Personal Response to Current Affairs

This is my first personal response to current affairs, which is on societal issues. This article was taken from The Straits Times on February 11, 2007. The writer of this article is Sarah Ng.


Excuses aplenty from litterbugs


Recently, cases of littering in Singapore have been rising over the past years. The author is trying to show that there are many litterbugs in Singapore, yet will go to great lengths to escape a fine if confronted by an NEA officer. This article makes one wonder why litterbugs are so desperate to escape fines, yet continue to litter. The growing number of litterbugs is indeed a worrying situation for all Singaporeans, as more litterbugs would mean more litter in our country, and that is surely not a good sign.

There are many types of littering offenders that are found in Singapore. When caught by NEA officers, some of them will try pleading for their case with incredible excuses such as litter that just happened to fall from their hands. Others might turn verbally abusive, even challenging the officers by not giving them their particulars on purpose. However, the offenders are usually cooperative as they know the severity of not cooperating with the officers—the police can be called in. Some even try to escape this by running from the NEA officers, dashing across roads and risking their lives. It is great wonder why they would risk their lives just to escape the fine, but do not dare to accept the fine.

As in the article, the Sunday Times did its own checks, and found that almost all who were found to be guilty of littering had a ready excuse at hand. Of course, it is true that some of these people’s excuses are real, but most of them are apparently faking it. Most merely want to avoid a fine. Thus it appears that most people litter, not because they do not know the law, or that they littered by accident, but on purpose. They just feel lazy to walk to a bin to throw their litter, stating it as being “too troublesome”. They will also try to escape a fine as much as possible. This is understandable as they would not want to lose money just for littering, a seemingly small issue.

As I am still a teenager, the education from schools about not littering has made me refrain from littering, and also made me treat litterbugs with discontent. As I do not know the exact reasons of littering, I would tend to treat most excuses of litterbugs to be false. However, it is difficult to tell who is lying and who is not in these situations. This tells me that when analysing any situation, we should not jump to conclusions, but look at the situation thoroughly first.

Ultimately, it is not the officials that keep Singapore as a clean city, it is the people that do. Singaporeans have the biggest role to play in ensuring the country’s cleanliness. Not only would Singapore be dirty and unsightly if the littering problems were to ensue, even public health would be at stake.

Thus, for the sake of everyone, we should all do our part to minimise our own littering.