| STATE
SECRETARY'S VIEW |
 |
| Tan Sri
Datuk Amar Hj Hamid Bugo |
CLEANLINESS
AS A WAY OF LIFE
We in
Sarawak have chosen Quality as a way of life. By so doing, we have committed
ourselves to practice a safe, clean and healthy lifestyle.
Nevertheless,
it is disappointing to note that in some places in our towns and cities we can
still notice the ugly habit of our people throwing rubbish anyhow and anywhere
they please without much regards to the danger to members of the public as well
as their families. For instance, throwing away fruit peels like durians or rambutans,
etc. from a moving vehicle is still not an uncommon habit! Now is the
season where we can get plenty of these fruits. Enjoy them by all means, but
be responsible enough to dispose off their peels in the proper manner, in a
bag kept in the car.
I am
pleased to note that the Dewan Bandaraya Kuching Utara, DBKU has taken the initiative
to launch a campaign to encourage motorists to use garbage bags in the vehicle.
These bags are made from recycled paper which, as most of us are aware, will
help to reduce the number of trees being felled in our forest. There bags are
to stop us from throwing rubbish out of the vehicles onto public roads and the
surroundings. Vehicle here includes the river passenger boats which we call
'tambang.' Once the bag is full, then we can empty it in our rubbish bins at
home to be disposed off by the rubbish collection team. The bag can still be
reused in the vehicle. I am hopeful that other local authorities in the country
will do the same to get everybody to learn and keep the environment clean and
rubbish-free and reduce the public expenses for rubbish collection and at the
same time help to prevent the potential outbreak of diseases from unhygienic
surroundings.
There
is a vision that I would like to see happening in our country. Right now, we
know that people just throw rubbish anywhere they like. There will come a stage
in the near future where our people will start to pick up rubbish and throw
them in the proper bins; people other than those who are paid to do them. Better
still, hopefully one day, there will be nobody throwing rubbish indiscriminately
but more people will pick up rubbish which happened to be in public places.
All these
can be done if we can shake off the imagination that we cannot have a place
where there is no rubbish. A zoo in San Diego trained their elephants to move
only three steps forward by tying up their legs so that they can move only three
paces forward. When the elephants are freed, they do not move more than three
paces forward as they imagined that the three paces forward are as far as they
can go. Don't be these elephants. We can stretch our imagination and imagine
a Sarawak which is clean and free of rubbish. This is part of the legacy that
we want to leave for our future generations.
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