If you have ever been to a travel fair or a computer fair, you would see ' kiasu ' - a word here which means wanting to have the best - Singaporeans squeezing their way through immensly crowded booth to get to the front line to get the 'best' deal, may it be a free notebook or a simple 5% discount off a certain item. These people who are busy occupied with the 'fights' they are having, are oblivious to the emcee's presence who is trying desperately vieing for attention.
From the above paragraph, crowds prove to be difficult to manage. But this situation is not a beyond hopeless case, there are ways to conquer this feat.
I believe that one of the solution is through one's family. Parents should be a good role model to their children as they are influenced by what they constantly hear and see. Constant exposure to ignorance would cost the children to be ignorant and arrogant, which brings me to my next point.
A handful of adults in today's society are very arrogant, so much so that they are unhappy and lodge a poor quality service complain when someone ask politely for them to queue up to purchase goods or view exhibitions. Their arrogance which cause them to ignore instructions given which is one of the main cause of the increasingly difficulty in managing crowds. To solve the problem, I think that a policy could be used in such event for example a ' no queue, no purchase ' policy where if one fails to queue, he or she would be prohibited to purchase the product they are planning to buy. Some may say that Singaporeans ned not to be reminded but let me give you one fine example that Singaporeans needs to be reminded. Though stickers are placed at the traffic lights to tell us when to cross or not to cross the road, there are still staggering amount of sinagporeans who are jay-walking. Does this not show that Singaporeans have to be constantly reminded in the simplest thing such as queuing?
I have been a student councillor in my secondary school life and have attended 3 secondary one orientation camp as part of a committee. In the camp, I have noticed that secondary one students - though only have been in school for a few days - are amazingly noisy at times and the councillor that are able to manage them are those that are popular among them. Thus this brings me to my next point, popularity.
In exhibitions or small scale concerts at shopping malls, organisers should use popular artiste like fann wong or felicia chin to be the emcee and manage crowds. This should be done as they are public figures and people would have respect for them. Also a portion of the crowds are their ultimate fans and would defintely pay much attention to them. But than, the cost of hiring this widely admired celebrities are realtively costly.
My last and final point of managing crowds is through propaganda, an effective way as it reaches to almost everyone Singapore. Mediacorp could have attractive advertisement on crowd management broadcast. Comedy show like ' Everybody loves raymond' or 'My wife and kids' could have an episode on crowd management. Star world which is the most watched english channel in Singapore could come out with unusual yet funny slogans. For example, channel five 'the noose' programme had gurmit singh to remind Singaporeans no to drink and drive with the slogan ' don't drink and drive, you will spill the beer ' . Thouh comical, the idea is etched to our minds.
With the increasingly difficulty in managing crowds, the four solutions I have given should improve the problems.
