my paper - Thursday, Jul 28, 2011
By Low Minmin
A man irked patrons of the crowded Golden Shoe Food Centre in
Raffles Place on Tuesday afternoon, telling a number of them not to
reserve seats by placing packets of tissue paper on tabletops.
"He was pointing at seats and asking why people were using
tissue packets (to reserve seats)," said manager Tan Li-Lin, 28,
who was among those approached by the man.
Ms Tan had been eating alone, seated beside two empty seats
which were "reserved" with tissue packets.
"My first thought was that this guy had obviously never had to
deal with the lunch-time rush before," said Ms Tan.
The food centre is popular with office workers in the Central
Business District who throng the place at lunch-time as it offers a
cheaper variety of food.
The practice of "reserving" seats with tissue packets has been a
bugbear of office workers there for years.
The man, Ms Tan said, had identified himself as a National
Environment Agency (NEA) officer and flashed what appeared to be a
warrant card.
He is believed to be in his 30s and was dressed in jeans. "His
tone sounded a little irritated and he was speaking quite loudly,"
she said.
Riled patrons were overheard complaining about his audacity as
they had never encountered a similar incident before.
In a statement yesterday, an NEA spokesman clarified that the
man is an environmental-health officer in charge of the food centre
and was doing his routine check during lunch hour that day.
He added that the officer had acted on "public feedback" that
patrons were reserving seats at the food centre with tissue packets
and, "out of good intention", had "advised patrons to be
considerate to others".
But the spokesman pointed out that NEA does not have a policy
against patrons reserving seats in hawker centres as this is on a
first-come, first-served basis.
"However, patrons should always be considerate to others when
sharing the facilities,"he added.
While NEA did not clarify the specifics of the officer's job
scope, Singapore Kindness Movement general secretary William Wan
said: "The fact that the gentleman took ownership of the problem
and tried to make a difference is commendable.
"But we have to be very careful that we distinguish between our
personal capacity and our capacity as an officer of a particular
organisation or ministry."
