Dear Friends,
WWS had another active week of programmes this week. While the weather did force us to conduct wet weather programmes for one school and one corporate, the other programmes this week went relatively well. In total, we had one Coney Island Litter Pick-Up (90 pax), four Kayak Clean-Up programmes at Kallang for Ngee Ann Polytechnic (160 pax), two corporate programmes – one kayak and one pedal-boat programme with Salesforce (26 pax) and one kayak programme for NVPC (40 pax). We also did two corporate talks given by our CEO, Eugene Heng, at Micron and SPH. We also did one school booth at Nan Hua Primary School and two meetings with corporate clients to finalise CSR and potential sponsorships. There was one postponement of a talk in collaboration by RWS-GOTS at the last minute. We had three safety boats support during the week. We had a total of 44 members on patrol during weekdays (Punggol) and weekend patrols (Punggol and Marina), including 5 new members on orientation. Our Garden crew completed infrastructure of Garden (see photos). Some promising new members were identified. Our Punggol team did housekeeping at our Punggol container offices due to the heavy downpour. Otters were again sighted over the weekend at Marina again.
During the week, there were two engagements on Fishing and one engagement at upstream Sungei Kallang was aggressive when we advised them to pull up their huge net stretched across half of the waterways. The individual even challenged the patrol to berth and come down. He went on to drink beer and dispose on the beach openly, defying patrol. We reported to PUB and also the police. Over this week, there were 126 pax engagements for anti-littering.
We continue to see PMD’s in both Kallang and Punggol speeding. These parks have shared footpaths and hence PMDs and PABs are permitted. As our LTA Authority Cards are still pending, we have not done any engagement. We have started using our approved eco-rider on patrols in Marina and will be including them for Punggol by the next month.
During the week, PUB was again sighted taking photos of our Kayak programmes. We are not sure of the reason – maybe it would be good if PUB can share with us?
There was a lot of litter found on Saturday morning for our CSR with NVPC due to the heavy downpour the previous day. A total of 27kg was collected for that event solely. The litter collected for the Marina programmes this week totalled up to over 49kg, not including the massive amount of litter of 140kg we picked up at Coney Island in less than 45 minutes. Milky water (construction) from the drain into our reservoir was sighted twice at Kallang Riverside Park. Our Sunday patrol members also reported Algae sightings at MBS waters (see photos).
This week, we made an official police report at Punggol NPC on attempted mischief on our jetty and boat. We are thinking of strengthening our security at Punggol. This is not the first time we have encountered such mischief.
Waterways Watch Society is also pleased to announce the launch of our River Hero, an interactive simple game on the phone and internet. You can download this free game from the Apple Store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/river-rush-education-game/id1347087483), Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sg.org.wws.riverrush) and your Windows computer or laptop
(https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14ME5E2gXIzp2YTOC0P9R4xVpodgY_1jF). We hope that this will bring interest to our youths and bring more awareness on our litter challenge in Singapore. We would love it if you could help us share.
