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Mdm Deputy Speaker, thank you for allowing me to join the debate.
Yesterday, the 3 Ministers who co-chair the Multi-Ministry Task Force (MTF) explained the sequence of events that led to the re-tightening of posture to Phase 2 (Heightened Alert). This action was all the more stark because of earlier planned relaxation of numerous Safe Management Measures (SMMs) barely 3 weeks ago.
One thing is very clear from their Statements – the intent to move carefully and safely to re-open Singapore’s economy and relax social restrictions. That intent remains unaltered, despite this big bump on the road toward that destination.
I would like to share 3 points that I believe would be essential for mission success – the mission being, how do we carefully and safely reopen Singapore’s economy and steadily relax the social restrictions.
First, we now recognise that so long as our population is not sufficiently vaccinated, we will find it hard to accept COVID-19 big flare-ups. Yet, this is precisely what has happened to us over the past 3 weeks. So it can happen, it has happened. And we have to find ways to de-risk quickly. And to de-risk as quickly as possible, we have to increase our vaccination rate as quickly as possible. We have to shorten that “night”. In Chinese, there is a saying 夜长梦多 – in other words, when the night is long, there are many dreams. Many things can happen if the period gets longer. So we have to keep it as short as possible.
In pressing on with vaccination, we must note 3 aspects:
(1) That our most vulnerable group – our seniors – have the lowest vaccination rate relative to the other age groups in our population. Therefore it is obvious, and I think we all agree, that we must do our best and our utmost to vaccinate them as soon as possible.
(2) That children below the age of 12 are not being vaccinated. So, because that segment of our population is not receiving vaccination, we have to “over-compensate” for this by pushing up the vaccination rates of the other age segments so as to attain population herd immunity.
(3) That as we take steps to re-open our borders, the people entering Singapore may not be vaccinated and may bring the virus into Singapore. If the inflow numbers are large, their vaccination status may impact on our effective “onshore population” vaccination rate. We have to take that into account in safeguarding our herd immunity threshold. This again argues for vaccinating as high a proportion of our local population as possible to ensure that we would have sufficient ballast.
For these reasons, I am strongly in favour of Government measures to incentivise rapid vaccination, including differentiating arrangements between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. We have no choice but to push hard and with great urgency.
And because we have to compensate for our unvaccinated young in order to achieve total population herd immunity, I am therefore also strongly in favour of maximum effort by tripartite partners to drive workforce vaccination – the working age population. This P2(HA) experience over these last 3 weeks should convince everyone that vaccination is good both for workers’ health as well as for companies’ business continuity.
Second, we must keep our eye on getting ready to seize the upturn. It is true that the ups and downs in our prolonged war against COVID-19 have led to a certain listlessness and fatigue in our businesses and our people. But we must not let that take hold. Instead, we must do more to direct the attention and energies of businesses and the population to the gradually brightening global prospects. There is real hope and opportunity to be seized, provided we are ready.
And to be ready means that our industries and companies have to be innovative and competitive, and our workforce equipped with the skills, technologies and work arrangements to be effective in a post-COVID or COVID-endemic world.
This will not happen automatically. It can only be achieved through solid tripartite partnership at industry and firm levels.
In particular, we must focus on 3 areas:
(1) Skills upgrading to meet new requirements. The requirements are constantly changing and changing quickly. We must up-skill our workforce quickly enough. NTUC will scale our Company Training Committee (CTC) network and Ops-Tech roadmapping to help companies quicken their pace of adjustment and transformation.
(2) Flexible work organisation. COVID-19 has forced companies to work much more flexibly and unconventionally. Many companies learnt that they can better tap and keep talent and good workers, both female and male, when they are willing and able to adapt their manpower models. This is a lesson learnt. It has delivered results in selected occupation types within companies in all industries. We must not let that go to waste. Learn the lesson and keep it for gain.
(3) Fairness. A company’s chances of success go up when it has a capable, engaged, cohesive workforce with high morale. Achieving this in the context of a increasingly diverse Singapore workforce – diverse in race, nationality, age, comprising both genders with equal ability to contribute at work, and so on – means that the different segments must feel that they are treated fairly and have a joint stake in the company’s success.
Fairness is multi-faceted. For example, given rapid changes in skills requirements, it will be almost impossible to protect specific jobs from change. We should rightly therefore move from trying to protect jobs to protecting workers through improving their employability. In the context of mature workers – a topic very close to my heart, I say this – Whether companies give their mature workers fair consideration and opportunity to train and upgrade their skills to stay employable will be key to whether their mature workers feel fairly treated relative to younger cohorts, whether they feel happy to stay and contribute, or whether they feel discriminated, disengaged and dispirited.
On this, I am glad that MOM has decided to set up a tripartite committee to consider how best to enhance effective protection against discrimination of various kinds in the workplace, in order to unblock performance and potential. Done right, this will improve not only the optics of Fairness at Work, but will actually hone it into a competitive advantage for Singapore businesses and workers. NTUC is committed to participate actively in this Committee and work toward win-win outcomes.
Mdm Deputy Speaker, the Support Measures and the Budget are not just designed to be cushions against the latest setback caused by the spike in COVID-19 cases. They buy us precious time to retool for a shot at better lives and better livelihoods ahead. And on this, I was greatly encouraged when I heard the speech by Professor Hoon Hian Teck take just now, when he recounted, even as we look back, how we do not just look at the now, even though we have to solve the problems of the now, but at the same time, we must look at structural adjustments – how do we strengthen our core, our ability, our capabilities, to create and fight for that better future, quoting DPM Goh Keng Swee. And I thought that that is exactly right, we are on the same page. We must not squander this chance.
I support the Budget and Support Measures. Thank you.
