A video of Singaporean sanitation advocate Associate Professor Jack Sim has gone viral across private messaging platforms, with its emotional critique of Singapore’s approach to public toilet hygiene reigniting national discussion on policy, enforcement, and the role of citizen activists.
The video, first published on 7 February by the YouTube talk show Inconvenient Questions, features Sim voicing deep frustration over what he perceives as official indifference to his decades of voluntary work on sanitation in Singapore.
Sim, better known as “Mr Toilet” for his global advocacy, begins by reaffirming his Singaporean identity and commitment. “As a Singaporean, I’m patriotic to my country, and I want to see it getting better,” he says in the video.
“For 27 years, I’ve been working for free to try to solve this [public toilet] problem.” He explains that while he has managed to persuade shopping malls, schools, and workplaces to improve toilet cleanliness, coffee shops remain an entrenched challenge.
Coffee shop owners, he says, have refused to upgrade facilities because “everybody knows it’s dirty, let’s keep it dirty so I don’t have to spend money cleaning it.”
He criticises the lack of collaboration from the National Environment Agency (NEA), claiming they now avoid him. “They treat me as if I’m very pressurising. I’m a bad guy torturing them to do the work they’re supposed to do,” he says.
Sim contrasts his experience in Singapore with his successes abroad. “I go to India, help Prime Minister Modi build 110 million toilets… I went to Brazil, raised funds to pass a law that attracted US$14 billion in sewage investment,” he states.
“If other countries welcome the help, why is it that my own country doesn’t welcome me?” he asks, before concluding with a plea that the Singapore government work with him to make local public toilets “as clean as China and as clean as Japan.”
Although the video initially received modest attention, it began circulating widely on WhatsApp in early March, just as Sim made more forceful criticisms through Facebook.
On 4 March, coinciding with the Committee of Supply 2025 debate in Parliament, Sim took aim at a newly announced S$10 million government initiative to fund toilet upgrades in coffee shops.
The scheme includes two S$5 million grants — one for renovations, another for deep cleaning — covering up to 95% of costs per coffee shop, managed by the NEA.
In announcing the initiative, Senior Parliamentary Secretary Baey Yam Keng described coffee shops as “natural gathering points” and stressed that improving their toilets was essential for public hygiene.
Baey noted that coffee shop toilets serve large numbers of the public, especially the elderly, and often lack the resources to maintain optimal cleanliness.
In 2023 alone, NEA and the Singapore Food Agency conducted nearly 19,000 public toilet inspections, issuing around 1,300 enforcement actions.
Calling the initiative a “grave mistake,” Sim argued that it unfairly uses taxpayers’ money to subsidise private businesses. “If you didn’t give money to shopping centres, why are you giving money to coffee shops?” he asked.
Two days later, on 6 March, Sim escalated his critique. In a new Facebook post, he questioned why millionaire coffee shop owners needed public funding to maintain hygiene, referencing the late Hoon Thing Leong, founder of the Kim San Leng chain, as an example of the sector’s financial strength.
He wrote, “Crazy Rich Millionaires of the Foochow Coffee Shop Owners Association, who own 35 coffee shops, have no money to clean their toilets,” criticising the decision to fund operators who, by law, are already responsible for toilet cleanliness.
Sim reiterated that stricter enforcement — not subsidies — was the appropriate response. “We have been talking about this problem for over 30 years without results,” he said, warning that the issue would persist without accountability.
His proposed solutions include stronger penalties, more surprise inspections, and greater use of technology, such as IoT sensors and QR feedback codes. He also advocated naming and shaming unhygienic coffee shops and making cleanliness training mandatory for F&B staff.
Sim has also called out perceived conflicts of interest, pointing out that Professor Paulin Straughan, a sociologist quoted in media defending the grants, is a paid consultant for the NEA.
The viral video, combined with Sim’s subsequent online commentary, has reignited a broader debate over whether public funds should support private sanitation infrastructure, or if more robust enforcement and civic accountability would produce better long-term outcomes.
As Sim’s video continues to circulate and draw public attention, it remains to be seen whether authorities will respond directly to his message — or re-engage one of the country’s most prominent sanitation advocates.
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