Big river clean-up went beyond the waterway
Spin-offs from total approach, seminar told
By Kwan Chooi Tow
CLEANING up the Singapore River involved more than just work on the waterway.
It was as much a multi-million dollar infrastructural exercise which featured the building of modern flats, new hawker centres and industrial estates.
As a result, the 10-year clean-up project also brought about economic and social development.
In a talk yesterday on the Singapore experience in cleaning up the river, Mr Foong Chee Leong, a senior engineer with the Ministry of Environment, said part of the project was to phase out pollutive activities such as pig and duck farming.
Other action Included the resettlement of squatters, backyard trades and industries and farmers which were contributing to the pollution of the river.
Street hawkers were also resettled in food centres and the river and its bank were Improved.
Mr Foong’s talk entitled Cleaning-up the Singapore River — A Singapore Experience in Environmental Protection and Preservation, was delivered at a seminar on Environmental Protection and the Liberal Market Economy held at the Marina Mandarin Hotel.
Mr Foong, who is with the ministry’s Pollution Control Department, said that the Singapore River clean-up was one example of how development and conservation efforts could be integrated.
"We can’t just post people out of squatter areas, pig farms and backyard industries, we have to provide them with the infrastructure, the alternatives that they can move into."
The government in resiting or phasing these out had to replace them with alternatives such as compensation for pig farmers, hawker centres for street hawkers, flats for squatters and concessionary rents at industrial estates for backyard industries.
He said: "The cleaning-up of the Singapore River which was started in 1977 and took 10 years to complete, Illustrates a Singapore experience that an environmental restoration project could also achieve economic and social development."
The integrated efforts of the statutory boards and ministries in developing Singapore had served to expedite the clean-up, he said.
However, Mr Foong said that continuing efforts had to be made to keep the river clean. These include public education, covering drains with concrete slabs and gratings to prevent rubbish from getting into the sewage and fouling up the Singapore River.
The Clean and Green Week launched last month to promote and enhance a sense of concern and respect for the environment was named as an example of such a public education programme.
Yesterday was the second day of a four-day seminar to discuss if development and environment conservation can co-exist.
The participants at the seminar are from Asean and Asian countries. it is jointly organised by The Confederation of Asean Journalists (Singapore), Institute for Development Communication of Malaysia and the German Friedich-Naumann Foundation.
Journalists get together to, form a ‘green’ group
A GROUP of green-minded journalists ‘nave formed a committee to work for the protection of the environment.
The 13 journalists behind the proposed Singapore National Forum, of Environmental Journalists (SNEJ) are from the Singapore Press Holdings and the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation.
Mr Ivan Lim, chairman of the pro-tern committee, believes this will be the first environmentalist society in Singapore and It will aim to be pro-active on environmental issues.
He named reporters Dominic Nathan of The Straits Times, Hong Lee Tiam of the Business Times, Miss Zahara Lateef and Miss Sylvia Wong of the SBC as some members of the committee.
Mr Lim, who is also general secretary of the Singapore National Union of Journalists, said: "We hope to work closely with the Ministry of the Environment, with the National Council on the Environment, the Malayan Nature Society and other conservationist groups.
"It is the right time to be Involved in the green cause in the sense that it is the hot topic of the decade. We have tended to be toa complacent in the past and too reliant on the Government."
Some of the journalists, he said, would be sent abroad for training so that they would be more pro-active towards environmental Issues and have a better grasp of the subject In their reporting.
He said that other environmental-minded people such as artists, public-relations officers and people in the communications Industry can also join the group.
Source : The Straits Times, 19th December 1990
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