Two veteran Members of Parliament with Labour roots, Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon who is MP for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC and Minister of State, Ministry of Community Development, Youth & Sports as well as Mr Ong Ah Heng who is MP for Nee Soon Central, have announced that they will not be contesting in the coming General Election.
Mrs Yu-Foo joined NTUC in 1971 as a Senior Industrial Relations Officer and became the first woman Chairman of the NTUC Central Committee in 1979. She said that as a woman, she has an interest in encouraging more female participation in the Labour Movement. She was active in unions’ membership drives, women’s activities and childcare services in the NTUC.
She entered politics in 1984 at the age of 34 and won as a PAP candidate in Yuhua. She said then: “The nature of an MP’s job and what I do now is the same. It is actually an extension of my work - to work with the grassroots, to explain Government policies to the people and to relay the problems. The difference is that as an MP, the scope is wider.”
Mrs Yu-Foo was also the first woman to be appointed Mayor in Singapore when she was made Mayor of Bukit Timah CDC in 2001.
Mr Ong Ah Heng, so-called the `Kopitiam MP’ because of how he mixes easily with working class people, joined the NTUC in 1980 and was Executive Secretary of the National Transport Workers’ Union from 1981 until 2006. He was also NTUC Central Committee member, NTUC Assistant Secretary-General, NTUC Administration and Research Unit Director and NTUC Care and Share Director.
Mr Ong was already a veteran grassroots leader in Nee Soon Central when he stood for elections there as a PAP candidate in 1997 and won. He has retained his seat ever since.
He told NTUC News in 1996: “I owe a lot to the meritocratic system. There are very few countries where you could start as a construction worker and end up with a master’s degree. It is right that I repay society by involving myself in community work - in the Labour Movement and in other grassroots organisations.”
