By Sakini Mohd Said
KUALA LUMPUR: Salim Adam works for a cleaning services company and for the last 15 years, he has been supervising cleaning activities at the Sri Perlis 2 public housing flats at Jalan Datuk Keramat, here.
The firm the 65-year-old works for has been commissioned by Kuala Lumpur City Hall to take care of the cleanliness of the housing area.
Besides supervising and monitoring the sweepers there, Salim is also responsible for ensuring that the premises are cleaned according to the schedule as set by the company.
Better known as Pak Kamil among the flat dwellers there, the father-of-four is only too familiar with the habits of the people who live at the low-cost flats where he himself has been residing for the past 41 years.
While he is generally happy living there, the attitude of some residents, both old and young, gives him “endless headaches”.
Luckily, the flat-dwellers there don’t have the dangerous habit of hurling garbage out their windows from the higher floors but, unfortunately, some of them don’t seem to have the slightest inkling of how they should dispose of their garbage properly – they either dump their trash beside the staircase or place their bags of rubbish at the side or on top of the lids of the communal bins, Pak Kamil grumbled to me.
I happened to bump into Pak Kamil when I stopped at Sri Perlis 2 to buy some stuff from a shop located there. After striking up a conversation with him, I asked him about the rubbish disposal habits of the flat-dwellers and that was how I got the inspiration to write this article.
The Sri Perlis 2 flats provide proper facilities in the compound for rubbish disposal. Yet, some residents dispose of their trash as they see fit.
At 9am when the sweepers report for work, they would see bags of rubbish strewn beside the staircases and they have no choice but to dispose of them properly. Then, at 11am or noon, fresh rubbish would suddenly appear in the same places the sweepers had cleaned earlier.
Obviously, the errant residents assume that they don’t have to walk all the way to the common garbage collection bins to dispose of their trash as the cleaners would do it for them. What kind of a mentality is this?
It is such a waste of time and effort for the cleaners to pick up after the lazy residents as they can put their time to better use by cleaning up the compound of the flats and the surroundings.
Just because they live in four-storeyed walk-up flats without lifts is no excuse for them to dump their rubbish by the staircase or wherever they wish except at the dedicated dumpsite on the ground floor.
The truth is, many Malaysians are still devoid of the cleanliness culture. Our nation attained independence 61 years ago and in tandem with its economic, technological and educational progress, our society should also adopt more civilised attitudes and way of thinking.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case. It is sad that when it comes to cleanliness and preservation of the environment, many of our people are still backwards in comparison with the populations in advanced countries.
Our country is still grappling with old issues such as indiscriminate littering, lukewarm response to the 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) practice and illegal disposal of solid wastes.- Bernama
