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Unfinished business: Toilets at hawker centres, coffee shops still too dirty
Singapore has much to be proud of when it comes to sanitation, but it has failed to get its hawker centres and coffee shops to clean up their act
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A notable concern expressed about coffee shop toilets was lack of provision of toilet paper, suggesting shortcomings at a quite basic level.
ST PHOTO: RYAN CHIONG
Alec Morton and Jack Sim
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Since independence, Singapore has made huge strides in universal access to sanitation. According to World Health Organisation figures, Singapore is one of only four countries in the world where 100 per cent of the population can boast access to safely managed sanitation facilities. What’s more, Singapore is the largest of these four states and only one, Kuwait, is of comparable size: The other two countries are the tiny Monaco and Andorra, with populations of less than 100,000 people each.
As part of its efforts to ensure access to sanitation, Singapore mandated that private sector buildings must open their toilets for public use if they serve the public. As such, there is no shortage of common-use toilets in Singapore. There has also been a concerted and consistent public education effort to remind toilet users of their responsibilities, and the public has, generally speaking, done its part: Over the last few decades, the standard of common-use toilets has strikingly improved.
