Alexander Chan Meng Wah
Singapore
“Sir, I think the Committee on Ageing Issues has offered many good suggestions. But, looking at them, I think many of the suggestions have to do with changes to hard infrastructure. Clearly, those are absolutely necessary. My question has to do with ageism. I think the issue is also one of attitude.”
“This will help Singapore companies, not just those operating in Singapore but also Singapore companies operating overseas, to be one of the safest in the world to work in. I also want to say that the Ministry has actively sought feedback on the proposed Bill.”
“Sir, one of the successes of the British investigation after the fact was that they had a network of thousands of closed circuit televisions and there was one statistic which said that the chance of a Londoner being caught on camera is like 300 times a day.”
“A point of clarification regarding safety culture. I fully agree with the Minister in taking a cultural approach to improving safety. I also agree that the 10 years for halving the fatality rate is a reasonable set of targets.”
“I thank Mr Hawazi for the explanation of the many activities that the Ministry of Education is doing. I fully appreciate that. Just as much as the education process totally immerses the students in the content and experience, this other thing about CCA and CIP is, we have more of a "smell the flowers" approach at this time.”
“I would like to ask the Minister how he assesses the situation and whether he views the clusters as fulfilling the original goals and objectives, whether there is a need to change these goals and objectives and therefore whether there is a further change anticipated to the clusters.”
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Every one of 47 lines we hold for Alexander Chan Meng Wah, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account.
“Sir, I think the Committee on Ageing Issues has offered many good suggestions. But, looking at them, I think many of the suggestions have to do with changes to hard infrastructure. Clearly, those are absolutely necessary. My question has to do with ageism. I think the issue is also one of attitude. I am just wondering whether the Ministry will work with the media agencies which seem, as a systematic process, to report age in most of the reports that they put out.”
“Getting visitors to the doorstep and trying the product is the next step, then having a memorable experience and a good outcome must surely be the objective for repeat and sustainable business. Achieving the memorable experience and the "wow" outcome is a collective effort of all Singaporeans in product knowledge and customer service culture. It also requires the concerted effort of private and public partnerships and inter-agency coordination to make the entire business value chain a viable and sustainable one in a challenging and small domestic market. I think we need to nurture domestic tourism and local consumption spending in our own tourism products. The Esplanade would never be successful if Singaporeans are unwilling to pay for entertainment. The S-League would not succeed if we do not support and pay admission charges to watch the matches. Since the budgets are prepared and segmented by Ministries, my questions are: Is there a budget for promotion of domestic tourism and for ideas creation, product generation and origination of services and products, just as we have for technology R&D? Which are the agencies involved and which agency is leading or driving the coordination? Are we adequately investing in new ideas and projects? Is the Government prepared to be aggressive to seed fund new ideas? Integrated Resort”
“Sir, Singapore is chosen to position itself as a global city that is prepared to compete for the world's investment and consumption dollars and for the best human capital. Global competition among cities is intense for technology investments, and the EDB has a long history of success in doing this for Singapore. In the past, we could just offer land, engineers, tax incentives and reliable logistics to win. Today, as PM Lee said in his Budget debate's closing speech, we need to meet or beat an ever growing list of the best of breed items. But chasing and winning the race for foreign investments is only one part of the success equation. The receptacles or factors of operations for the conduct of successful business must be available, ready and also competitively best of breed. This includes our hard and soft infrastructures, our human capital and our overall social environment. We have proven that we can build, run and maintain our hard infrastructures. We are now being tested whether we can educate, train and retrain our human capital to meet the challenges of the future. We are now also showing that we are able to invest or wanting to invest heavily in R&D to generate the future technology that will hopefully have a strong economic impact on Singapore and indeed the world. There are no guarantees for economic returns, but without the bold attempt to engage the future possibilities, we will surely be out of the race and lose our significance. The point I am trying to make is in today's incredibly noisy world, getting noticed is a "must have" first step. Dubai, through its mega-tourism project, is a good example.”
“This will help Singapore companies, not just those operating in Singapore but also Singapore companies operating overseas, to be one of the safest in the world to work in. I also want to say that the Ministry has actively sought feedback on the proposed Bill. Several dialogue sessions were held with members of both SNEF and the Singapore Business Federation, and many of the feedback from companies have been incorporated in the Bill. I therefore support the Ministry not only for proposing the Bill, but also engaging the industry in the process. I am in full support of it. 5.30 pm”
“Under the new goal setting framework that more emphasis be placed on stakeholders to self-regulate and manage risks at source, I welcome this emphasis to foster a safety culture and to make safety an integral aspect of the workplace. What is noteworthy is the non-prescriptive nature of the Bill. This puts the onus on employers to make proper risk assessments that are specific to their business and to develop and then to put in place health and safety measures that are preventative in nature and appropriate to the work environment. This would avoid unnecessary costs for overburdensome measures. However, I do note that in the Third Schedule of the proposed Bill, listing occupational diseases, only repetitive strain disorders of the upper limbs are listed. What about similar disorders for the lower back, for example, in cases where repetitive lifting work is carried out? We certainly are not intending to only provide for the office worker and not for the manual worker involved in heavy manual lifting work. So I would like to propose that these be considered for inclusion. The Bill will have an overall effect of raising the professionalism of those involved in safety and health practices. Companies must therefore respond proactively to the Bill and invest in the skills upgrading of their staff involved in these areas. Such investment must extend beyond safety and health officers. It needs to engage management and supervisors who are involved in operations as well. Management must appreciate that this is an investment we must make. This will ensure that every company develops a safety culture that is sustainable by the staff and workers in the company.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to speak on the Bill. I rise to speak in support of the Workplace Safety and Health Bill aimed at achieving quantum improvements in workplace safety and health and in making workplaces in Singapore one of the safest in the world. Through the work of the Ministry, safety standards have improved steadily for the past decade. Industrial accident frequency rates fell from 2.8 per million man-hours worked in 1994 to 2.2 per million man-hours worked in 2004. But as we have stated before, in the case of occupational fatality, this is still double that in the safer developed countries. And the Bill therefore aims correctly to halve this rate in the next 10 years. We also have our share of workplace accidents, several of them high profile ones involving the loss of precious lives in a variety of industries and workplaces. Each of those lives lost or workers seriously hurt as a result of poor workplace safety practices cannot be condoned. In the years ahead, with the growing emphasis on entrepreneurship, this country will see the birth of many new local companies. I anticipate that many of these businesses will have managements which will not have had the benefit and experience of being part of a larger and more established multinational environment. As such, these managements will have to originate their company practices, including its workplace safety and health practices. I sincerely hope that we do not see a cycle of declining workplace safety and health as a result of this economic progression. So this revamped Workplace Safety and Health Bill is timely. Providing a safe working environment is the duty of every employer, but its achievement is also a shared responsibility of every employee.”
