The great, the wise and the good: Living the Covid-19 crisis
Mr Speaker Sir, I rise in support of the budget.
The Covid-19 crisis is named for the last day of last year on December 31China informed the World Health Organization of a novel virus pneumonia in Wuhan.
Singapore has close links with China. Our Changi airport receives an average of 330, 000 visitor arrivals from China each month. On 2 January, MOH alerted all doctors to identify any patient with pneumonia and a recent travel history to Wuhan. A day later, we started temperature screening at our airport of all travellers arriving from Wuhan.
More information started coming from China – including the vital fact that the virus could be transmitted from human. By then it was late Jan. On Jan 23, Singapore diagnosed its first case of Covid-19, a tourist from Wuhan.
Since then, we have seen the best, and the worse of ourselves.
The Great, who toiled so hard and late
The heroes in this fight are undoubtedly the healthcare staff – the doctors, nurses and all in the healthcare industry who work under incredible pressures and fears.
Nurses who care for Covid-19 patients are working with cumbersome masks and protective wear. Those of us who have worn an N95 will know how hard it is to breath under one of these, even for half an hour. Yet they have to go through entire working days with these, sometimes doing delicate work, taking blood and other procedures, all the while knowing that these bodily fluids are infected. There is a real risk. And many of these same people would have worked at the job when we had Sars.
When they can finally take off their equipment, clean up and go to lunch, some of them are unfortunately shunned and avoided. On trains and buses, their uniforms are a badge for isolation. Unfortunately there are some who mock the great, who toiled so hard and late.
Prime Minister Lee, our ministers, our union leaders and community leaders have made many visits to these workers, openly standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them, no masks, just smiles.
I also count among these, the selfless and courageous grassroots volunteers. In the distribution of masks exercise, many volunteers stepped forward to make the whole process seamless and smooth. There are also others who declined their quota of masks, saying to give them to others as they already have secured their supply of face masks.
Then, there are students of our universities which give me hope for the future. I saw on television a student’s union President Mr Richard Wang, who delivered food to his fellow students regularly and without complaint. And then there was SCDF Corporal Mohd Shahrom who picked up a patient suspected to have, and later confirmed to have the virus. And then there was Mr Keith Aw, from the Manpower Ministry who checks on foreign workers on Leave of Absence, speaking to them for up to 10 minutes a time. All these people act, not because they have no fear, but they act in spite of fear. There is no Budget measure that accounts for greatness.
The Wise, with old aching eyes
I also want to speak about the wise – the key decision makers, including our public health officials who have acted quickly and decisively in this crisis. Contact tracing and quarantine orders were swiftly issued. We instituted travel declarations and entry restrictions; there were also leave of absence from work and stay home notices that were instituted.
These are not easy decisions and cause a lot of disruption to people’s lives and livelihoods. But the price of leadership is to sacrifice the popular for the right.
For many of us in this House, this solidarity reminds us of Sars in 2003 when 238 people were infected, with 33 fatalities. Since that time, we have the new National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), we have also built a national stockpile of masks. This again, is the prescience of those who are wise among us.
The leaders who have made all the difficult calls. Not just the Cabinet Ministers but the men and women on the ground, who have had to make difficult calls at a time of fear and panic.
And of course, the opportunists will mock the wise, they’ll spew untruths and outright lies. Even in such trying times, some would take the opportunity to spread fake news. The POFMA office was kept busy during this period too.
I am glad that we have POFMA. Left unchecked, the spread of deliberate online falsehoods will have serious consequences which society will ultimately have to pay a heavy price for.
I count these measures that we have outlined in this budget to be among the wise decisions. Overall, there is nothing much that one can find fault with our DPM and Finance Minister in this year’s Unity Budget. So, I would like to confine my comments to SMEs and have a couple of suggestions for Finance Minister to consider.
For promising SMEs, Government has announced that ESG will launch an Enterprise Transform package with focus on leadership. It will also support business leaders of 900 SMEs over the next 3 years with training and mentorship.
