What causes the problems in our restroom?
While users' behavious causes the problems in our restroom, I think the issue of design and maintenance contribute greatly to these behaviours. For instance, if the design of the urinal is too high, children will urinate on the floor. The design is not logical, but people don't consider it.

As a result, we need to educate the owners of the building and analised to them how a good restroom benefits themselves, so they will develop a good restroom with complete products. While a lot of building owners pay attention to the developments of the lobby, the lifts, but seldom the restrooms, we want them to know that restrooms can be a feature of the buildings too. Rentability can go up if the owners can prove to the kind of things people expect.

What the R.A has done to tackle the public restroom problems in Singapore?
I note that because of the great numbers of campaigns by the government on various subjects every day, the public is tired of hearing "Do-this-Don't do that" message. Therefore messages have to be more subtle, indirect, thinking and humorous in order to be effective.

For example, I am currently working on the script of a Chinese Drama Series on Television Channel 8 with the idea of including the Restroom Association as part of the story line. The story line is about ambulance services and one of the main characters joints the Restroom Association as a member. After initially being ridiculed by his friends and colleagues, he eventually came up with several great ideas to successfully solve the dirty toilets problem in many places and won recognition from his friends that public toilet issues are indeed important and serious matters.

Apart from the drama, we also intend to work with producers of comedy programmes to include our public education messages. R.A. also went "live" on news Radio talk show where the public can phone-in and give suggestions or comments on the restroom issue for one hour.

This year the R.A Singapore coorganised the "Clean Toilets In Our Garden City" campaign jointly with the Ministry of the Environment. We also invited Coffee Shop Restaurant & Bar Owners Association to participate in our activities. Our activities in the month-long campaign includes The People's Choice Awards, where the public were invited to call our hotline number and nominate their choice of the cleanest public restroom in coffee shops, and food/market centres. Besides, we also held newspaper contests, website essay contest, and autobiographical Writing Contest for Primary School Children.

Who are the members in the R.A.?
To date, it has 17 members, including experts from an architectural firm, cleaning services companies, building material supplies companies, publicity and creative services companies, sanitary supplies companies, internet consultants, and other private individuals. We work closely with the Public Education Department of the Ministry of Environment in organizing this year's Clean Toilets Campaign. The pooling of resources from such experts can help solve the restroom problem at hand because restroom cleanliness and comfort issues are multi-faceted and require them to be tackled from various angles.

How do you get funding to organise all sort of events?
We don't have money, but we don't consider we are handicapped. Off course, you can do more things with money, but we still can do things without money. Therefore, we partner with people who are willing to undertake the events and supplies the materials needed.

When I go to people for possible joint partnership and tell them that I have no money, it's so much easier to talk with. They think that if you have no money, you won't want to talk to them; but you still talk to them, that means you are sincerely interested. So my job is to sell them the idea on promoting restroom education, whether they want to make profit out of the event is up to them, the organizers. We found this kind of partnership works pretty well.

Why you want to do this kind of volunteer job?
I'm 44-year-old already. It comes to a stage that you want to make a living, but you also want to do something that you feel like doing. I spend 20 percent of my time everyday for RA, while the benefits that go out didn't benefit members. When you have nothing to give, the people who want to share will come.

go to top