“While the changes proposed may reflect the effects of inflation of a time and perhaps some more financial burden on the offenders, it does not seem to go enough to reflect the increasing competence of our NS commanders. I would like to suggest that the SAF provide more responsibility to lower level Disciplinary Officers, for example, by way of expanding upon the types of offences under their charge, in addition to just increasing the scale of fines relative to the existing scales. Also, if the Superior Commanders are given more powers, in terms of fines, detention, reduction of ranks and reversion of ranks, the number of cases going before the general court martial will be much reduced. Presently, there are probably too many court martial cases because of the lack of powers on the part of the Superior Commanders. This would then shift responsibility and accountability lower down and it should also have a concomitant effect of reducing workload at the higher level of disciplinary jurisdictions. Therefore, while I am in support of the direction and the quantum of increases to the fines, as proposed in this amendment, I also hope to see further amendments to the SAF Act to put more responsibility for discipline further down the organisation to NS and career commanders.”
“Mr Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak on the Bill. The amendments have proposed increasing the existing range of fines imposable by various levels of disciplinary officers for offences under the SAF Act, from the current $100 to $2,000 to the new range of $300 to $10,000. These are multiples of three to five times the current levels. In the light of the development of the SAF towards a third generation fighting force, the SAF will be staffed by more highly trained and educated soldiers at all levels. In fact, a 3G SAF is made possible only because Singapore has the right kind of human capital to undertake this kind of development. Against this background, I can see the logic to keep up with the times and to increase the scale of fines for offences committed. However, I note that the quanta and multiples have increased for higher levels of disciplinary officers such as superior commanders, more so than for less senior ones such as Junior Disciplinary Officers. As the specific detailed schedule of offences for which the fines are used as punishment is not evident in the amendment, I have to ask if this then means that there has not been any change to the disciplinary responsibilities in spite of a more capable and responsible SAF organisation. Since we will find more SAF commanders and regular career commanders at the Junior Disciplinary Officer levels than at the senior levels, by virtue of promotional opportunities within the timeframe, the amendments proposed seem to give me the impression that we are not recognising the possibility for more disciplinary responsibilities for NS commanders. So, while this amendment proposes the wielding of a bigger financial stick, it is still the same stick in the manner of speaking.”
“Sir, with regard to this particular species of mosquitoes, since all our efforts are directed at urban breeding areas, do these mosquitoes, for example, breed in green areas near urban centres and, if so, do they peregrinate into the urban centres and, if they do, do we have any programmes to deal with that? Because we may succeed fighting the urban war but we may not succeed in actually preventing this particular problem. Assoc. Prof. Dr Yaacob Ibrahim: I am not familiar with the science behind all these things. What I know is that the mosquitoes need human blood in order for them to procreate. It feeds on, for example, sugar just for its own energy, but it needs the human blood in order for it to procreate. So it has to go into where there is human population in order for it to procreate. As to whether we have found instances of mosquitoes breeding in our parks, we are in close contact with NParks and the authorities responsible for managing our parks, to work closely to ensure that there are no natural habitats for the mosquitoes to breed. But as to whether they migrate from our green parks of the country to urban areas, I am not able to answer that question. But I am most happy to check and reply to him on that.”
“Sir, one of the successes of the British investigation after the fact was that they had a network of thousands of closed circuit televisions and there was one statistic which said that the chance of a Londoner being caught on camera is like 300 times a day. My question is whether or not we think that this might be necessary for us to implement in Singapore.”
“Sir, coming back to the topic of youth community space at Orchard, Orchard Road is a confluence point - Heeren, Orchard CineLeisure, K-Box and Marche are all there. These are all the teenage things. It seems like it was quite opportune to plonk the youth thing in Orchard Road. But I think the point that was raised by hon. Members - Miss Penny Low and Ms Eunice Olsen - about the idea of having a similar concept in other parts of Singapore is something that we should think seriously about. In this case, of course, we should then be trying to look for where are those other confluences and to allow those things to happen more naturally, as what I think happened in the case of Orchard Road. My question is: what is the kind of organisational structure that is going to be in place at Orchard Road, presumably, to handle these things? I would like to think that the youths are going to take charge of the activities, which therefore begs the question that at some point, somebody is not going to be a youth, and therefore has to graduate out of being in charge. I think there are things which we need to think about, which should be quite more natural as opposed to contriving something to say, well, this is youth and we put the infrastructure there and, hopefully, the people can enjoy themselves. And the office bearers get into an aged mode, and then we have a non-youth problem. Maybe the whole thing needs to be studied with a bit more natural rhythm.”
“Can the Minister clarify, with regard to the $300 million, is that $500 million plus $300 million, which means $800 million, or does he mean that it is $300 million beyond the first five years, which might then be lower than before?”
“Sir, my point is that, by our well-intended policies to improve our proficiencies in our mother tongue, we have concomitantly traded off the benefits of having English as a common working language. Similarly, I anticipate that the formation of more ethic-based self-help groups could also inadvertently have other consequences only because it becomes administratively convenient for policy implementation, because we now have a reporting label and a mail box. It is quite common for official reports and for the media to report things using our convenient racial sort of criteria, eg, smoking incident, school results, crime statistics. Again, we are all cognisant that this was not the original intent. But once conveniences become available, they do become easily too convenient. So, there seems to be a need to find more opportunities and social glue, both public and private sector NGOs, to offer cross-racial boundary activities that further bind our society. My questions, therefore, are: How does MCYS keep a pulse on these matters? What is the state of race relations deep down? And what are our future strategies for improving race relations further, beyond campaigns?”
