Keep Singapore clean like Colombo - opinion
September 24, 2012 10:11 am
In what seems to be a testament to the steps taken to beautify Colombo a recent letter to the editor of the ‘Today’ newspaper in Singapore has hailed Sri Lanka for its civic consciousness in keeping Colombo litter free.
In a reply to an article published earlier titled “Singapore: Clean city or cleaned city?”, the Singaporean writer draws the example of how during his recent visit Colombo he found the city ‘free of litter, even cigarette butts, with no road sweepers or dump trucks in sight nor dustbins along the streets, either.’
The writer claims that even the area around the busy Central Railway Station was litter free. Not littering seems to be a way of life in Colombo, he opines.
He encourages Singaporean education officials to visit
Colombo to learn how its schools nurture children to grow up with a litter-free
attitude.
Sri Lanka’s civic consciousness in this regard seems superior to ours, he adds.
Many quote the famous story of how decades ago Singapore’s iconic leader Lee Kwan Yew aimed to make Singapore like Sri Lanka before the war put Sri Lanka on its back foot. Likewise this praise should not give any room for complacency as Sri Lanka emerges from years of war with its sights set on greater development.
The ‘TODAY’ newspaper is Singapore’s second most-read newspaper which enjoys a circulation of over 700,000 readers.
(Ada Derana)
