Real reasons for dirty habits

When I first read your Editorial titled, 'A glaring lack of enforcement of existing laws' , I felt it was futile to respond to your statement "All three issues were unrelated except by one thing: a glaring lack of enforcement of existing laws and regulations" but when I read further the angry complaint by ' USJ business operators [who are] up in arms over indiscriminate garbage dumping behind their shops', I am of the view that The Star has been barking up the wrong tree, in its efforts to raise awareness on the dirty habits of Malaysians.

As the USJ business operators reported, and I quote, " We saw them throwing rubbish such as domestic waste and their unwanted furniture such as old mattresses and broken chairs. I once told off a group of foreign workers who dumped rubbish in the back lane and now I think they are doing it at night to escape detection." it is not TOTALLY the fault of enforcement officers and local Councils that the nation is in such dire straits regarding its filthy problem and the growing menace of leptospirosis. Foreign workers and residents work and stay in cramped conditions and come from countries where most of them had lived in abject poverty and where proper hygiene has never been emphasized. 

I remember an incident related to me by my brother in Muar, who had observed a Caucasian 'back packer' wondering in his residential area, holding an empty soft drink can, trying to look for a rubbish bin on the streets, and finding none. He, the tourist, did NOT throw the can anywhere. Now compare this with foreign workers who walk home through the backlanes of my residential area, holding plastic bags of teh tarik. Where do you think they threw the empty bags? Yes, into the drains, on the grass verge. Walk around any residential area after the weekend, and you will inevitably find empty beer cans and whiskey bottles lying on the road sides.

Of course it's not only the foreign workers that have this selfish habit, we Malaysians are guilty of this too. Even schoolchildren happily throw stuff out of school buses, all the time.

So, can enforcement really put a dent on this scourge? Not really, not until we, Malaysians and foreigners feel 'ownership' of the land that we set foot on.

Instead of trying to blame everyone else for the mess we are in, we should try to look at ourselves, deeply

 Real reasons for dirty habits