This morning, a group of enthusiastic young adults and several of us, the young-at-heart were at the East Coast beach. I had gotten to know them from GE2020 when several of them volunteered to help in our campaign.
Most of them are still university undergraduate or had worked for just a few years. Some had volunteered before in beach cleaning activities with other groups in the past. They decided to execute their East Coast cleanup plan today. They invited me along.
We spent about 1.5 hours cleaning the part closest to car park D1. I met a group wearing various NUS T-shirts moving eastwards from McDonalds. They were armed with tongs, bags and plastic pails too. I found out that they come regularly to the beach for clean up too, as most of them live nearby. One of them turned out to be the son of my classmate from primary and secondary school!
I also chatted with Mr Han. He is a full-time cleaner for the beach. His day starts off at 5 am when he will be picked up from his dormitory and dropped off at the beach. He gets to end work around 5 pm each day, a rather long workday. He said that he gets just one rest day a month. He is tasked to cover ‘7 stones’. These are the stone breakwaters. His area for cleaning spans the beachfront of 7 breakwaters, a fairly long distance.
Mr Han has been in Singapore since 2004, first as a construction worker. He switched to the cleaning job only a year ago. He is undecided if he will continue to work in Singapore when his contract ends. He feels that the salary in his hometown of Jiangsu, a fast prospering part of China, is now not that far off from what he gets to take home from his work in Singapore. 16 years is a long time to be working away from home.
I titled this post as Jurwa2. Jurwa is the Bhutanese word for Change.
I first blogged about Jurwa in 2013 when I was in Bhutan for a total period of over 7 weeks spread over 5 months. I was the lead consultant to the Ministry of Education of Bhutan in their ICT Masterplan project.
There, on one of the Sundays, I met a group of young people who did a clean up of the streets in the capital city, Thimphu. In the afternoon, there was another group of mostly professionals and business owners who had formed the Jurwa club. They were also doing clean-up in the area around the clock tower square in the heart of Thimphu. I made friends with this group as well. In fact, I am still in contact with one of them.
The Bhutanese were also frustrated that their once-clean streets and rivers had become littered with rubbish. Care for the environment has been something ingrained in their Gross National Happiness teachings, something all Bhutanese learn since school. Yet, the streets were littered. Part of the problem was that Bhutan was opening up and many foreigners had come in. The habits of the foreigners started to influence the behaviours of the locals as well. These groups wanted change, and decided that change should come from doing something themselves. So, they did these regular clean-ups.
In Singapore too, we had our “Keep Singapore Clean”, “Use Your Hands”, and other campaigns decades ago. In my original Jurwa blog, I shared this story of how when I was in junior college, our class had a night hike across Pulau Ubin island and camped at a remote part of the island. The next morning, we packed up to go. Some of us left their rubbish in plastic bags in the deserted beach. A classmate picked up the bags and carried these with him. The nearest dustbin must be at least 5 km away, back through the plantations we had trekked through. This classmate reminded us that we should handle our waste properly. So everyone picked up every bit of rubbish that we had created on the beach and carried them till we came to the first dustbin miles away.
There were plenty of dustbins in the East Coast beach. Yet, today we filled several trash bags with rubbish, most picked from within 50 metres of a nearby dustbin.
I spoke with the young people in my team. They agree that we should be the change to influence people around us. It may be challenging because our society is open. We have some 40% of our population who are non-native born. One of those in this morning’s team had recently returned from a 6-month NUS overseas program in Stockholm, Sweden. She said she picked up being environmentally conscious from the Swedes. We spoke about how the Japanese and Taiwanese dispose their rubbish well despite not having many bins in public areas.
I still remember the camping story after so many decades. One member of our team took his rubbish and those of the others. Everyone then quietly cleaned up the remote beach. Our actions may be small but we can choose to change and inspire others to change. We need Jurwa too – for a better world, and a cleaner Singapore.
Yee Jenn Jong 