Citizen participation

As I was going to work in the wee hours of the morning, amidst my stupor (I'm always in that state in the morning), I noticed this sign placed on the staircase landing of my house. Apparently an irate resident had decided to take Grassroots action to resolve a problem that my wife and I had been regularly disgruntled about in our HDB home. The only difference was that this concerned individual took the extra effort to do something about it. By the way (side track a bit) not only had there been regular instances of public urination at the landing, there has even been a time where someone actually crapped on the landing (Yuck).

What are the different ways to take action in the community, for social problems such as these. Could this individual have done a mini community survey to identify the victims of this incident and then bring the matter up via petition to the member of parliament, or to Town Council. What would Town Council be able to do? 

Interestingly I attended a Grassroots meeting in an RC recently where they were vehemently debating this issue, complete with photos taken by CCTVs installed at the lift landing, showing several culprits marking their territory in different lift landings. I assume the public would be grateful that such a thing seemed to be high on the agenda in a meeting of grassroots leaders. For me, I'm just wondering whether we are too focussed on the grassroots level with small issues such as where to put parking lots, covering a hole near the drain, etc, instead of wider social issues in the community. Perhaps these small details are the ones that we perceive control over, as the latter may be too "controversial" or "not-easy-to-change" for our tastes. 

So I in summary if you have a problem such as an intruder defecating/urinating in you lift landing (or anything similar), here are possible ways to take community action

1. Bug your resident's committee chairperson to take action. If you bug him long enough your grievances may go all the way up to the citizen's consultative committee
2. Petition to the Member of Parliament in your area. Get more people to believe your cause by getting them to sign a document about their combined grievances. 
3. write numerous letters to Town Council. They might eventually relent and install a CCTV camera. (Btw is installing a camera cheaper than paying someone to clean up the mess regularly?)
4. Just take aggressive action, and threaten the said defecator/urinator (s)

Looks like option no 4 has worked so far, no human waste has been observed since Monday. 

We shall examine Community Work in greater detail soon (I hope)

 

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