Squads fight ‘killer-litter’

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 6

Squads fight ‘killer-litter’

NZPA staff correspondent Singapore “Killer litter” is the latest subject to receive the saturation news media coverage and concentrated attention which the Singapore Government turns on for its social awareness campaigns. After a year of campaigns to persuade educated women to have more children. ban video game parlours, and keep chewing gum off the streets, the Singapore Government has now moved to eliminate the menace of heavy objects falling from high rise buildings. After an incident in which a woman was seriously injured by a steel pipe thrown from an upper storey, the Government, through its Housing Development Board, has begun a series of prosecutions on “killer litterbugs.” Three men were last month jailed for periods from four to six weeks for throwing a variety of objects — including a cupboard, a video, and bottles — from high-rise windows. The campaign has received the saturation press and television coverage which Singapore's docile and managed media customarilly devotes to the Government’s campaigns. The Housing Board has declared that 11,000 of its flats have potential “killer” litter that must be removed — on penalty of eviction for non-compliance. Objects hung dangerously from flats windows or

perched on balconies included pans, flower pots, and bicycles. The newspapers have devoted detailed coverage to raids on estates by a special housing squad set up to eliminate the problem. Each enforcement squad has four men equipped with walkie-talkie radios. Two men station themselves in one block and observe a second where the other half of the team is based. When litter falls, co-ordinated action by the team results in the se’rving of a summons upon the offender. In a report in the main daily Singapore newspaper, describing such a raid, the squad spotted an old lady throwing a piece of paper out of a window. “Since it was not killerlitter as such and taking into account her age, (the officer-in-charge) told his men to issue a warning only,” the report said. For the majority of Singapore’s 2.5 million people, who live in high-rise apartment blocks, the possibility of being squashed by a falling cupboard or knocked out by a flying bottle is very real, say locals. Hong Kong, with a much larger population living in similar housing, also enforces penalties against residents who drop things from windows. It has so far not needed to give the subject the blanket media coverage which lias been the Singapore Government’s usual method of calling the attention of its citizens to problem social areas.