I can't wait to write this article. I have noticed many times already about this changing attitude. Perhaps many of readers did pay attention to this revolutionary activity as well. For sure, we have to appreciate such rewarding performance like this. This is the best ever model for building a civilized and stable society.
Quess what? It is the culture of cleaning wastes and whatever kind of trash that has become the spirit of many young Cambodians. Why this habit surprise me and all of you? It is because Cambodia or our Phnom Penh capital city was famous in the last few decades a country of disorganize and no discipline.
We can't reject this statement. Even though I am one of Khmer citizens and have to defend our country but I can't. It's, in fact, true that our country was and is not clean. Street, building, and peole are less organized. Even worse than that majority of Khmer did not pay much attention to good environment at all. Maybe some of readers feel and witness the same thing like I am doing right now.
Of course, we accept that we are not as hygiene as one standard society expect to be. Our city and country are not that clean to meet even regional standard. People's attitutde and awareness to clean environment are also ver low. If we walk down the roads in Phnom Penh city, we will encounter lots of wastes, trash, and dirty road etc. You can mane it when you were out there.
Additionally, we may also see Cambodian people both young and old, boys and girls or individual, couple and families are throwing remaining plastic bag and other types of wastes along the streets all over the city although the City Hall has its city regulation to forbid and even fine to those who disrespect the law. Many of Cambodians kept doing the same thing as it was.There were some explanations regarding this low and uncivilized behavior. For some scholars, they said that it was because of the war. People lost lots of good traditions and values that their ancesters had practiced before. Another would say it's because of seriousness of law implementation. Law has been created by no one has willing to enforce it. The other expalanation seems very convincing is because we do not have such lessons to teach and encourage students to do it at very early age, for example, during primary school.
I am not sure which one is correct but I am sure that right now thing has changed a lot. For the last three years as many of readers have noticed, there have been radical movements by many Cambodian adults towards cleaned city. They sometime gathered by a university initiation, voluntary groups or through social networks such as facebook. They happen to be very active in cleaning our city.
They seem very confident and brave in doing their social work although picking up trash is not a good job to do at all. They have changed their mindset from leaving the job to cleaner's responsibility to do it by themselves. This is very good point to talk about. Let's give credits and encourage this kind of behavior to keep running. Why we have to talk about this goodness? It's because for so long we have always fingered point to one another that were so inactive and did not help develop the country. But now there are people doing, we should also give recognition to them.
As many readers have witnessed, there were many activities relating to the cleaned society movement but I don't need to detail about that. What I wanted to raised all of readers' awareness is few voluntary events and happened without any pre-planing. One major example was during our 2003 King Father Sihanouk's funeral event. We have seen many young and old people joined hand together to clean our city especially the garden infront of Royal Palace. They did it so voluntary and with good heart.
Second major notice was the gathering via facebook by Life Library facebook page led by venerable Oeun Sam Art to clean our city every weekend. I also happened to join this activity few times. I really like it and very proud that I am part of the solution, not the trouble for the country.
The third, fourth, fifth.. and this time it happens in the Olympic Stadium after the football match. I have very carefully observed that it is now becoming a habit of many young Cambodia to share their responsibility in keeping the city clean. As you have seen in some video posted on facebook, both young and old people walked around the stadium and collected all wastes and put them into one organized place. I really like this behavoir. For a clear instance, during the Cambodian All Star Football Match with Thailand on January 23, 2016 hundred of thousands of people joined the match and, of course, thousand kilo of wastes left behind. We may think nobody will care of this but there were many Cambodians who joined that match cared. They did it by their bare hand. They finished and kept it clean before they left home.
Now, the habit of a cleaned city and cleaned enviroment in general has come deeper into Cambodians. Let's it be our new mindset. May it be our gene and continue to our next generation..!
Why don't we do this and let's have a world record or Guiness World Record on calling most youth to join the cleaning city in Cambodia.