“Sir, in many multi-ethnic societies around the world, recent world events and terrorism have definitely caused some stresses and strains on inter-communal relations, whether covert or overt. Multi-racial Singapore was not spared nor insulated from such terrorist threat developments. We had our share of tests and near misses. If any of the JI plans had happened, for example, Singapore could have suffered an unpredictably protracted period of difficult race relations. Protected by a Constitution, Singapore today has a good history of peaceful community life recognising our multi-ethnicity, multi-cultural heritage and multi-language and multi-religious nature. Today, we have a number of organisations, eg, self-help groups that are specifically race-based and function to serve only within their own community. The logic of this is that each community is best able to deal with her own kind. While we can easily understand the merits of this logic, I feel that in addition to some benefits, we may also have, by such design, created the organisational and administrative boundaries and interstices between such groups. We recently started to debate the issue of lack of Malay language skills, for example, made evident during the humanitarian efforts in Banda Aceh. In the workplace, we can easily observe that people tend to congregate among their own races, eg, Chinese lunch with Chinese, Malays with Malays. This is, of course, natural. And, in Singapore, there may not be anything insidious about such behaviour. Nevertheless, we have somewhat diminished the fact of having English be one type of social inter-racial glue in everyday life.”
“A point of clarification regarding safety culture. I fully agree with the Minister in taking a cultural approach to improving safety. I also agree that the 10 years for halving the fatality rate is a reasonable set of targets. In order for the country to approach that, I think individual firms would have to probably adopt zero defects, zero fatality targets. So I do not think it is a compromise. My question is: in order to encourage this, would the Minister consider incentives for firms to either train up on new kinds of discipline, like zero defects? Even for building contracts, would the contractor with zero defect be given a bonus for zero defect?”
“In a very real sense, Singapore will be forced to remake its economy at the firm level and redevelop all these company skills again. It is going to get worse before it gets better. The training needs of Singaporean workers will shift from training provided by larger companies to training where the individual employee has to do more by himself or herself. Our manpower training expenditure experience clearly shows that large firms which have mostly been MNCs, GLCs, publicly-listed local companies and the Government agencies themselves are the better people developers, spending more per head count than smaller local companies. We need to anticipate this possible change in the structure of the manpower scenario of the future. Is it therefore possible that the WDA and other private and public training agencies will have to deal not just with training of more mature displaced workers like now but also new job entrants and even management staff as well? I wish to ask the Minister whether MOM has begun to anticipate what would be the future strategies and areas of emphasis for WDA, and how we can use the opportunity to enhance the success of entrepreneurship in Singapore.”
“Sir, the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) was formed as a result of one of the recommendations of the ERC to address the retraining needs of many Singaporeans who lost their jobs. Many of these retrenchments happened during the economic recession when many companies down sized, right sized or relocated their operations to lower-cost regions. Although a significant number of such unemployed workers came from manufacturing, no segment was spared. Blue and white-collar jobs, production operators to senior managers, younger and older workers, both local and foreign, were affected. So the WDA now serves as a new age adult education board, an agency that we had in the earlier time. Would the Minister for Manpower enlighten us how has the WDA performed since its inception and share where it has met with good success and where it faces challenges? Sir, while the recent past job losses arose from global economic conditions affecting MNCs and their local supply partners causing many to shed parts of their workforces, I anticipate that the future structure of the economy in Singapore will be one weighted less on MNCs and more towards local companies. Under this scenario, many more Singaporeans will be working in local companies, many of them starting life as young entrepreneur-led profit-seeking organisations. By their very nature, they will have to develop their own business systems largely from scratch, not imported from parent headquarters as the foreign MNCs gave us in the 70s and 80s. Singapore companies will also have to learn to grow from small to medium to large, learn to address domestic, then regional, then global markets, and learn to handle the key functions of business, manufacturing, marketing, product development, logistics, administration, etc.”
“I thank Mr Hawazi for the explanation of the many activities that the Ministry of Education is doing. I fully appreciate that. Just as much as the education process totally immerses the students in the content and experience, this other thing about CCA and CIP is, we have more of a "smell the flowers" approach at this time. I hope that in years to come, it is going to go beyond that. Then you do not have a situation, like the one which was brought up by the hon. Member, Mdm Ho Geok Choo, where you have a disabled person being ostracised within his own community. I hope that we can go truly down into rootedness, not about the physical thing but about the spirit.”
“In fact, our system insulates and segments, perhaps, inadvertently. Sir, I think we already lack the number and the variety of different organisations' activities and substantial linkages for our school children into the community. We do not have a surfeit of organisations that can be a kind of a common platform, a familiar vehicle to carry children from childhood into young adulthood, other than our shopping centres. The idea here is that our children can be involved in such organisations on a regular basis that will become potential anchors to enhance rootedness. I applaud the Minister for leading the rapid and widespread transformation of our education system to inject more positive experiences with its renewed emphasis on teaching, less learning more, the changes to mother tongue teaching, the call for more sports, a new admission system, beefing up the teaching cadre and opening up of school sports facilities to the public. However, I wish to ask the Minister for Education what MOE is doing to develop more team work, a stronger sense of community, nationhood, regional understanding and, also, how our schools can be better plugged into our community for both students and staff. Sexuality Education”
“Sir, in an IPS survey of 1999 involving a random sample of 1,451 Singaporean citizens between 15 and 64 of age, it was noticed that Singaporeans were generally very positive and very strongly patriotic to the country when abstract concepts, like pride, sense of belonging, and what Singapore means to them were mentioned. On the other hand, questions regarding more economic and pragmatic issues, like job loss, defending the nation in periods of tension, returned less wholly positive answers. There was also a strong positive correlation between age of respondents and national pride score. Apparently, the younger the Singaporeans, the lesser their national pride. In my view, strong feelings for Singapore are built up over a long period of time, reinforced by positive experiences but also damaged by unfavourable experiences. This just means that the process must start from young and in school. During school age, what happens? Our children are managed and educated by our schools, first, in the primary school for six years, and then potentially by a different institution, a secondary school for four years, and then another set of institutions - the JCs, ITE or polytechnics and, subsequently, perhaps the universities. Or, if you are a Singaporean male, you are then handed over to the SAF. Thereafter, they are released to the workplace. In each case, the responsible organisation, more or less, fully consumes the available time for its primary purposes, whether that be for education, in the case of schools, or for military training. This leaves very little precious time for other purposes, such as building community relations, enhancing rootedness and love for Singapore and, furthermore, developing a more than superficial understanding about our own and neighbouring cultures.”
