Report: Dirty Elevator Habits Cause a Stink in Singapore report

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 Sunday.

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 with them after moving to high-rise apartment blocks.

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

"Sometimes there's faeces as well," housewife Jo Neo, 40, told the newspaper. "What happened to civic-mindedness?"

People who smoke in prohibited places are normally fined Sg$200 ($161), while those who urinate in public places are fined Sg$150, the report said. Repeat offenders and those who defecate in public places can be charged in court.

"As the lift is a communal facility, it is important for our residents to treasure it and be considerate to other users," a spokesman for the town council was quoted as saying.

More than 80 percent of Singaporeans live in government-built apartment blocks because of land scarcity in the affluent city-state.