SINGAPORE : Elevators used as toilets

AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

SINGAPORE: Elevators in Singapore public-housing blocks are still sometimes being used as toilets, infuriating residents despite a long government campaign to eradicate the dirty habit, a report said today.

A suburban town council has put up notices showing a bare-bottomed woman apparently urinating in a lift and a man smoking

in another, the Sunday Times newspaper said.

The incriminating images were captured by closed-circuit cameras and published blurred as a warning. The Tampines Town Council said that if similar “anti-social” acts continue, it will publish clear pictures of offenders and submit them as evidence for prosecution under the Environmental Public Health Act.

Singapore is obsessed with cleanliness and wages regular campaigns to promote social graces, with sales of chewing gum banned and recalcitrant litterbugs shamed by being made to pick up trash in public.

But before mass public housing was launched in the 1960s, many Singaporeans lived in slums without indoor plumbing and carried unsanitary habits.

The newspaper said the smell of urine and cigarette smoke is the most persistent problem in lifts — but it can get worse.