This is a much welcome move. However, smaller SMEs might have issues understanding Government initiatives and programmes in English and so I suggest having such initiatives and programmes to be also translated into Mandarin, Malay and Tamil so that the wider business communities can understand and embark on such initiatives. The language gap requires another sort of translation. We need to make these schemes more accessible by showing SMEs how such government grants can help them. So they don’t miss out on them.
The Government has also announced Covid-19 relief measures to support SMEs in affected sectors in the form of tax rebates, bridging loans, rental waivers, wage subsidies, higher absentee payroll and training course subsidies, foreign worker levy waivers and so on. These are certainly appreciated by SMEs and businesses. However, there are some gaps:
First, the ground feedback I had received is that Job Support Scheme to be given out in July 2020 is rather late and does little to help mitigate cash-flow issues. Time is of the essence for these SMEs as the adverse business impact they are facing due to Covid-19 is a significant one and they are crying out for help with urgency.
Second, there is no additional Absentee Payroll and training course subsidies for enterprises affected by Covid-19 to send excess manpower for training.
And third, there is no foreign worker levy waiver for enterprises affected by Covid-19, especially when foreign workers represent a significant manpower share in the food services and retail sectors.
So I hope Government will consider and see if these gaps can be addressed.
The Good, that fancied goodness
The day that Singapore announced that it was going DORSCON Orange, there was frenzied buying at the supermarkets. But it was not the long queues at the supermarkets but the long queues later for a separate matter that I would like to remember.
Two weeks ago, the Red Cross Singapore called for Singaporeans to donate their blood as blood stock levels for some blood types were running critically low. Many came forward – there were crowds of Singaporeans at the four Blood banks around the island. Meantime, there are other stories of people being incredibly altruistic – leaving sanitizers and masks for their neighbours.
Then unfortunately there are those who take advantage of this crisis, to do great harm. The Ministry of Health (MOH) released a statement to warn the community of scam calls impersonating the MOH Contact Tracing team in an attempt to retrieve personal financial details.
Police have also arrested five people for their suspected involvement in five separate e-commerce scams involving the online sale of face masks
There are those among us who are great and wise and good. And there will always be those who mock them. Those who use fake news or false news. Those who are socially irresponsible. Those who behave badly.
What about those of us, who are neither great, nor wise, nor good? We ordinary men and women of Singapore can be decent.
FairPrice was also caught up in this panic buying
As you know FairPrice was caught up with this panic buys, as the group CEO of NTUC FairPrice, I witnessed first-hand the shopping frenzy by many people on those two days - Friday and Saturday. This shopping behaviour was quite broad-based covering all age groups, races and social strata.
To instil calm to all, NTUC Fairprice instituted a variety of measures including the imposition of purchase limits on some items. As to be expected, when this was first announced, it attracted a lot of noise, there was a minority group that criticised our move, but a large majority were in favour. In fact, many also suggested to me that when this episode is over, that FairPrice should not allow people who stock up to return their excess goods to us to get a refund (this is actually our standard policy)) – this so as to teach people a lesson on buying responsibly and not hoard first only to return the stocks later. I thank everyone who have given me various suggestions – I think what we will do is to encourage all those who had bought too much to consider donating these excess stocks to Food Bank or Food from the Heart. Maybe I will set up a collection counter for them too!
At the same time, I am also heartened and warmed by the many calls from members of the public who reached out to me to volunteer their services to help out in any crisis if needed.
As I look back e just over the last one month, I see a government that has led from the front, been decisive in managing this crisis and coming up with a comprehensive, assuring and caring budget that takes care of businesses and citizens alike whilst transforming, supporting and building a sustainable Singapore .
Even in the aspect of face masks, I think Singapore may be the only country to ensure that every citizen, every household has some face masks at their home.
Mr Speaker, this Budget is for all of us, those among us who are great and wise and good. Those who mock them – purveyor of false news, socially irresponsible, the boors of society. Most of all, this budget is for the ordinary men and women of Singapore who are decent and who care for our fellowmen, who would work together to stem out the foul storm that is facing Singapore. This Budget has something for us all, and I thank the Finance Minister DPM Heng and his team for their inclusive and thoughtful rendering that is this Unity budget.
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