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Karung guni woman refuses to give students her empty cans
By Genevieve Jiang
August 14, 2008
IT was all over a drink can. And an empty one at that.
1. Students approach karung guni woman at Jurong hawker centre.
They ask her for her cans.
The debate: Who should have it?
It began when a group of students went out to look for empty
drink cans for a TV challenge.
Their task was to collect at least 8,500 empty cans so they can
be painted and stringed together to form a gigantic Singapore
flag.
The aim was to get into the Singapore Book of Records, by
breaking the last record of 8,470 cans set in 2006.
Groups of students from Fuhua Secondary, Hwa Chong Institution,
Innova Primary and Townsville Primary fanned out to look for the
cans.
Their search was filmed in last Tuesday’s episode of The Records
Challenge on Channel 8.
Students from Fuhua were filmed asking a karung guni woman for
some empty cans, but she refused.
Later, the students also had to give up some empty cans they had
found to the woman.
2. Karung guni woman refuses to hand over her cans. She says her
livelihood depends on the cans.
One of the students cried.
Some viewers said it was wrong of the students to ask the woman
for the cans.
A 31-year-old business development
manager, Foo Tze Wei, said: ‘To the students, the cans were to
break a record. But for the woman, every can contributes to her
three meals.’
Housewife Lee Yew Huang, 63, agreed, adding that it was
insensitive of them to ask the woman for the empty cans.
She said: ‘They must realise that it’s not easy for old people
to make a living this way. It was not justified for the student to
cry just because she couldn’t get the cans.’
But another viewer, a 24-year-old undergraduate Darren Tan, did
not think the students did anything wrong.
He said: ‘The students were just trying to complete their
assignment. And it’s not like they snatched the cans from the woman
or were rude to her.
‘I think it’s commendable that they gave up the cans that they
found to her, and even gave her some money.’
The programme’s host Pornsak also defended the students.
He told The New Paper that the students had gone to several
coffee shops before finding the empty cans.
3. She asks students to give her cans which they found. Students
agree. —Pictures: LIANHE WANBAO
Pornsak said: ‘It was a weekday afternoon and there were very
few customers at the coffee shops and hawker centres. The students
were doing this after class, so they could have been tired.
‘One of the students had set herself a target of 500 to 600 cans
within an hour. She thought it was going to be an easy task at
first, but it turned out otherwise.
‘She could have wept out of tiredness and disappointment.’
He added that the students, together with the filming crew, even
bought noodles for the woman.
During filming, students from Fuhua were scouring a Jurong
hawker centre for cans when a male student saw the woman, in her
50s, collecting cans.
He asked her for some of her cans but she refused, saying that
she depended on the cans for a living. The students then continued
their search within the hawker centre.
When they finally found some empty cans, the same woman
approached them and asked them to let her have them.
The woman said: ‘Can you let me have the cans, please? Have a
kind heart. If I don’t collect enough cans, I won’t have food to
eat today.
‘You are still young and can continue to hunt for cans. And
there are so many of you, whereas I’m alone.’
When contacted, a spokesman for Fuhua said: ‘The students gave
away the six cans they found to the old woman.
‘Before the students went out to collect cans, they didn’t know
how hard it was for these elderly people. Now, they do.’
Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao interviewed several karung
guni women and they said that collecting cans was a difficult
living.
A 80-year-old woman, who wanted to be
known only as Madam Feng, collects cans at the Chong Pang market
every afternoon.
She said she works seven hours a every day, but earns just
between $10 and $20 a week.
Another woman in her 70s, who sources at Sengkang, said she
sometimes has to compete with students and other welfare groups who
are trying to raise money or collect materials for recycling.
Madam Feng said: ‘These young people are strong and energetic.
How do we compete with them?’
