Representatives from the hotel, restaurant, cinemas and retail outlets and industry associations,
Union leaders,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning
I warmly welcome you to the launch of the Singapore Contact Bowl.
The Singapore Contact Bowl is a national project initiated by the NTUC. The tagline of the project is "Drop a Card, Win a Prize." What is the project all about? To understand the initiative, we have to look at the Sars outbreak in Singapore.
The Sars outbreak
The last one month has been a difficult one. We were hit by the Sars outbreak quite unexpectedly. The first phase of the outbreak was in the hospitals - we see healthcare workers being infected in alarmingly large numbers. With strict infection control and the Ministerial Combat Teams in the hospitals, we have largely contained the spread of Sars in our hospitals.
It was unfortunate that the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market was affected. The market was closed for an extended period. That brought inconveniences to Singaporeans, but the inconveniences were necessary to stop the outbreak.
The number of new cases has slowed down. We are making good progress in containing Sars. That will be a major milestone and achievement.
But while we are making ground in the battle for now, the war remains. As long as a vaccine is not found, we can only contain the disease and not eradicate it. To win the long-drawn war, we have to fight a battle of containment. And it is a war that we can win. How?
In a conventional war, three key factors can turn the tide of battle: strategy, technology and soldiers. So too are these factors in the battle against Sars.
The government has already outlined a clear strategy. We're fighting the war on three fronts - public health, the economy and the society. A key strategy is containment. We also see new technology being deployed - the thermal scanners at the various entry points, our scientists working frantically to develop a diagnostic kit. It is now up to the soldiers - which is all of us.
What we have to do now is to raise our personal standard of hygiene and social responsibility.
The importance of social responsibility
The importance of social responsibility cannot be over-emphasised. What does it mean to be socially responsible? It is really very simple: see a doctor if you are ill, rest at home if you have been given an MC, call the hotline if you suspect that you have Sars. We saw the impact of the outbreak in the Pasir Panjang Wholesale Market. Once a cluster starts, people get infected in huge numbers, resources are tied down to chase the cluster and treat the patients, massive inconveniences are caused to the public, and there are dislocations to the communities or families.
All it takes is one irresponsible person to start a whole new cluster of infections. If all Singaporeans behaved responsibly, we can contain the disease and live life as normally as possible, with precautions of course.
The Singapore Contact Bowl
The Singapore Contact Bowl is our initiative to encourage Singaporeans to live their lives as normally as possible. Do you remember a Straits Times story "This cabby does his own contact tracing" on 23 April? It was a story of how a taxi driver took the initiative to start a log book for his passengers to voluntarily leave their contact numbers. This will facilitate contact tracing if needed.
Our Singapore Contact Bowl idea shares the same basic principle. It aims at encouraging people to drop their contact details into specially-designated bowls at the public venues that they visit or patronise. It is a strictly voluntary exercise. Drop a name card if you have one. If not, we have prepared specially-designed cards for you to use.
I am happy to launch the project for retailers, hotels, restaurants and cinemas today. When we mooted the idea with the industry groups, all of them were supportive. Many have even initiated their own lucky draws, whether at the participating outlets or industry levels. In other words - drop a card, win a prize. The contact cards will be collected at least once a day, and will be kept by the participating outlet for a period, say 2-weeks, before being destroyed if they are not needed for contact tracing. Of course, all the participating outlets and industries have given the assurance that the information in the cards will be kept in strictest confidentiality.
Getting involved in the Singapore Contact Bowl is a simple step. Should there be a SARS case outbreak, the project ensures that those who might be affected can be swiftly alerted. At the same time, it allows people to be in control as they go about their normal routines even with the presence of SARS.
The Singapore Contact Bowl is just a start. We expect more participants to come onboard as the project kicks off. In fact, our objective is that mini-contact bowls can be formed within communities, even without the incentives of winning prizes. This way we can draw people and communities closer together, Sars or no Sars.
Let us do our part.
I am confident that we can contain Sars with a combination of government measures, personal hygiene and social responsibility. When SARS is contained, so too will the risks. In fact, some have observed that it will be no different from the risk of traffic accidents. In short, life can and will go on normally. As soon as that happens, we can go about life normally, the economy will pick up, and all of us do not have to live under the grim shadow of Sars.
Finally, let me thank the various parties who have come onboard with their fullest support for the Singapore Contact Bowl project. Singapore Press Holdings and MediaCorp have agreed to work with us to publicise this national effort. The various industry associations were instrumental in galvanising their members. Finally, many have worked on an overdrive mode behind the scenes to kick off the project from conceptualisation to launch and implementation. This is what I call the relentless and resilient "can-do" spirit!
Let us continue to work together with the same spirit to contain Sars.