“I would like to ask the Minister how he assesses the situation and whether he views the clusters as fulfilling the original goals and objectives, whether there is a need to change these goals and objectives and therefore whether there is a further change anticipated to the clusters.”
“Sir, our public healthcare delivery system was reorganised into two vertically integrated delivery networks - the National Healthcare Group (NHG) and the Singapore Health Services (SHS). This was to enable more integrated and better quality healthcare services through greater cooperation and collaboration among public sector healthcare providers. Let me declare that I am a director on the board of the National Healthcare Group, one of the two public healthcare clusters. Having seen the genesis and the early-stage transformation of this cluster, I know that there were numerous challenges to meet, as expected in any new organisation with new management, newly created and reformed competition, the changing patient demand picture and the newly crafted regional segmentation of the restructured hospitals. There was great impact on staff at many levels, leading to movements between hospitals and clusters, due largely to the perceived imbalance of medical disciplines between the two clusters at the start, and the perceived difference in management styles as well. In any case, five years after the birth, these two hospital clusters have stabilised their respective operations. The entities seem to be driven by well staffed mission oriented management teams supported by their respective boards. There have been critics of the cluster system as well as supporters no doubt. The rising development of competing hospital systems in the neighbouring countries as others before me have talked about, plus the continuing public attention on healthcare costs, may have also added some doubt as to whether the original goals and objectives of hospital clustering are being achieved.”
“So I think that we need to rethink and to restructure our thinking on how to support this industry. My question to the Minister is: has the Ministry studied the deep structural dynamics in this very inter-related manufacturing sector, between the MNCs, the local enterprises and the SMEs? And what strategies the Government has in mind to keep the manufacturer as a viable employer and contributing to the value-added output? Economic Development Assistance Schemes”
“Mr Chairman, Sir, manufacturing is a very big sector in Singapore. At the end of 2003, it employed 420,000 people, of which 259,000 were Singaporeans. But I look at the years from 1993 to 2003, the total manufacturing employment declined in six out of 11 years; in nine out of 11, the local or the Singaporean employment base actually declined. Now, if I use the electronics sector as a very big part of it, investments in electronics totalled US$4.2 billion in 2003 and it comprised 56% of the total amount of all local and foreign investments. The stock of FDI was $20 billion by 2000 and that was 50% of the total manufacturing FDI. So, clearly electronics not only dominated the FDI, it also dominated R&D expenditure, and 30% of total US$1.8 billion in 2001, whereas bio-medical was only forming 9%. Now I think that we are used to the diurnal rhythm of the tides. When we get used to it, our formula for success is very much the same. If you lose one firm, then you find another firm to replace it. I think we are suffering a little bit with this syndrome. I worry that this diurnal rhythm is going to be substituted later on by a tide that does not come back, unless it comes back with a very big tsunami. Now, if I look at the changes which I see, we grew, as Dr John Chen put out earlier on, based on the back of MNC growth. The MNCs did a lot of good. They taught local companies how to do many things and functions. I think when the MNCs begin to pull out of Singapore, the next generation of Singapore firms is not going to have these tutors. We are going to find that the Singapore firms would have to learn very much by themselves and at the time when we are asking them to do good product development and become good product marketeers as well.”
“So, the question is: what is MINDEF doing to address this possibility of the need for more training, and would the shortened NS liability require more talented NSmen to volunteer beyond statutory requirement?”
“Sir, Mr Leong Horn Kee has the privilege which I do not have. His son has also finished NS. The only difference is that I do not have a son. I am still an active serving NSman on a volunteer basis. So when the little green flashing man flashes, I do have some duties that I have to pay attention to. The SAF has provided a silent and effective deterrent to any potential aggressor. I think our capabilities have been well exemplified in the recent Aceh tsunami. But less discernible values are also the changes in the attractiveness of the SAF, in the sense that there is an increasing desirability of our sons in wanting to become officers. Operational readiness requires many important things to come together well - technology deployment, adequate training, proper doctrine, assessment of threat, good public acceptance of National Service, proper administration and the symbiotic relationship, professional relationship between the regular cadre and National Servicemen. Well, times are a-changing. Changes in geo-politics, new threat, growth of East Asia, business opportunities, smaller families and, therefore, fewer sons, new munitions, etc, all these have put new challenges on the SAF. My question is: have some of these new challenges created a situation where MINDEF has to pay attention and study the possible changes in attitudes to our young men and, if so, what are those results? SAF has definitely become a more flexible operationally ready fighting force and, in some cases, also a non-fighting force. This requires more training. In fact, with the deployment of more sophisticated systems, training needs to be more integrated. I think the Minister earlier had said that in many situations, the reserve force performs just as well, if not, better than the NS units.”
“Perhaps these new rules will create opportunities to have more integrated actions by forcing collaboration on common issues among Members; better still, between Members and Ministers. If we can do that, we will be on the way to creating opportunities and building a Singapore community. If we cannot do this, then I am afraid that we would have solidified our legacy. With that hope, I support the motion. EXEMPTED BUSINESS (Motion) Resolved, That the debate on the Budget Statement be proceeded with beyond 7.00 pm and the proceedings thereon be exempted at this day's sitting from the provisions of Standing Order No. 91(3). - [Mr Mah Bow Tan]. ANNUAL BUDGET STATEMENT Debate resumed.”
