The four Chinese characters had a prestige effect. No poster was pasted by any political party or religious body. It was certainly no advertisement too.

During those days we could see notices of religious bodies, election campaign posters of political parties and product advertisements on the walls and street lamp posts.

Fifty years later, I used to see people ignored the warning and pasted posters anywhere they liked to. Although we could see the advice, warning or notice of fine given, people were just careless. They were fighting against the law.

Whatever warning or notice of fine given, they just could not bother. That was useless!

Fifteen years ago, in order to get a baby-sitter, I inserted a few classified advertisements with the local newspapers. It did not bring me any good response. I then decided to paste a little poster around the estate I stayed. I found a number of notice boards. They were locked and some of them displayed outdated notices.

I then printed few pieces of little poster and pasted them at the lift landings. I wished them people would read it before entering the lift. It was not nice to do so. I gave myself a target date to remove all the posters even if my dream did not come true.

Is there a way to settle this matter on a mutually beneficial basis?

The residents may sometimes have to get an hourly basis domestic helper or to sell their unnecessary appliances. Some neighbourhood shops may wish to employ a worker. Some nearly factories may like to get workers from that estate. The Residents Committee (RC) could then do something good for the residents. RC could help to display those posters on their notice board. Definitely, some money should be collected for displaying those posters. That money collected could be used by the RC for their activities.