Kota Kinabalu: Some 100 smokers were given pocket ashtrays at City Hall's Anti-Kutu Sampah (Anti-Litterbugs) Campaign at the Gaya Street Fair, Sunday, to help reduce littering. The pocket ashtrays are in fact small metal canisters that are used as packaging material for a popular imported breath mint, were quickly picked up by the public at the Campaign here.
City Hall Director General Datuk Dr Chua Kim Hing, told reporters that smokers could use the metal canister as a pocket ashtray where they could extinguish cigarette butts instead of tossing them onto the streets, sidewalks or into drains.
"I think it's actually good that we're giving these mints to smokers. Firstly, they have to eat all the mints before they can use its metal container as a pocket ashtray. It's good because it may help reduce their smoking habit.
Secondly, most smokers like to throw their cigarette butts indiscriminately onto roads, pavements, and into drains. At least with this, they can use it as a pocket ashtray for them to discard their cigarette butts," Chua said.
The objective of the campaign was to create awareness among the public on cleanliness and to encourage proper disposal of rubbish. The campaign also delivered reminders to the public that City Hall would constantly have this campaign to effectively promote awareness.
"We will continuously have this campaign, here and in other places around the area such as in shopping malls. We want the public to know that they can help to do their part in keeping the City clean and litter free by disposing rubbish properly and mindfully," he said.
He also explained why City Hall didn't use the word gotong-royong in their campaign.
"I don't like to use those words because it actually means that people litter and others clean-up after them. This is not the mentality that we want people to have. It's an old and outdated mentality. We don't want to clean up after litterbugs, we want to get rid of them, hence the name of the campaign, Anti-litterbugs," he said.
The campaign also invited the public to register to become City Friends (Rakan Bandaraya).
City Friend is a programme that City Hall introduced two years ago that allowed members to reproof litterbugs.
"We have around 20,000 members but its seems we are lacking in quality members," Chua said, explaining that most members forgot about their duties to practice and promote cleanliness.
Among other efforts to promote cleanliness awareness, City Hall will have patrol vehicles going around the City promoting awareness via a speaker system that would be mounted on top of the vehicle. The same would be done on boats to promote it on the seashores of beaches and other areas. It will also look into getting the co-operation of airline operators to help promote the awareness to passengers on board flights on route to the City.
The campaign had some 46 enforcement officers plus a number of volunteers that patrolled around the City area to catch litterbugs. If caught, litterbugs face being fined RM10 - RM500.