“But he failed to notice that right by the lady's tee was another sand box in a proper position. I can explain the reason why people make divots when the ball is teed up. It is because of the sea and the OB markers, but I could not, for the life of me, understand why this 30-year-old, good-looking, healthy Singaporean male saw his job only as ticking off the foursome. As the storm clouds loomed overhead, I asked him whether it might rain, hoping for a rain check. And his predictable reply was, "It hardly rains at Sentosa." He was merely fulfilling his employer's economic goals. After the first hole, the Club sounded the rain signal and we were stuck under the shade for the next 45 minutes waiting for the all-clear signal. Maybe a day will come when our parents and our teachers will no longer say to our kids, "by right, this" or "by right, that". The right comes from rote and likely stems from repetitive action and driven by efficiency. Equally, I also hope that when we set policies, we also remove the concept of "no second bite of the cherry". As the hon. Member, Mr Iswaran, said yesterday, if it is necessary, we should do it. To conclude, we will be entering the debate in the Committee of Supply with a new set of rules. This will limit each Member to a maximum of 18 minutes. It appears that this is driven by efficiency. So being well-trained in efficiency, I dutifully submitted 18 minutes, six cuts, three minutes a cut. We could have opted to speak faster if time was a limitation but, perhaps, our interpreters would be simply too stressed out, and it is not good for the staff. It will not be a desirable outcome.”
“In this case, the space available for that particular section was a couple of lines. Instead of asking the applicant to write any additional things on a blank sheet and attach it, the civil servant insisted that only that form could be used and if there was not enough space, he could give you multiple copies and you just keep filling that little section up. This is how we work, often with too little empowerment, too often blindly following old rules and not achieving outcomes desired by the public. I hear that now the Government is going further in sophistication to implement KPIs built upon EVA or NEV. These are very complex measures fit only for economists. What I fear is that we are going to do this using our current mindset. I therefore hope that a strong shift towards effectiveness, as seen through the public eyes, will mean a totally fresh approach to the setting of KPIs and to offer us a chance to achieve a real mindset change, not just in the Government bureaucracy but also in the society at large. If you think this mindset is happening only in the civil service, I assure you that the civil service is not alone. Let me use another example. I played one of my rare golf games at the Sentosa Golf Club, Tanjong Course, last Saturday. At the first tee box, a threatening par four with the sea and the OB markers on the right. The box was sent to repair divots on the tee which was located about 10 metres in front of the white tees. Many have left divots unrepaired and the reason is simple - the sand box is just too far ahead. So I brought this to the starter's attention and I suggested that the sand box be moved to the tee position. He promptly said that there was a lady's tee in front further ahead, so we could share.”
“But I had in mind, to myself, to be effective and efficient, bring back a plateful for the rest of my table. Lo and behold, the well-dressed serving chef told me that four sticks were all I could have and, if I wanted more, I had to re-queue. The Singapore norm had arrived at the Istana. A quick glance through the expenditure estimates book quickly reveals that we have workload and performance indicators reported for all Ministries. These are likely judiciously collected and reported on over many years. Most of them are measures of work, not measures of outcomes. Many of these measures are also private as opposed to public in the sense that only those within the organisation reporting them identify with them. One thing is for sure - what gets measured gets attention and gets done. So what is my point? If we keep mindlessly plugging at this efficiency mindset, it becomes a mind trap and Singaporean golfers would be improving their efficiency by lowering the cost of green fees per stroke, which is hardly an effective outcome. Or our public services - they definitely have no problems - trying to come up with KPIs to improve patient-to-doctor ratios, student-to-teacher ratios, cars per kilometre on road, etc. All these are efficiency measures. Surely, our desired outcomes must be to cure patients, provide an education to our kids and have smooth running transportation. Just to give Members a sense of how deeply mindsetted some of our Government departments are, let me quote you another example which I just heard last night at a gathering of business people over dinner. This is related to the approval of some kind of project where many professional parties have to fill in the respective sections on a Government form.”
“When any organisation pursues efficiency, it starts to look inwards and measure things simply as transaction per unit time or per unit of resource. I think this is in part due to our being reminded constantly that we have very limited resources. Unfortunately, an efficiency only based mindset more often than not ignores the real necessity to identify with the ultimate customers' needs for their service. In fact, by pushing harder and harder on KPIs relating to efficiency, we run the real risk of not meeting the external public needs. Let me cite a scene at a typical Government office. You go to the information desk, you are told which queue to go to, take a queue number, wait patiently in the queue while watching Mr Bean, arrive at the counter, submit the document, get told to go to another queue - simple formula, always works. But does it? The queue performance reports would all show reasonable good performance, but who actually looks at these reports unless someone from the public complains? Then, we all have the statistics and show how we perform. On average, this is for the typical and modal case. Lest you think I am painting all departments this way, let me say that there are a number of excellent customer satisfying examples in the civil service. That was a hypothetical but nonetheless representative case. Here is a real and recent experience. The scene now is in the recent, "chap goh mei" reception at the finest lawn in Singapore, the Istana. I was queuing like everyone else. Once the starter pistol for dinner was given, I headed for the satay stall. I arrived at the chef serving station in about 10 minutes. Fortunately, I did not have to stomach Mr Bean because conversation was all right along the way. Anyway, I was given four sticks of satay.”
“I think it is time to find more ways to multiply this impact and to modify the Singapore brand as something exportable, and not just a domestically consumable notion. We must contemplate this seriously. As we speak, the Sports Hub is being planned for. We will replace the National Stadium, and, together with the beautiful Indoor Stadium, the new integrated sports facilities at Kallang will be a thriving hub for sports and recreational activities for people of all ages, casino-free. Also, as we speak, a new Botanic Garden is being planned for at Marina South. I read that a 10,000-seat outdoor arena is being built there as well. So in addition to the contemplated integrated casino resort, we will potentially have an over supply of entertainment facilities. The world of arts, entertainment and sports events is not one of "built it" and it will come. It is one of shrewd economics and touchy emotions. I hope that the Singapore Government will take an integrated approach to planning these facilities or we will pass an inadvertent structural unbalance to the venue operators, the promoters and other stakeholders, and eventually to the people of Singapore. These projects are under different Ministries. So I urge the Government to use this opportunity for integrated action as it seeks to create value for the future. Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the second area I want to speak on is on Government effectiveness. Here, I wish to view them through an x-ray lens since we have a good number of doctors in this House. I agree wholeheartedly with both PM Lee's and DPM Tan's recent statements about pushing for effectiveness in the civil service more importantly than efficiency.”
