Using signboards to curb littering is just rubbish

 

I had a good week recently, visiting many parts of our country up in the northeast.

By the way, we Malaysians hardly use compass notations. We don’t say south-east or north-west to describe directions.

When Waze says “head south-east…” we’re flummoxed. Some ask, “where is south-east…?” Others ask, “what IS south-east…?”

The compass, the physical one, and perhaps other compasses too, don’t seem to play a big role in our life.

First, I drove into the jungles of Kelantan helping some NGO friends working with a remote Orang Asli community.

The area, once beautiful, is now all oil palm and rubber plantations. Many hills have been mowed down for the latest miracle crop – Musang King durians.

This has led to massive erosion that has silted up rivers. The water may be clear, but itchy with pesticides, fertilisers and mining runoff. And during the monsoon rains, they overflow easily, and often destructively.

I came out of the jungle and took the rough roads from Gua Musang to Kuala Berang, passing by Tasik Kenyir. When you’re in a big ugly 4×4, any rough road calls out “Come to Daddy…”

The beach at Tasik Kenyir is full of houseboats, abandoned equipment and buildings – and rubbish. But the landscape is breathtaking, a reminder of how beautiful our country still is.

I then drove north to Besut and hiked the delightful Bukit Keluang. It’s an easy climb anybody can do. I was rewarded with the beautiful vista of the sun rising over the sparkling waters of the South China Sea. And of course, plenty of rubbish there too.

I drove south to Kuala Terengganu with leisurely stops at places like Penarik and Kuala Merang for makan and chill.

A beautiful vista of the sun rising over the sparkling waters of the South China Sea.

Near Kuala Terengganu, I drove up and camped on Bukit Maras, a popular new site for launching paragliders.

The view from the top of the 329m-high hill is magical, especially at dusk when Kuala Terengganu yonder starts to light up and the sound of prayer calls reverberate from many points below.

Because the place is quite new, and not many people go there yet (you either hike or drive a 4×4) there’s not much rubbish.

I then drove further south to Kuala Dungun and took a boat to Tenggol Island, a great diving site. It’s a 45-minute trip through pristine waters.

And yes, there’s rubbish there too, even if Tenggol itself is relatively clean as it’s a protected marine park and has no settlements apart from some diving resorts.

I love the east coast of the peninsula, and Terengganu is a lovely place with lovely people, and I’m not trying to “rubbish” them.

Their problem with rubbish is not unique. But being blessed with beautiful islands, beaches and rivers makes any rubbish an even worse eyesore.

I’m a kampung boy, so I understand how this works. When I grew up, we casually tossed rubbish everywhere, at most to a pile nearby.

But rubbish then was “natural” and “organic” – banana or yam or other leaves and fronds used for wrapping, or untreated lumber that came from trees nearby.

Over time, they all rot and disappear, some even ending up as compost to help new growth.

You hardly saw any metals. They would have been collected and sold to the scrap iron guys. Though scrap iron, to us naughty and poor kampung boys, could also mean somebody’s fence posts!

That certainly doesn’t work now with plastic bags and Styrofoam and aluminium cans. They lie where they’re dumped and the plastics eventually break down into microplastics that often end up in the sea.

The breathtaking landscape overlooking Tasik Kenyir.

Everywhere I went in Terengganu I’d see anti-littering signs. Many were actually rather long messages which seem to express the idea of “cleanliness is next to godliness”. Some reminded people that littering is a sign of poor faith. Some even carry the same message but in hectoring or even sarcastic ways.

None says that if you litter, you’ll be punished. And none of the signs work.

Education is certainly an issue. In the old days most kampung folk were poorly educated or even illiterate. Life was tough. Fussing about litter wasn’t high on their priorities.

Sadly, nothing much has changed since. Most people are still poor and even now many are poorly educated, if at all.

This is strange for a state like Terengganu that’s so rich because of offshore oil. The wealth seems spent on ostentatious and showy projects whilst the masses remain as they were before the new-found wealth.

The local governments would probably say hey, we’ve posted signs telling people being dirty is not a sign of a person with faith, invoking God in the process. They’d go off happy they’ve done good by Him, and if nobody heeds the signs, then it’s not their problem.

Nowadays, many Muslims see Islam as something transactional. They do a good deed – check out our sarcastic anti-littering signs – so they get credit for the hereafter, and if nobody obeys them and things don’t improve, it’s not their fault.

They don’t feel they should be judged by the results – the environment is clean – but rather by efforts – we’ve put up signs invoking God against littering. Efforts are up to them; results are up to God.

Why can’t they arrest a few offenders and fine them? Oh, they’re poor people. Okay, get them to do civic duties cleaning up public spaces instead. Oh, too humiliating for them. Okay, bus them to another district and do it there. But, but…

When you have people who’re transactional (put up signs) rather than results-oriented (our communities are clean), things don’t improve, and would even deteriorate.

This mollycoddling and lowering of expectations is why the people’s lot doesn’t change. People don’t improve just because you tell them to – they improve if there are carrots and sticks involved in the persuasion.

This pandering, whether to co-religionists or mates by race, state, district, or kampung, is why there is so much rot in this country, over and above dirty kampungs and towns.

The populism we see from the top – doing whatever it takes to make their constituents happy and never holding them accountable to higher expectations – is what’s keeping us as a third world nation. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.