged groups. Most people are aware of these grave continuing problems. We cannot allow these problems to become more complicated, by dithering or balking at temporarily unpopular measures. The consequences of not inconveniencing the polluter, now, is to face a grave or even critical position in five to seven years' time.

Water resources

The management and development of our water resources will be better coordinated under a single Ministry. Coordinated sewerage and drainage projects with the covering enforcement of anti-pollution legislation are primary preventive measures to conserve water.

Sewerage

A comprehensive Master Plan for the collection and treatment of sewage in Singapore will be completed. This will be followed by the drawing up of detailed development programmes. The pace of sewerage projects will be' stepped up. Priorities on sewerage projects given to Housing and Development Board, Jurong Town Corporation and other large Government developments will now be extended to Upper Bukit Timah-Woodlands areas. The importance of well-planned and executed sewerage projects cannot be over-emphasised. It is one of the major long term solutions to our water pollution and conservation problem. The control of all trade and industrial waste will now come under a single department. Drainage

The role of drainage will now no longer be confined to the task of flood alleviation but will serve multi-purposes, aimed at creating both a better environment as well as the abstraction of drainage waters for selective uses.

Water Pollution Act

Present legislation on water pollution control will be revised to give sufficient teeth to ensure that those for whom facilities and expertise are available, to control pollution, will act to prevent pollution. A comprehensive Water Pollution Bill will be presented to Parliament.

Solid Waste Disposal

The disposal of solid wastes would become a pressing problem as available dumping grounds become scarce. Modern techniques of compaction and incineration will be introduced in the near future to conserve land and water.

Mechanisation of Street Cleansing

The recent introduction of mechanisation of street cleansing is to meet the problem of the present shortage of cleansing workers. More machines will be acquired. In the process of mechanisation, the upgrading of the skill of our workers is necessary for these machines to be maintained and used efficiently.

Hawkers

The magnitude and complexity of the hawker problem is seen in the numbers, diversity and dispersion of hawkers in the city centre, in the rural districts, in public and private housing and industrial estates. The socio-economic grounds for their existence in Singapore is recognised. The present programme of building markets and hawker centres to resite licensed street hawkers into hygienic and pollution-free surroundings will be extended.

Both public authorities and private developers have to consider the building of suitable indoor accommodation to serve hawker-type food. It is an essential social amenity to domestic residents, factory and office workers, and, `others. Such a programme will quickly improve the existing street hawker conditions and forestall graver problems for the future.

After spending large sums of public and private funds we should not be frustrated by an uncontrolled proliferation of illegal hawkers, or by a lowering of personal and food hygiene standards. The Ministry will educate hawkers and enforce public health standards. At the same time firm action will be taken against unlicensed hawkers.

Air Pollution

We should now be more careful in the types of industries that are allowed. Heavy pollution industries will not be allowed. Existing industries which are causing too much pollution will have to install anti-pollution devices, or they will have to move elsewhere.

In the city area, there will be more intensive surveillance to control emissions from motor vehicles. Noisy and old motor vehicles, whether private or commercial vehicles or buses or taxis must be gradually eliminated. This will reduce the noise level in the city areas. New regulations will be made to control carbon monoxide and other residual pollutants from exhausts to improve the air. Most cities of the developed world are already doing this.

Later, as a further step, certain industries and trade premises in the city areas will have to use low sulphur fuel oil or gas. This will reduce the emission of smoke and sulphur dioxide.

Open burning of domestic and industrial refuse also adds to the pollution of the air. This practice will have to be controlled and regulated. Either the wastes go into incinerators, or they are used for the manufacture of by-products, e.g. sawdust to hard board.

Cemeteries

To conserve land, particularly in the urban areas, cemeteries in and around the city will be closed. There will be extensions to existing public cemeteries in the Chua Chu Kang area and development of new cemeteries in other areas. But cremation is the long term solution. A new crematoria and columbarium will be developed.