PUB's sewer cleaners are responsible for cleaning and maintaining over 3,600km of public sewers here. By the end of 2024, a total of 1,000 new sensors will be installed around Singapore to help its Water Reclamation Network Department respond to chokage cases more quickly.
These underground blockages often go unnoticed until a toilet bowl fails or, worse, coughs up its contents.
Mr Saiful’s team is responsible for cleaning and maintaining a total of 3,600km of public sewers in Singapore, a vast expansion from about 550km that Singapore had when PUB was formed in 1963. In 2017, cleaners in London encountered a 250m-long fatberg that comprised congealed fat, wet wipes, nappies, oil and condoms, and weighed a whopping 130 tonnes – nearly as heavy as a blue whale.
A choke behind Newton Food Centre’s toilet in May required the team to lift one manhole cover after another to trace which segments of the sewer were affected. Mr Saiful added: “Sometimes, they curse. Mostly, they will just shout at us… Sometimes they tell us, ‘If we don’t have any issue, why do you need to come into our house to check?’When homeowners show a lack of sympathy for their neighbours experiencing the effects of a choked sewer, the team has little choice but to find an inspection chamber farther downstream – an effort that can double the time taken to unclog a sewer, said Mr Saiful.
Every day, PUB inspects or cleans about 2.5km of sewers, with the aid of remote-controlled robotic CCTV cameras that act as eyes for the team. They are safer, more efficient and more thorough in their inspections of the sewers. The CCTV footage is also recorded for subsequent review. By the late 1980s, the manual disposal of night soil through buckets, which Mr Musa used while growing up in a seaside kampung, was replaced with a seamless network of sewers, pumping stations and treatment plants.
MINISTRY OF SUSTAINABILITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT MAINTENANCE ENVIRONMENT CLEANER SEWER SEWERAGE SINGAPORE INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS HOME IN FOCUS THROUGH THE LENS ST DISCOVER
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