Dear Friends,
OVERVIEW
“People should be doing things consciously in a right way”
Last week, one of our members chanced upon seeing a man riding his bicycle at the Kallang Riverside park. The lone man stopped his bicycle and walked down to the wateredge. He stared at the water for a while and then started picking up the litter from the water with his bare hands. A very very rare sight indeed to see someone caring for the environment in public and in particular, trying to keep our water clean.
It was a result of a conscious effort on the part of the person involved, to pick up the litter. He got what he wanted to do.
So what is the case? You may say, “It involves a minority. The impact is negligible, and it would not make the difference. Anyway, we have cleaners to clean after us.”
We, the volunteers at Waterways Watch Society believe that it is possible to do it, difficult though it may be; to make people be aware of keeping waterways clean and to take ownership of the environment. We do it by taking small steps of picking up litter for a few hours every week in public view.
But, really we would like to see more of the action of the lone person coming from all of us. Yes, making an effort to keep our environment clean and safe. By doing this you will be more conscious of the presence of litter and hence, not rely too much on cleaners.
On this note, we would like to take a leaf from an article, ‘You know what? Just pick up the litter,’ by Han Fook Kwang, Editor at Large, SPH dated May 2021, to reflect on what you can do as an individual, just like the lone man did at the Kallang Riverside.
“It does seem like a very tough nut to crack.
Yet, at the personal level, it is such a simple thing to do.
When you see litter, pick it up. If you see someone littering, tell him in a polite way not to do it.
Why is something so simple so hard to achieve community-wide?
I don’t have the answer to this puzzle, and perhaps we shouldn’t spend too much time puzzling over it.
Just pick up the litter.”
Our work done for the week:
- We conducted two CSR programmes, a Bike and a Kayak Clean up at the Kallang-Marina area. A total of 60 participants attended the programmes and collected 93 kg of litter in total.
- A virtual learning journey session was conducted for 48 new citizens from MCCY – VEP
- This week a total of 71 members were down for CSR programmes, talk, patrols, administration and housekeeping duties and the total trash collected = 45 kg. We remain very concerned with the number of masks sighted and picked up as litter, especially when the numbers are not coming down.
- Boat Patrol. We conducted 6 boat patrols in all; 2 at Kallang, 3 at Punggol, 1 at Lakeside.
- Bike Patrol. We conducted a total of 8 Bike patrols; 4 at Kallang, 2 each at Punggol and Lakeside.
- Foot Patrol. We conducted 1 Foot patrol at Pang Sua Pond.
- Pedal boat Patrol. We conducted 1 Pedal boat patrol at Kallang
- Boat Training. 2 boat training sessions were conducted at Kallang
- Boat Tour for Frontline workers. We had a boat tour for 4 SGH frontline workers.
ACTIVITIES AND REPORT
1. Educational Programmes
2. Volunteer Patrols & Activities
a. Marina
b. Punggol
c. Lakeside
d. Pang Sua Pond
