SINGAPORE, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- Singapore, which has won the reputation as a Garden City, has reported more litter bugs caught since 2006.
According to Channel NewsAsia reports on Sunday night, In 2006,only 122 offenders were issued with Corrective Work Orders (CWO), but the number of CWOs issued over the past two years has increased to 1,052 as of last month.
Over 60 percent of offenders are young people below the age of 30.
In the first 11 months of this year, 30,200 tickets for littering have been issued, and this is in part due to stepped-up enforcement by Singapore's National Environment Agency (NEA).
Tai Ji Choong, a NEA official, was quoted as saying that CWO has up till now still been effective because the number of repeat offenders has remained low and fairly consistent over the years.
In fact, repeat offenders for the last five years have not exceeded three percent, he added.
Each year, the city state has to spend 37 million Singapore dollars (about 25 million U.S. dollars) cleaning the streets.
In Singapore, the CWO scheme was implemented in 1992, and tougher laws were imposed in 1999 after a record 8652 litterbugs were caught the year before.
Currently, litterbugs have to serve up to a maximum of 12 hours of community service, involving clearing areas that have litter, and the maximum fine for repeat offenders is 5,000 Singapore dollars (about 3378.3 U.S. dollars).