Check this out, Selayang councillors!

This is so pai-seh lah!

Our neighbour down south is one up on us - they have the "Singapore-based World Toilet Organisation, which ... has members from 40 countries, and organises the World Toilet Summit which will be held this year in Moscow in September."

The World Toilet College (WTC), an educational-arm of the World Toilet Organisation have engaged a team of Japanese professional toilet cleaners to conduct a four-day seminar aimed to pass along advanced scrubbing and other skills to boost productivity and improve morale of Singaporean toilet cleaners.

Mr Katsumata and his two Japanese assistants gave a class of 51 local cleaners tips on dealing with choked toilet bowls and the curriculum includes a history of toilets, and how to dismantle urinals. They even learn to use hand mirrors to check for urine crystals which lead to bad smells.

Katsumata, who has organised similar seminars in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia, urged toilet cleaners to uphold Singapore's squeaky-clean reputation.

"We are a rich country and we have everything. Our image is that of a clean and green city. We can't have dirty toilets," WTC founder Jack Sim said.

The pilot course was funded by Singapore's trade union and the skills-development agency. Sim hopes that with funding, the course will be converted into a 64-hour training programme by October.

"Once we professionalise the job of the toilet cleaners, they will take pride in their job and their salaries will increase, so everybody wins: the cleaner, the user and the owner of the building," Sim said.

The course has left Santhi Cheti, a toilet cleaner for the past decade, feeling flush with success.

"Now I take home 750 dollars but (after the course) I can take home 900-950 dollars because now I know how to do some repairing," Cheti said of her monthly salary.

"I'm very happy because I learnt a lot."

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Did anyone notice any changes in the state of our public toilets after the Selayang Councillor's toilet-inspection trip to South Africa?

And what happened to the first National Public Toilet Design Competition?

Did it also got flushed down the drain after the prize-giving ceremony?

Maybe Malaysia should apply for membership to this World Toilet Organisation. Perhaps then, we could save lots of precious public funds by tapping on their expertise in solving our long-standing problems with public toilets.

And it's much much cheaper to send an entourage to Singapore than South Africa, isn't it?