Duty to be civilised and clean

I REFER to Victoria Brown’s “Unsung heroes of our unclean streets” ( The Star, July 26). The writer reported about workers who bear stench every day to clean the city’s clogged drains and culverts. The workers lamented that our people just threw rubbish everywhere. Some even threw unused furniture from flats.

Physical and mental health partly depends on one’s surroundings. Dirt is associated with diseases. For example, a dirty home or environment brings many diseases. So cleanliness is a requisite of life.

But we see filth almost everywhere in our country. Drains are clogged, rubbish thrown on the streets and cigarettes butts tossed in front of restaurants.

Nearer home, we see dirty car interior with food debris, dirty cans, undusted mats, or dirty shoes kept long in the car. Dirty car interior will make us breathe dirty air when we drive.

A study from the Aston University in Birmingham, led by Anthony Hilton, the university’s director of biology and biomedical science, shows that the dashboard is as dirty as the toilet seats. And it also shows that gear stick has approximately 356 different germs, while the boot contains about 850 bacteria.

One of the marks of a civilised society is cleanliness. Hence we may not be able to call ourselves civilised if we just work hard for wealth but ignore cleanliness. A clean environment depends on everyone. It is civic obligations. Our surroundings will not be thoroughly clean, even if there are cleaners working every day.

For instance, the public toilets are always dirty as the cleaners are not able to cope with their frequent use. But if everyone puts an effort to keep them clean, the toilets will be clean. Dirty public toilets have tarnished the image of our nation.

Being clean is habitual. Children as young as four should be trained to collect trash. Discipline is the backbone of any society.

We may emulate the Japanese. We have seen videos of Japanese children cleaning their classrooms and schools.

The world has also been awed by Japanese fans cleaning their seats after a football game at the World Cup 2018 in Russia. They were so civilised.

Cleaning school compounds, latrines and fields was a common practice in my primary school years in the 1960s.

In those days, a few mornings of the week our headmaster would ask us to run to the field and collect rubbish. And so we did, excit- edly and happily. At times we took turns to clean the toilets and drains. So cleaning school compounds was our collective duty, not the cleaners’. Furthermore, we did not litter. In fact, if we saw rubbish, we would pick it up.

I am not sure how cleaning a school compound is done nowadays. Why not help the schools reduce their budgets by getting the kids to clean their schools?

There will be complaints at the beginning but as we make it a routine, children may find it fun cleaning their surroundings together.

We can do the same at universities. And for streets, towns and cities, can the authorities come up with rules that make every household clean its front and back areas?

Every faith and civilisation put emphasis on hygiene. It is the measure of a society. We deal with a habit. That is what cleanliness is all about.

As we move towards promoting political responsibility or banning white shoes in schools, those thoughts are worth putting into action to preserve the cleanliness of where we live and raise our children.