“Integration must go beyond this to grow the many necessary tenuous and multi-varied bonds to weave the fabric of Singapore as a strong and dynamic nation. I was enjoying an eye-opening performance of Lady Salsa on Sunday. It told the history of Cuba by way of a musical and through the eyes of its protagonist, an African-Cuban. As she told her life story through the different stages of Cuban nationhood, what struck me was how that society, through its fusion of its music and dance art forms and religions, developed a totally robust and uniquely Cuban identity that has bound and integrated their country. We all know Cuban music and dance in some way or other, eg, rumba, chachacha, salsa, guantanamera. Salsa dance clubs are a rage among our young adults here and in many other countries around the world. Our Singaporean practitioners enjoyed themselves on the aisle and on stage when audience participation was called upon. The synthesised Cuban brand is truly not only well-known but recognisable and exported all around the world. The Cubans are obviously very proud of it. I left the show, asking myself, "So where is our 'Uniquely Singaporean' equivalent?" I tried, but I could not name one. There is a current debate about our Singapore brand, more a result of the raging debate on the casino. While it is one thing to experience the brand in Singapore, and there is real value to this brand because it attracts many foreign professionals to pursue their career and family choices here, it is another thing to be able to package it for export and for further value creation. If it cannot be exported, then only four million residents and eight million tourists a year can potentially enjoy this.”
“That, surely, is the same call for an integrated approach, targeted in this case for local enterprise. I believe, and I agree, that this must be Singapore's focus, going forward. We must strongly support our local enterprises, big and small, just as other hon. Members have said before me. In my view, new opportunities for Singaporeans can come about through utilising this approach and seeking synthesis at the same time. Synthesis is about creating something from its constituents. It is well established that we have the greatest problem to work cross-boundary in our system, for some reason. Perhaps our institutions are so well-defined, controlled and proceduralised that many things come to a standstill when projects and ideas have to require inter, not intra, organisational decision making. We are trapped in a world of circular logjam where one department is waiting for another to kickstart the approval. With a strict budget control environment within Government and a no-mistakes-allowed culture for wrongdoing, it is almost impossible to get ease of passage for new projects and ideas that have to be cross-boundary. Using the momentum of Remaking Singapore, I would make a very strong call for an integrated approach across the entire spectrum of society, and this must go beyond economic spheres. I would, therefore, like to see our Budgets more readily show and measure the initiatives that have to go cross-boundary. I feel that an integrated approach also embraces the Government's concept of inclusiveness. Whereas inclusiveness may just mean ensuring that those at the margin of society, eg, the minorities, disadvantaged, unheard, etc, are included.”
“We see the rise of advertising and mass communication to outshout competition in an already very crowded world. We see ever shortening product life cycles, whether due to fashion or fad, or worse, due to in-built self-destruction. In trying to find and fill whatever niches that may exist, we have to resort to mass customisation, as was earlier pointed out. Sir, what do these developments have for Singapore? In today's world, Singapore does not have the biggest this or the tallest that, or even the fastest other. When globalisation and modern information technology provide the conditions for almost a perfect market, these arbitrage opportunities disappear very quickly. What firms and organisations could do well individually is now just not enough to compete, especially when the lack of domestic scale forces all of us to contemplate competing on at least the regional, if not a global, scale right from the start. We now cannot be happy just about environmental scanning, because there is not very much left to seize. We have to resort to other tools, such as scenario planning, in other words, fortune telling. With that as an imperative, how do we take our points of strength and make them stronger. In my view, as far as governmental action is concerned, one way is for us to push for more integrated and holistic action. And this integrated approach must eventually pervade all in our society, so that it becomes a new type and a higher level of competitiveness and, hopefully, one which is more difficult to achieve by other competitors. Hon. Member Dr Amy Khor referred to this idea as a "multi-pronged" approach. Mr Inderjit Singh mooted the idea of a Local Enterprises Development Board.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, thank you for the opportunity to join in the debate. Being 42nd in the overall queue has got some benefits and challenges. So, let me borrow Ms Eunice Olsen's description of ourselves as "newbies" - albeit I am a much older one - and I will let the more seasoned hon. Members peek at the Budget with their microscope and their surgical instruments. I wish to comment on two areas in particular, ie, on creating opportunities and Government effectiveness. First, on creating opportunities. I wish to view this aspect through a wide-angle lens, in order that I do not miss the wood for the trees. The world has become one of paradoxes. We are in one sense in over-capacity in many physical consumer goods relative to their natural demand. This over-abundance may even be true today of more modern products, such as pop music and information. This has led to extreme competition for the sale of too many products and services. While there seem to be greater choices for consumers, in reality, little separates these choices. Few goods have distinctiveness that sustains beyond one or two years of product life. This analogy is also becoming evident in the competition among countries for FDI, talent and ideas. At the same time, we do see scarcity in other commodities, such as building materials, as a result of the great current construction boom in developing Asia. But we also see a scarcity of real talent or innovation, and one would even say of tolerance and human kindness. How has the economic world responded to these effects? What is becoming clear, short of having human conflicts or natural disasters disrupt supply, the modern world, more often than not, artificially creates demand.”
“Some of our statistics may show improvement in our country situation, but the underlying threat of future economic tsunamis still exists for us, and many of our citizens are still suffering various forms of hardship. Our reconstruction must continue. Yesterday, this House heard a question on how to get our older citizens to engage in a more active lifestyle. My answer would be: by getting them to get into the habit when they were in school. Our changes must start with our young. Sir, I am very much in agreement with engaging and energising our young. Our President did not just paint a picture of paradise, as was pointed out by one Member yesterday. To me, he painted a picture of the continuing work that needs to be done by all of us. It is a picture of opportunity, perhaps on a canvas unseen, but it is certainly for us to seize. I support the motion.”
