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Feb 14, 2011
Landscaping industry lacks accountability
I APPLAUD Ms Tan Hui Yee for her special report ('What lies beneath'; Jan 29), which exposed a few unpleasant truths about Singapore's lush canopy, including some contractors' practice of stuffing the ground with pollutive soil.
I would like to share my experience to stress the need for accountability in the landscaping industry.
From late December to mid-January, I was working on my parents' garden (2m x 6m) adjacent to a 10-year-old house they had just bought. It being the rainy season, the garden was waterlogged. Knowing that Singapore has predominantly clay soil which does not drain well, I undertook to remove and replace some of it to improve the drainage. What I discovered in the process angered and disappointed me.
There was a layer of topsoil just under 5cm thick, below which was a thin layer of greyish material that, for accuracy, I will call 'unidentified'. Just under that was a layer of 'solid clay' a foot thick. Within the clay layer I found, among other things, broken tiles, brick fragments, cement 'stones', wire segments, wire tubing, packing material, styrofoam, drink cans, drink packets, metal plates and glass fragments.
I was furious, and contemplated legal action against the original developer but gave up on the idea after being told that the developer had gone out of business.
I propose that standards be drafted for landscaping work along with a certification scheme. In the event of non-compliance, immediate licence revocation should follow. As proving wrongdoing is straightforward, the legal system should facilitate the award of damages. Basing revocation on legal decisions would lend weight to the scheme.
All principals of a firm doing landscaping work should be named on certificates, and an individual being party to a firm previously engaged in wrongdoing should be indicated beside his name for a certain number of years. Such an effort need not even be government-driven. Interested consumers could set up a certification body on some seed money and fund the body through the certification process.
Jeremy Chen
http://www.straitstimes.com/STForum/Story/STIStory_634601.html
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