Mohamad Azhan with some of the winners of the clean toilet award and clean food handling award at Petaling Jaya Civic Centre. – LOW LAY PHON/The Star
About 90% of public toilets in Petaling Jaya, Selangor have been found to be at a satisfactory level following inspections made on facilities throughout the city.
“A majority of toilets are of satisfactory quality but some 10% of the toilets were not at their best.
“This could also be attributed to factors such as restaurants with a large number of customers using the toilets, old toilet facilities and the public’s behaviour,” said Petaling Jaya mayor Mohamad Azhan Md Amir at the Clean Food Handling Premises and Clean Toilet Award ceremony held at Petaling Jaya Civic Centre.
He added that a clean toilet often reflected the level of cleanliness practised by the premises and everyone deserved the right to a clean toilet.
“This award is for us to acknowledge the effort put into ensuring cleanliness and making sure these facilities are always clean and inspected.
“About 2.6 billion humans live in non-sanitary places and they are forced to relieve themselves in open spaces, rivers and close to where they live.
“It is estimated that about 1.8 million humans, mostly consisting of children, suffer the consequences because of contaminated food and water each year,” he said.
After reviewing 424 toilets, Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) identified 35 as the cleanest in the city.
The clean toilet award was divided into categories such as primary and secondary school, council-owned, public transport hub, places of worship, higher learning institution, shopping complex, market and stalls, air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned restaurants and gas stations.
For schools, SMK Seksyen 8 Kota Damansara, SMK Seksyen 4 Kota Damansara, Kolej Tingkatan 6 Petaling Jaya, SJK(C) Chen Moh, SK Bandar Baru Sri Damansara (2) and SK Methodist Petaling Jaya are schools with the cleanest toilets.
In addition, the city council recognised 84 food handlers for keeping clean food handling areas.
The clean food handling award was divided into categories such as air-conditioned restaurant, non-air-conditioned restaurant, hotel kitchen, cafe and bakeries, fast food restaurants, shopping complexes, private food court, council food court as well as primary and secondary school canteen.
Under the clean school canteen category, SJK (C) Yuk Chai, SK Taman Megah, SK Assunta (1), SK Petaling Jaya, SJK (T) Vivekananda, SMK Sri Permata, SMK (P) Assunta, SMK (L) La Salle and SMJK Katholik were named as winners.