“How then can we expect them to sink roots and to have them grow long and deep, so that when the floodwaters recede a new plant grows? Two, we cannot ignore the gentle or weak signals, as they may portend a disaster yet to come. The reports of the tsunami, the lack of warning, the lack of sharing these warning signs, the lack of proper reporting, then lack of faith in the warnings, all show our custom to the status quo and our continued belief in the paradigms that brought us success in the past. More light-heartedly, I am not saying that a spouse's constant nagging is a gentle signal, but when that nagging stops, often a tsunami follows. Three, the tsunami shows also that knowledge is important to understand our complex world. The story of the 10-year old British girl who learnt her geography lessons well and remembered the tell-tale signs of an oncoming tsunami, and warned the people around her, is especially convincing. Today, this generation has been more or less fully educated about tsunamis, and it will be remembered because there was a context. We must really check what is learnt, not what is taught. Let us find new contexts for learning. Four, the little girl's knowledge only had value because people listened to her. Would a Singaporean parent or adult have given the same credence to our 10 year-old? Talk about listening to the young! Yes, there is a big difference between listening and heeding. Action is only taken after we heed, not when we just listen. Finally, while there is an apparent calm after this tsunami, there is still a real and present danger.”
“Having measures and KPIs for everything does not necessarily result in better outcomes. It reminds me of an Olympic Games video which depicted some Olympic heroes and athletes in action. The caption read: "Speed is measured in seconds. Distance in metres. But we can't measure courage." I also recall what Mr Hsieh Fu Hua, the CEO of SGX, said among friends when he commented on what he got from school. He said that what made him, and what he took away, were more the intangibles than the tangibles. I concur with him, since it is by chance, that we shared the same teachers. At that time, even the tangibles were not measured. US psychologist B F Skinner said it more succinctly: "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten." In closing, quite a few of our Members have spoken about the tsunami. I did not have the opportunity to experience the aftermath first-hand and so I cannot relate the personal tales as others have. Nevertheless, I have learned a few lessons which I now wish to share. One, the survival of any community or country depends upon the mettle of the little people, the common people. This will ring true as we see happening in the reconstruction. Observers will be able to see for themselves if there is differential progress made by the various countries hit by the recent tsunamis, depending upon each community's spirit. Our youth today get passed from primary to secondary to tertiary schools, each one optimising their own organisation goals. For our males, the SAF takes over and they then pass them on to the real world. We lack the continuous community and organisational vehicles to transport them across all these organisational boundaries today.”
“Firms today are often unable to predict their own business levels beyond three to six months ahead. We will be less able to predict which technologies and business models will win in the market places of the future. That being the case, how must we approach our planning for manpower, skills and competencies? Our children must be prepared for many changes in their working lifetime, be able to cope with continuous learning as required, and operate in a multi-cultural environment. This in turn means that they have to be offered as many choices of study and learning as possible, and to be given as varied a school experience as we can give. I already see this beginning to happen. We must give our children a new context for survival and belonging. Their world is no longer one of "we are good, so we can get the business". Students of science and technology must also understand ancient history, culture and people. If our appreciation of the arts is limited only to that of Western high art form, they will not appreciate the art of the common folk in this region. So while I support the birth of the special schools for the arts, sports, special needs, etc, let us also ensure that our future generation is firmly plugged into our neighbourhood, so to speak. The renewed emphasis on sports participation in schools, rather than sports only to win medals to be put onto the school principal's report card, is another example of going in the right direction. To make Singapore our home, this home must be one full of life's experiences. Study alone cannot fulfil this task, but a broad-based holistic education can. On the area of metrics, measures and KPIs, may I say that we already do too much benchmarking.”
“If we admit that, then we must also admit that not every policy issue studied and implemented may necessarily produce the desired outcome for Singapore. This just means Government has to continually adjust its methods, processes and, most importantly, our paradigms for Singapore. Personally, I actually see this happening already. This, too, our President has mentioned in his speech, when he said, "we will encourage more people to dream of new ideas, pursue them with passion, and open up new opportunities for our economy". These new dreams require different interpretations for sure, or our dreamers remain that, or they spawn a new psychiatric industry, or they take their dreams elsewhere. So I am glad to hear anecdotes that our civil servants are at least asking "why not". But do not stop there and then sabotage the idea behind the walls. Sir, I would like to bring up several questions for all Singaporeans to ponder. Firstly, do we possess the ability to imagine or create opportunities in our hearts and minds in the first place? It appears from the constant drone of feedback that this is perhaps our fundamental problem to begin with. Do we lack the education our forefathers and earlier entrepreneurs wished they had the opportunity to have? Our Education Ministry has tons of metrics to show how well our students and schools do. Do we also lack the opportunity to be exposed to the global community in this Internet and international media age? So if well-educated people, electronically connected to the rest of the world, cannot see the opportunities, something has not gone that right. This then brings me to our future generation and our youth. The future world will pose many more questions and fewer definitive answers.”
“This leadership will demand responsibilities beyond pure economics as there should be the concomitant corporate social responsibility as well. A flexible and pro-business approach has also been re-emphasised by the President. Given today's high stakes game of winning business and investments, and accelerated by the global high technology world, I urge that every Government official, every decision-maker, and every regulatory department, act with extreme urgency and speed. One of the members of the international panel on university education was quoted in our media as saying, and I paraphrase, that "it does not matter whether a country is big or small, but rather, whether you are slow or fast". Can our Government departments make speedy decisions, even as they may not know whether the decisions made are right or wrong? Well, if it cannot be deliberately pro-business, perhaps it can be immediately flexible. So, I offer a twist to PM Lee's duck and hippo tale: if our bureaucrats cannot duck the proposal, at least be prepared to cheer "hip hip hurray"! I have sometimes heard our civil service claim that most problems and issues we face in Singapore have been studied, and studied extensively and deeply as well. Indeed, we are all thankful for this rigour, and I would rather have that than no analysis and careful thought into our policies. However, every well-conceived analysis has to have a model or paradigm of decision-making attached to it. Just like the cold war methods of intelligence analysis spawned decisions pertinent to that era, they could not be effective against current-day 9/11 style terrorism. The world has changed, not just in the political sphere, but also in the economic, business and social senses.”
