Effectiveness of Community Volunteer Scheme in Reducing Littering

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (a) how has the community volunteer scheme helped in reducing cases of littering in public; (b) how many litter bugs booked last year have arisen from public tip-offs; and (c) whether the reporting of litter bugs will be made easier for the public to assist NEA.

Littering is an unacceptable and irresponsible behaviour that dirties the living environment and causes potential public health problems. As part of our efforts to tackle littering, the National Environment Agency (NEA) launched the Community Volunteer (CV) programme in 2013 to foster greater ownership of the environment.

CVs have to meet stringent selection criteria and fulfil the requisite training to be appointed. They are required to adopt specific geographical areas and lead by example to promote good social norms, through participation in monthly environmental activities, such as litter picking and educating environmental offenders within their adopted areas.

CVs help to strengthen the social norm of keeping the environment clean by encouraging fellow members of the public to bin their litter. I am heartened that more than 330 individuals from all walks of life have come on board the CV programme. Our CVs have engaged more than 3,700 litter bugs, most of whom were cooperative when asked to pick up their litter.

NEA will continue with their enforcement efforts in support of the community. In 2016, NEA issued more than 31,000 tickets for littering offences, 17 of which were to uncooperative litterbugs that our CVs had encountered and whose particulars had been forwarded to NEA for further action.

Members of the public can report a littering offence through various channels, including by email, the online feedback form on NEA's website, the MyENV mobile app or the NEA Contact Centre hotline. Many of the tickets issued for littering from vehicles, for example, arise from reports from civic-minded members of the public. We welcome suggestions on how to make it even more convenient for the public to give feedback.

The problem of littering cannot be solved just by enforcement or public feedback. I urge everyone to take ownership of the environment and keep it clean. To this end, I also hope that more members of the public will come forward to volunteer as CVs.

Mdm Speaker, as we can see, littering is still everywhere. On the record number of 31,000 persons fined, if we had a bigger pool of enforcement officers, I am sure that figure would have shot up. I have two supplementary questions. First, how many enforcement officers does NEA have currently and is NEA going to deploy more employment officers? Second, how can we encourage more CVs to come forward to help to nab the litter bugs? Of course, enforcement is not the only way. There is education. But I think we cannot do away with enforcement. Yesterday, I was picking up litter with my residents at East Coast Park. Actually, there is still a lot of litter there.

With regard to the first question about the number of environment officers enforcing, I do not have the exact number. So, I will follow up with the Member. Whether we will increase the number of enforcement officers, I think we have, over the years, increased the number of enforcement officers. But obviously, there is a limit as to the number that we can increase. We have also engaged the help of our CVs, not just those who are signed up as CVs, but also volunteers under our "Keep Singapore Clean" programme and so on, to help encourage as well as build up the community's sense of ownership for the environment and to do the right thing.

With regard to how we are going to encourage more volunteers, we have, over the years, been doing this through various campaigns and programmes. For instance, NEA actively engages the premises owners, such as the shopping malls, various grassroots community organisations, to encourage them to get their members, including non-government organisations, to get their members to sign up to be our CVs.