For many Singaporeans, Sunday is an off day from work. But for the hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans who worked in industrial factories of the 1970s, Sunday meant working the morning, afternoon or night shift.
On a Sunday that fell on 22 July in 1973, then 23-year-old senior quality control supervisor Lilian Chan was pulling another shift at SGS ATES Semiconductor, a factory in Toa Payoh Lorong 4.
“My workplace used to be across the road from today’s Toa Payoh Central. I think it is where ST Microelectronics is now. Whenever we had our breaks, we used to cross the road to have our lunch at the hawker centre,” said Lilian, who is now 69 and working as an admin associate.
It was supposed to be a routine lunch break for Lilian, but she noticed a large gathering at the carpark, in front of Block 192.
Her eyes glanced up the wall of the three-storey building – NTUC Welcome Supermarket, a sign read in red. It turned out it was the day the supermarket officially opened. And Lee Kuan Yew was there to officiate the opening.
Hundreds of people had attended the launch of the supermarket.
“I grew up in Toa Payoh. When we wanted to go marketing, we would always go to the wet market in Lorong 8, Lorong 7, or Lorong 5. But when NTUC Welcome opened, it was something new for me. In fact, we didn’t even call it Welcome. Whenever we wanted to go to the supermarket, everybody just said, ‘I’m going to NTUC to buy things’,” said Lilian.
Lilian Chan, standing right, as a quality control supervisor in the 1970s.
She also said that shopping centres were few in Singapore back then. Most were found in Orchard Road.
“When we wanted to go shopping, we liked to go to ‘NTUC’. There was nowhere else to go. So if we wanted to jalan-jalan on our off days or after our shift, we would go there,” she said.
Lilian believed the opening of the supermarket was a good move to help Singaporeans with the cost of living then. When she compared prices, she realised the supermarket’s prices were lower than other sellers.
NTUC Welcome changed its name to NTUC FairPrice in 1983.
“For us, we had nothing to compare the supermarket to. It was only NTUC supermarket or wet market. When we compared them like that, definitely we thought that the supermarket was very nice. But FairPrice today is very much better and more organised than it was last time, and now many of them are opened 24 hours. So that’s very good,” said Lilian.
Now, 46 years on, Lilian is still a loyal NTUC FairPrice customer who goes there at least once a week to do her grocery shopping.
Why did the Labour Movement see a need to set up social enterprises like NTUC Welcome? Find out at ReUnion, an exhibition by NTUC. Happening at the National Museum of Singapore from now till 10 November. Admission is free.
