Dear Friends,
This week WWS conducted 4 programmes in total. We did 2 sessions of Virtual WWE @ Kallang River for JunYuan Primary School, sponsored by SPH. A total of 6 classes attended the 2 sessions and covered about 210 students. The other 2 were CSR programmes for Rackspace Technology and Salesforce Singapore. 16 staff from Rackspace Technologies came for a Kayak Waterway Clean-up programme at Kallang Basin and picked 10kg of litter (see photos). Whereas Salesforce did a Boat Waterway Clean-up with 14 staff and collected 31kg of litter, and they also saved one bird from water (see photos).
On Wednesday, 6 members turned up for duty at Punggol, 4 of them went out for bike patrol and 2 of them attended PUB audit for the boats (see photos). The bike patrol group picked up 2.5 kg of litter and 1 mask along the Punggol Waterway Park. They noticed one broken plastic tubing cover on the jackscrew next to the Sunrise Bridge and dead vegetation at lamppost E6-1 W-200. One rusted broken bicycle was found abandoned at lamppost E4A/48 (see photo).
Saturday patrol at Kallang and Punggol was cancelled due to International Labour Day, but 15 members volunteered to do some gardening and housekeeping at Kallang.
On Sunday, a total of 27 members turned up at Kallang for duty. Members did one group of bike patrol (8 pax), one group of pedal boat patrol (4 pax), two groups of boat patrol (6pax and 7 pax), another 2 as admin support (see photos). The bike group patrolled until Custom House and Esplanade then returned. Most of the litter was picked up along the shore areas, for example under Benjamin Sheares Bridge. They found one bench was damaged, along the Marina Blvd @ walkway near Custom House. Wooden pieces have dropped out and sharp-edge may cause injury (see photos). The bike patrol group 4.5kg of litter and 8 masks. The pedal boat patrol reported that WWS Biodiversity Pond was quite clean but the area at the end of the Dragon Boat Beach was very dirty. The stretch of vegetation along the Sports Hub was generally clean, but there was lots of litter around the corner near the concrete wall. The total litter they collected was 15kg and 4 masks. The two boat patrol groups found the water body was clean with a few plastic bags and drinking cans floating around. Only in the Singapore River, a lot of litter settled in the shallow areas under Alkaff Bridge and Robertson Bridge (see photos). The two boats picked up 8kg of litter in total, plus 3 masks. There was also boat training for two new member drivers.
On Sunday afternoon, 11 members did bike and boat patrol in Jurong Lake. Lots of litter was washed up to the shore area near Water Lily Pond. The area was not accessible by both kayak and foot patrol groups and may need contractors to clear the area. The water edge near viewing deck No.2 was also full of litter (see photos). The majority of litter picked up by the bike patrol group was plastic items. They picked up 11.5kg of litter and 12 masks. The water body of Jurong Lake was quite clean. Patrol members reflected that instead of fishing at the fishing decks, fishermen prefer to fish on the slope just after the fishing decks. Members spotted 3 individual fishermen illegally fishing on the slope next to fishing decks.
Due to the current increasing community cases of COVID-19, we have decided to scale down our weekend activities starting from this week. Members will be advised soon on the details.
