AREAS AND WALKWAYS BORDERING ROADS (Cleanliness and maintenance)

Assoc. Prof. Chin Tet Yung asked the Minister for the Environment what steps have been taken to ensure that the areas and walkways bordering roads are properly cleaned and maintained, especially in the new towns such as Woodlands.

The Senior Minister of State for the Environment (Encik Sidek bin Saniff) (for the Minister for the Environment): Sir, ENV is responsible for keeping public roads and walkways clean. As a norm, roads and walkways are cleaned once every two days. However, areas that are busy and have high vehicular and pedestrian traffic are swept daily.

In addition to using its own workforce of cleaners, ENV has, since 1999, also contracted cleaning companies in the private sector to do the cleaning. Many of these areas are now swept by these contractors with modernised equipment and machines.

To further improve the productivity of cleaning, footpaths and walkways in new towns are designed to make it more accessible to cleaning machines. In the older areas, ENV is working closely with LTA to make these places more machine-friendly, as much as possible.

Even though we have contracted the cleaning jobs to the private sector, ENV officers are deployed on the ground daily to monitor and ensure that public places are properly cleaned and maintained. ENV also acts on feedback received from members of the public.

Assoc. Prof. Chin Tet Yung: May I ask the Senior Minister of State how close a control does the ENV officers have over their sub-contractors, and whether he does not know that in Woodlands Neighbourhood 8, for example, debris and clogged drains have been in existence for several months and up till now, I think no action has really been taken to clean them properly.

Encik Sidek bin Saniff: Sir, I understand that roads and walkways in Neighourhoods 5 and 6 are still being maintained by HDB, as the roads and walkways in these two neighbourhoods have not been taken over by LTA as public thoroughfares. Notwithstanding this, my Ministry has moved in and taken over the cleaning of the roads and walkways from HDB. Rest assured, I think, by now they might have done the job.

Assoc. Prof. Chin Tet Yung: Particularly, Senior Minister of State, I said that "Neighbourhood 8" does not have modern walkways as Neighbourhoods 5 or 6, which probably have walkways that would facilitate machine cleaning. But in certain older neighbourhoods, and I am sure I am not just speaking in relation to Woodlands but to other areas as well, there are no such modern walkways and so on, to facilitate machine cleaning. How close is the supervision of the cleaning of drains and what are the methods used to clean such areas?

Encik Sidek bin Saniff: For that particular area, we have our men to do the job.