Chairman of the Public Hygiene Council Andrew Khng suggested the idea of offenders serving their CWO with their families.
“The whole family (should) do it. Then, the pain is not necessarily (for) the one person, but is the whole family going together, even with your maid,” he said.
He added that in the case of those with children, the impact will be greater. So it would be even better if children are involved?
This ought to be one of those things that make Singapore unique. Someone by the name of Simon replied to my earlier post on Mob Justice For Litterbugs.
“I disagree. Many people litter due to habit and total lack of civic mindedness. Even if the dustbin is 2 steps away, there are people who will just throw rubbish on the floor.
Case in point is high rise littering, people who throw rubbish at multi-storey car parks, etc.
Here in Singapore, you probably cannot walk 100m in HDB estate without encountering a dustbin. And yet, people still litter. They do so because they can litter with impunity.
Best to nip the problem early, rather than employ more cleaners.“
You can see my reply to Simon on that post. The first indication of human civilization is not the discovery of the wheel or writing. It’s the discovery of a healed femur. If you’ve fractured your femur, you can’t find food. You can’t run away from predators. The discovery of a healed femur tens of thousands of years old means that someone or some people who might not even have had proper clothes to wear must have cared for and protected the owner of that piece of bone. That is the most positive sign of civilization. We all want our living environment to be clean and let’s face it, Singapore is already very clean by any standards. Shaming people on social media is the digital equivalent of throwing them into the lion’s pit. 借刀杀人. Collective punishment for the family is like 连坐.
To make the punishment even more “effective”, how about gathering an audience to watch the family being punished. Get them to cheer like they are watching a public execution. That should teach them a lesson, right? Frankly, litterbugs are disgusting but they are a tiny minority with absolutely no influence on civic minded people. Instead, influence should be taken out from people who rejoice at the barbarism of imperial and medieval times.