Mr Speaker Sir,
Let me declare my interest as the Group CEO of both NTUC Enterprise and NTUC Fairprice group.
First I would like to assure everyone in the House, and Singaporeans outside – that our warehouses are quite full. We have rice, canned food, toilet paper, cooking oil, instant noodles. We have fresh fruits and vegetables. We have meats – fresh and frozen.
Yes, prices of certain items have gone up in recent weeks – due to higher demand worldwide, increases in production costs, increases in shipping/ freight charges and so on. But we assured that we will continue to do our best to moderate these price increases and make it affordable to all. In March last year 2019, we had announced we would freeze the prices of the top 100 Fairprice Housebrand essential products for 15 months regardless of changes in supply and external factors. This price guarantee could not be more timely under the current situation.
Ordinarily, I would not have made such a promotional statement. But these are not ordinary times.
And we are not an ordinary people.
Our storehouses are full.
We are a hard government, in good times – some critics here call us stingy. We are a House known for discipline, fiscal prudence, saving for rainy days.
At NTUC Enterprise, we too have to marshal our capital resources to ensure our entities from NTUC Income to Mercatus to Fairprice Group to NTUC First Campus to our NTUC LearningHub to our NTUC Health – that we are able to withstand the shocks and disruptions caused to our businesses.
As a group, we provide jobs to over 21,000 people. And we serve over 2 million people every day. We have a strong local core where close to 80% of our team are Singaporeans.
We have Malaysian colleagues who form slightly over half (51%) of our non-local workforce. We have staff from other nationalities and as what NTUC Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng says, every worker matters – every one of my colleagues play a part to keep our many essential services running smoothly – our childcare centres, our nursing homes, our senior care centres, our foodcourts, our malls, our supermarkets, our online platforms, and so on.
And in a slightly different but equally important function, our NTUC Learning Hub is pivoting towards being a digital learning hub and they have been busy working closely with employers and unions to train thousands of workers [digital where possible] so that when our economy recovers, workers (both local and foreign) and companies will be all ready from the word go.
There is no them and no us – we are inter-connected, and we are inter-dependent - manpower, skills, supply lines. Supply lines are especially vital now - our teams have been working as part of our diversification strategy to ensure our supply chains remains strong.
Singapore has a 30/30 vision - to have 30% of our food consumption coming from local sources by year 2030. We have been working on this for many years, and we are proud to support local produce and local companies.
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The things we do to support this philosophy – giving offtake contracts to local producers, holding local fairs such as the Annual Tasty Singapore Fair to promote local produce and products by local firms; or a manpower policy that employs as many Singaporeans as possible.
So while we think and plan global, we act, support and we grow local.
Old and Gold
There are also more older workers in our NTUC group, especially at the Fairprice group. The demographics of our workforce and our policies are skewed towards mature staff. More than 50% of our workforce is more than 50 years old and majority are female. We also have a large pool of permanent part-timers which suits their lifestyle. We keep retraining and reskilling all.
If there ever has been any doubt about the resilience of older, mature workers, the past few months have laid these to rest.
I am proud and glad that our mature workforce come through very well during this period - they have been very calm and steady, resilient and working tirelessly. And they work well with our younger team members and so together, the team becomes stronger.
The young with energy, creativity and stamina, the older with experience, patience and acumen. I see parallels with how our 4G leaders are coming up and showing their leadership mettle whilst being supported by the senior, more experienced leaders.
Again together, we have a better team at the helm to take us through this global crisis.
Turning to our government leadership – they have stayed calm, listened to feedback; they have been bold, thinking out of the box, thinking measures for both short and long term, and they have been decisive. During such times, there were many difficult and tough decisions to make and for sure, some unpopular ones - but I know PM, DPM, the Cabinet and most certainly the Ministerial Task Force – they have all been guided by their true north - what is good for the country and our people.
If I can draw a parallel, a difficult and unpopular decision that I had to make as group CEO of Fairprice was the one that concerns the imposition of purchasing restrictions. No one likes to be told that there are some things money cannot buy.
But end of the day, I was guided by my true north which is to ensure as many people can have access to their food supplies for the key categories. And yes, in this case, there are some things money cannot buy – fairness, a sense that we are in this together and a trust that we are doing the right thing.
We can only take these decisions if we have supportive and understanding stakeholders – in my case, my board of directors, public, staff, my business partners, customers. In the case of the government, this would be the Cabinet, residents, citizens, and the tripartite partners comprising employers,unions and government.
These are not built overnight - if there is no trust, none of this can be done. Yes, we all need to tighten our belts, grit our teeth, and learn to adapt – as they say in Hokkien: no fish, shrimp also can. If need to, can we make do with porridge with salted fish or vegetables – no issue with me.
Shrimps and fish
Over the last two months, our supermarket staff in the frontline, they have been working hard, serving customers – they too are tired, they too are anxious, but they have to maintain a professional front - facing all kinds of customers, a big majority are very understanding and polite. But there are some who do not make the effort to be civil or reasonable. There is a very small group of people who turn into terrible versions of themselves when confronted with crises.
Just this morning, our Priority Shopping Hour for Pioneer Generation members, for pregnant women and for people with disabilities, again we had one of two of these people that make a lot of comments. But we stood firm.
What you do not see are also the staff serving behind in the “backline” as my chairman describes them: they are working hard to secure supplies, making more deliveries. Indeed, I am extremely grateful to all my staff – frontline and backline as well as our business partners and the public for their understanding and support.
For sure there are some areas we could have done better, some where we took a wrong step but learn we did and we strive to do better going forward. Likewise, I am sure our government and our leaders probably had such experiences too but hey, we all have perfect vision after the event.
Having said that, my team and I have also received numerous notes, cards of appreciation [from public, customers, unions, business leaders, school teachers, school children these all served to encourage us.
We are in this together – this is what is required for us to overcome the crisis.
Over this period, we have had to press the button and call on many friends for help – and when the button is pressed, our colleagues from HQ as well as staff across the group all responded and helped out any time over the weekends doing replenishment, picking, packing and what have you. From our leadership team to administrative staff, from our board directors to our union leaders.
SG United is not mere slogan.
We even had many members from the public and former colleagues stepping forward to call me and say hey if we need them just call them. This is the SG United spirit.
I see this manifested and being played out throughout all parts of Singapore. Lines are being blurred.
Public and private businesses rallying and appreciating our healthcare workers, our security and immigration officers, our cleaners, our workers that keep our transport systems running and others such as the many volunteers that helped made the distribution of face masks and the sanitisers for all Singaporeans.
There are many things that money can buy. The Supplementary Resilience and Solidarity Budget at $53b is an enormous package to help individuals, families and businesses alike. People know this but what makes it really extraordinary is that it is financed by our reserves – how can a small country with no oil, nothing valuable to sell, accumulate these reserves?
We don’t make light of money, because we know it buys a lot – it helps us to pay for the salaries of workers and helps us to save jobs; to help pay for the healthcare of the sick, to offset the living expenses and so on. It will set us up to be better and stronger.
But we know, better than most, what money cannot buy. Unity, resilience, and solidarity, and most of all, a shared history and a shared future.
On behalf of all of us at NTUC, NTUC Enterprise and NTUC Fairprice group, as well as my residents at Braddell Heights and Marine Parade GRC, I am happy and proud to support the Budget.
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