Civic Consciousness and the Great Dirty Toilet Debate

After spending some time reading and commenting on Peter Tan's blog, I am thinking about the issue of 'Dirty Toilets and Dirty Malaysians' and also, 'The Abuse of Disabled Toilets'. It is not the nicest topic in the world, but when we start to think about it and the comments that have been put forward by people who read Peter Tan's blog, I am starting to form some understanding about this issue and the underlying problem.

People inevitably would comment in the lines of 'lack of civic consciousness', 'developing or developed nation but third world mentality', and 'poor upbringing and lack of awareness and education', referring to the abuse of public facilities.

When we analyse this bad attitude in detail, we find that, when one person starts to 'lead' the abuse, like abusing accessible toilets for disabled people, or not cleaning properly a toilet after he or she had used it, and then the next person who uses the toilet, would also follow suit with the bad attitude. (ie Follow the Leader style)...

So what I am saying is tha,t if this happens all over the country, where people take the lead in introducing the bad attitude, then there are many 'bad leaders'. We don't even have to go and do a research, but find out often enough, as we often go out ourselves, that this bad attitude habitually, repeats itself in many places and very often. So what's the deal?

Do we blame it on the lack of design of the toilet, or lack the number of toilet facilities or lack of good management in cleaning toilet facilities or what? The blame could be pointed to the tidak apa (laissez faire) attitude, selfish and me-first stance and also, for some people the blame could be directed to the government on top of that.

Generally, I would argue, in hotels, I do not find the toilets to be as dirty as in the shopping complex. So, could it be that, we tend to behave at places where we will be seen easily after we had done the 'job' (for example the hotel reception staff will notice who came out of the toilets) as oppose to when a person comes out of the toilets in a shopping complex. There are instances where some people do not really care if the toilets that they had just used are clean for the next person to use.

I find that it is odd that some people do not have respect for other people, when they do that sort of thing. Why is that? Does someone owe these disrespectful people something? Maybe, the government owe these disrespectful people something... go on, blame it on the government again!

Of course, we can discuss further in great detail, but I do not want to put off your meal. It is not the best topic in the world. But then I am starting to think, surely everyone was brought up by their parents to respect people and property. What happens as they grew older, though?

I am beginning to worry that Malaysians are getting to be a vengeful lot, deliberately disrespecting people and property, as they go on with their busy lives, with not enough time to make worthwhile activities and just want to get the best for themselves. And not caring what other people think of them, and displaying bad manners and attitude, as abusing toilets, and other things, like fighting for carparks, driving and overtaking wantonly.

You see, these things happen in the UK as well, but only in the minority, whereby in Malaysia, it is the majority. Is education and awareness training missing?

We are too busy chasing some desire, some dream, and we do not care what happens around us. We do not love and care what we have, in terms of civic pride.

Yes, the debate goes on and on...