“So we must turn our attention to the question of who our future partners for development and success should be. The President has thrown some light onto this question. He called for us to work with our ASEAN neighbours for a common good, and at the same time, to cultivate our ties with China and India. With rising competition from gigantic regional countries, no more important the concept of a thriving cooperative ASEAN economic trade area than now. Our new economic partners of tomorrow would be more Asian than Western in nature. There would be new differences that could arise from this. In my view, the past MNCs from the US and Europe were leading corporations of their day with leadership practices in their areas of expertise. These may have been in manufacturing processes, quality systems, project management, legal contracting, IT, whatever. The new partners of tomorrow may not be that in advance of our own practices because the economic space is now more crowded; they may not have the resources like before because of extreme competition; or they may not even be as willing a partner. This means that Singaporeans have to be able to create their own value in their ecosystems. In other words, we have to bring value and innovation to the table, and we have to be able to create opportunities and solve problems ourselves, or as a part of larger teams. These are newer skills and this poses new challenges for a large part of our working population, as well as for many of our business leaders, as they are more used to the leading role played by our first generation multinational partners in industrialisation. In the next lap, Singapore firms will have to come to the fore and take the lead, and only then reap the benefits as our western MNC economic partners did before.”
“This is not to be interpreted to mean the same thing as an iron rice bowl, or that we do not touch the status quo. It is to mean that employers, Government policy-makers and stakeholders have the responsibility to try their best to create jobs and grow the web of relationships, not to destroy them. I do not think we can today repeat a forced systematic driving out of whole legitimate businesses or industries, however low value-adding they may be, just because they did not fit a masterplan. Mr Inderjit Singh mentioned yesterday about the NIH (or not invented here) syndrome used to deal with project proposals. I agree with him that there is a good dose of this in many places in our administration, and this may stem in part from internal competition for recognition, or from our misplaced notion of scarcity of resources. If we were less dogmatic about our policies, who knows, we may have spawned a local IKEA from one of our local innovative wood furniture makers in Singapore. Our economy has grown in both breadth and depth. The first generation of MNC partners have come in the 1970s and 80s, and most have either expanded into the Asian region or even left Singapore, to where costs are lower and markets are bigger. The stakes are significantly higher now, for individual firms as well as for countries, for each investment decision taken or not taken, and each move made or not made can be a fairly defining and decisive one. Sir, I think most Singaporeans feel that we do not lack leaders who have a proper grasp of a vision for our country. I also think the majority of our adult citizens would say with conviction that they are willing to work hard and to go the extra mile if necessary.”
“Today, slightly better terminology labels them as part of the value chain or even more accurately as part of an ecosystem, with each part providing its own essential value. It is instructive to note that those SMEs that formed the supporting industries then were started by entrepreneurs who probably knew very little about how to do what they perceived to be the requirements of those MNCs. So how did they succeed? Bob Reiss, a successful entrepreneur and author of the book, "Low-Risk, High-Reward: Starting and Growing your Small Business with Minimal Risk", says: "Entrepreneurship is the recognition and pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources you currently control, with confidence that you can succeed, with the flexibility to change course as necessary, and with the will to rebound from setbacks." Those early SMEs saw a glimmer of opportunity, imagined they could achieve success, and they acted. Our forefathers, when they braved the high seas on the least safe of vessels, and the founders of those SMEs, certainly qualify to use the entrepreneur label. Many of these first generation SMEs today are themselves regional companies and a few even global MNCs in their own right. Some of them still have their founders at the helm. An ecosystem is not organised just by economic transactions. Like all natural ecosystems, it thrives or not depending upon the interaction among all its participants in its environment, there is a more-or-less survival-of-the-fittest reckoning system, a continuous rebalancing that happens, and catastrophic consequences often happen when the status quo suffers a disruptive change. Recognising this fine balance of any ecosystem, we need to preserve its chemistry.”
“Life has become more orderly on the surface and we depend upon working systems for maximum productivity and stability. We could do it because our early generation leaders had the vision, our people had the guts and were willing to go along, and equally notably, we could find economic partners to show us the way and to work with us through what was often at that time uncharted territory. The history of the Jurong Industrial Estate rising from our swamps and the subsequent growth of manufacturing in Singapore is a key testimony of this wonderful tripartite combination. Again, the opportunity was imagined and created in our minds, and then we acted on it as if by faith. We are familiar with the electronics growth in our manufacturing industry, those economic partners in those pioneering days were primarily American, European, and some Japanese. Those companies were themselves growing enterprises, looking everywhere for more markets and for more resources. Most of those companies forged abroad without formal economic support from their own governments. In fact, we farsightedly found it expedient to provide some of them the financial and fiscal incentives. Some of these companies, such as HP, GE, Motorola, Philips, Matsushita, still exist today, probably several tens or hundreds of times bigger in size than before, and they created for Singapore hundreds of thousands of man-years of work. They came to Singapore and the Far East as manufacturers of goods, later as product developers and marketers. This led to the emergence and development of our current generation of local manufacturing companies, often under-value-labelled locally as the supporting industries.”
“Mr Speaker, Sir, the President, in his Address, has painted a broad vision for Singaporeans. While this vision is not entirely new or surprising to many, for me, it provided the comfort of familiarity and a refreshed viewpoint, both in its areas of emphases, as well as in its subtleties. It has positioned our view ahead and, more importantly, our approach going forward more clearly. His address was less about "what" and "where", but more about "how". In particular, the words, "making Singapore a land of opportunity for our people, so that this will long be the place where talent, energy and vitality congregate" should strike a very strong chord for the business community and its economic players, as well as for the ordinary citizen. I want to dwell a little bit on the concept of opportunity. Opportunity has first got to be created and recognised, in our hearts and minds, and then to be taken. In recent debates in this House on the subject of entrepreneurship, Members have passionately talked about the need for re-building this spirit. Our forefathers and mothers, as immigrants, came with a healthy dose of adventure, courage, enterprise, and, very likely, of fear and uncertainty as well. They did not know what lay beyond the horizon, save perhaps for the hope of finding a better place. The opportunity, though unknown, was imagined and created in their hearts and minds. In the course of the recent past few generations of Singaporeans, we have modernised our country, added to our stock of knowledge, become facile with high technology and complex systems, built an international city state, and in the process, won quite a few accolades in many fields of our chosen endeavours.”