TR EMERITUS

The South China Morning Post( SCMP ) has reported that the last corona virus patient in Macau was discharged yesterday. The territory now has ZERO corona virus patients and no new cases for over a month, since 4 February. Despite being next to Mainland China, it only had 10 cases of the virus. If there is one territory/ country which deserves a platinum medal for protecting its People’s health and safety, it must go to Macau. From the start, their government was proactive in containing the disease. They closed down all their casinos and 18 other types of establishments such as bars, cinemas, massage parlours etc for 15 days from 4 February. The authorities distributed 20 million masks for sale to the public. This in a territory with a population of 660,000. There was an effective rationing system where its residents could buy 10 masks every 10 days. Compare this to the derisory 4 masks which the PAP government gave out to every household. Singaporeans have been facing a drought in trying to purchase face masks. The authorities also regulated that everyone who took public transport had to wear a mask. For those who believe that the wearing of face masks is unnecessary unless one is sick, you should think again! In Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand, all of which have fewer Covid-19 cases than Singapore, the wearing of face masks is widespread and encouraged. Finally, we must also congratulate Vietnam for its successful fight against the virus. I was informed that it too has discharged the last of its corona virus patients. Gan Kim Yong, Lawrence Wong, and others on the Taskforce should learn from these countries instead of making excuses all the time when explaining why Singapore is seeing a spike in the number of cases. And stop brandishing dubious reports suggesting that we have the Gold Standard in containing the virus, when we clearly do not! Propaganda is not going to contain this deadly virus! Only decisive and proactive measures will.   Lim Tean      Read More →

I welcome the formation of SG Clean Taskforce (SGCT). In fact, I consider such a taskforce long overdue. My only hope is that SGCT is not a so called much thunders and little rainfall taskforce. Singapore used to enjoy a solid reputation internationally for being a clean and green city but for people who have lived here long enough, they will know that as far as public cleanliness and hygiene of this place is concerned, we have regressed a great deal under an incompetent government. Superior public cleanliness and hygiene in Singapore have become a thing of the past. The mission of SGCT are many. They include but not limited to instilling new habits and new norms in people such as not sharing food. In this post, I will focus on keeping Singapore clean. The lack of public cleanliness in Singapore is not due to uninformed or uneducated people. It is almost always due to their couldn't care less or couldn't be bothered attitudes and for the large majority of them, when their couldn't be bothered attitudes attract no consequences or punishments whatsoever, it will further embolden and entrench such behaviours. In order to effectively tackle the lack of public cleanliness and public hygiene problems, we must get to the root causes of the problems. Dirtying of our living environments comes in many ways. They include feeding of stray cats and pigeons, birds eating from residual consumed foods at hawker centres/coffee shops, owners who fail to bag their dog's poos, littering including high rise littering, failure to flush public toilets after used, the indiscriminate burning of joss papers and indiscriminate disposing of supermarket trolleys at carparks or grass patches etc. For example, the feeding of stray cats is very bad. Feeders often fail to clean up the leftovers and sebsequently, rats and roaches will feast on the leftovers. If we extrapolate that across the whole island, Singapore must stink. Public education and teaching our children in schools do help but all that takes time. In fact, it will take a long time with no guarantee of desired outcome. I am a very strong believer that all our efforts at cleaning Singapore will come to nought if the pap government shies away from taking strong and firm enforcement efforts with punitive punishments to back up their much publicised taskforce and ground efforts. Neither education nor hard work put in by the multi-agencies or enforcement efforts on their own is going to be enough. It must be a sustainable, no nonsense multi-pronged approach before we can once again hope to return back to those fresh, proud, clean and green Singapore days under the late MM's leadership. His politician son, unfortunately, is a washout that all can see. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

We are, as we have shared before, entering a new phase in our fight against COVID-19. The first phase was when the epicentre was in China, in one country, and it was a matter of dealing with the import of cases from China. I think we have been able to contain and manage the imported numbers. However, as all of you know, the virus is now spreading very rapidly in other countries outside of China. In fact, the number of new cases are even higher now outside of China. Increasingly, we will be exposed given how open and connected to the world we are. That is why Minister Gan and I have both highlighted that, because of this exposure, we must expect our numbers to go up, and we must expect to deal with the virus for quite awhile. In this new phase, border controls will become less effective because you cannot identify a clear epidemic centre outside of Singapore anymore. We were still able to do it – after China, we have identified a few countries – but increasingly it will be harder and harder to do because the virus is everywhere. You cannot identify clear epidemic centres to stop the number of imported cases; there will be undetected cases everywhere in the world, and we do not isolate and shut ourselves from the world. So as border controls become less effective, we have to redouble our efforts within Singapore. We are not helpless in this scenario. Increasingly, individual and social responsibilities have become a more important part of the defence. We have said from the start that we have to have the system of multiple lines of defence, and the most important line of defence now is what we do within Singapore. That is why this SG Clean campaign is of vital importance. It is to rally everyone together to build up our defensive systems. All these measures may seem quite simple but they really are effective to slow down the spread of the virus. If you look at the cases of infection that we have so far, and the clusters that we have had, a lot of them come about from gatherings of people and close contact of people. They could be gathering in social settings, religious settings, and workplace settings, but it is from this contact with people. Very often, the virus spreads from an infected person who is symptomatic but continues with his or her gathering. So being responsible if you are sick and not going out may seem like very simple things to do, but they are of vital importance. And if you think back at your individual experience, how many times have we seen colleagues next to us in meetings coughing and sneezing, and saying “Oh, it’s ok, I’m alright.” How many times has that happened? Or, as what Minister Masagos had said, how many times have you had the experience where you are having a meal together and people are double-dipping with their utensils? Someone could even be coughing and sneezing at the same time, and they say “It’s ok, it’s just a mild flu.” – We cannot allow these things to happen anymore. We need to raise our level of personal hygiene, public hygiene, and social responsibility. I think these are critical parts of our line of defence to fight against the COVID-19 spread within Singapore. It will have an impact in slowing down the spread, and that is of utmost importance in this new phase where we see the virus spreading everywhere in the world and Singapore is exposed. We should take these efforts very seriously. They are equally, if not more important than the border control measures we have put in place. With all of these measures, even if we have more imported cases, we hope we will be able to slow down the spread of virus and continue to contain the spread within Singapore itself.   Remarks by Minister Lawrence Wong, Co-chair of the Multi-Ministry Taskforce on COVID-19, at Press Conference at National Press Centre on 6 March 2020.      Read More →