Yesterday morning, I woke up bright and early at 5am. Decided to take a 5km jog and by the time I finished my jog, it was only 6am. The sky was not even bright yet. I decided I might do a little fishing, so I took my fishing gear and headed down to Bedok Reservoir. As I reached the new fishing platform, there was a guy already fishing. Beautiful morning. The sky was a little overcast but nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful.

As I walked nearer, I noticed some rubbish strewn all over the platform (see picture above). Boy, was I disappointed. Here we have a beautiful reservoir and the government has just opened it up for fishing and other water sports, and even before this new platform is opened, rubbish were all over the place.

As I looked around a little more, I realised that those were not the only rubbish I saw left around. There were plastic bags, leftover food, cups etc… etc… What’s really bad was that some of these were strewn in the water. While not all of these were left by anglers, I’m sure some unscrupulous anglers played a role in some of these as well.

A week ago, I saw a student from Damai Primary School, just threw a plastic bag into the water after fishing. Schools ought to play a bigger role in teaching our students not to litter. I’m always of the opinion that Singapore is clean because we have cleaners cleaning the streets every day. However, just look into some of the canals and rivers running through the housing estates (especially those in Kallang) and you’ll see that the general population are still not educated about keeping the environment clean, especially the waterways.

Well, these were definitely signs that the “ugly Singaporean” still exists. I applaud the authorities for opening up the reservoir for water sports. Now I can even understand why our waterways and reservoirs were opened for fishing and other water sports so late. If they had been opened many years earlier, the issues of littering might have been even bigger. As anglers, we definitely have to do our part to educate the general public on environment protection, otherwise, the fishes won’t be there for our enjoyment for very long!

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