SINGAPORE: Entrepreneur Jack Sim took to social media on Wednesday (March 5) to say that a “Crazy Rich Millionaire who owns 35 coffee shops has no money to clean his toilets. The Ministry of Sustainability and Environment has to offer him a 95 per cent grant for him to clean his toilets.”
Mr Sim posted a screenshot of a 2015 Straits Times article about Hoon Thing Leong, the founder of the Kim San Leng chain of coffee shops, who passed away in 2021. The screenshot highlighted the number of coffee shops he had owned, “which made him a millionaire many times over”.
On Tuesday, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and the Environment Baey Yam Keng said that coffee shops will soon be able to tap into two grants of $5 million each to improve their toilets. The goal is to address the persistent issue of dirty public toilets in coffee shops and help operators improve hygiene standards.
Mr Sim, who founded the World Toilet Organization and is well-known as “Mr Toilet,” wrote that coffee shop owners are required under Singapore law to keep toilets clean and well-maintained. Otherwise, they face fines ranging from $500 to $5,000, depending on the severity of lapses found in the toilets on their premises.
“Accumulating 12 or more demerit points within 12 months can result in a suspension of one to three days,” he noted, adding, “But with 60 per cent of coffee shops rated as dirty, the current enforcement level is lax.”
Last month, an ST report said that in an evaluation of 2,600 toilets across different public venues, those in coffee shops received the lowest score, 46.26 out of 100. The score that restrooms at coffee shops received has remained the same in all the years the study has been conducted: 2016, 2020, 2023, and 2024.
Mr Sim then listed his recommendations for improving the conditions in coffee shop toilets. These include more frequent surprise inspections, fines of at least $2,000 for repeat offenders, a public toilet cleanliness grading system, employing smart technology for real-time monitoring, naming and shaming repeat offenders, and making toilet maintenance a mandatory part of hygiene training for F&B staff.
He added: “In China, they’ve influencers rating toilets and encouraging citizens (to give) feedback on Red Note 小红书 with geotag and it motivated premises owners to clean up or lose businesses. Singapore should learn from China.” /TISG
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