Update on Work by Department of Public Cleanliness

Assoc Prof Fatimah Lateef asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (a) how is the performance of the Department of Public Cleanliness since its setup in April this year; and (b) what is the workload of the department and what proportions of this workload are diversions or redirections from other agencies.

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The Department of Public Cleanliness (DPC) was set up in April this year to integrate the cleaning of public areas, including roads, pavements, drains, parks and vacant lands. These cleaning functions were previously undertaken by various agencies, such as the NEA, PUB, HDB, NParks, SLA, URA, LTA and JTC.

Since its formation, the DPC has set up a one-stop contact centre to handle and coordinate all public feedback on cleaning as it progressively works towards an integration of all the agencies' cleaning contracts. The first phase will involve the integration of cleaning for expressways, followed by road and pavement sweeping, together with drain cleaning, and, finally, the cleaning of parks, park connectors, vacant lands and URA carparks by 2016. The frequency of cleaning for areas with higher human traffic and volume of litter will also be reviewed.

The DPC will seek to raise cleaning standards by strengthening the audit regime, leveraging on technology, and improving litter bin infrastructure. The DPC will also work with the cleaning contractors to put in place a more robust system of checks on the quality of cleaning works carried out. For example, the DPC has initiated a pilot to outfit its contractors' mechanical road sweepers with GPS tracking devices, sensors and cameras to enable the DPC staff to monitor their cleaning performance remotely.

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Since its formation, the DPC has fronted all responses to the public through the DPC hotline, 1800-600-3333, email or the new smart phone application CleanLah. To date, the DPC has received and worked on more than 10,000 cases of feedback since 1 April 2012. This translates into about 60 cases per day. About a third of the cases are on cleanliness of areas that were previously under the care of other agencies, and the DPC worked with these agencies to resolve them expeditiously, mostly within two working days. Less than 1% of the cases were more complex and took longer to resolve as they involved multiple agencies or review of existing policies and processes. We are happy to note that the initial public feedback from the cases handled so far has been positive given the greater ease in reporting cleaning lapses and the more responsive follow-up actions.

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