Debated in Parliament on 14 Jul 2015.
Dr Chia Shi-Lu asked the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (a) since the launch of ActiveSG, how many Singaporeans and permanent residents have signed up for membership; (b) whether these numbers have met the Ministry's targets; and (c) if not, what plans does the Ministry have to boost utilisation of ActiveSG credits.
Madam, we launched ActiveSG as the national movement for sports in April last year. Since then, 815,000 persons have signed up, of which close to 90% are Singapore citizens, the rest being Permanent Residents. About three in five ActiveSG members have utilised their free ActiveSG credits to book a sports facility or to sign up for a sports programme.
The encouraging response has far exceeded our expectations for the first year. To encourage more Singaporeans to sign up for ActiveSG and to use their ActiveSG credits, we will expand the range of ActiveSG programmes to offer more quality opportunities for sports participation.
ActiveSG will work with schools to provide additional opportunities for students to participate in sports, whether it is to pick up a new sport, go further in a sport they are already participating in, or to take part in a sports competition or league.
One example is the Basketball Developmental League for school teams that did not qualify for the National Round of the B Division Inter-School Basketball Championships. So, these are students interested in playing basketball but they did not qualify for the B Division Inter-School Championships. Each team was allowed to field more players than usual, so that those who did not make it to the school team can get a chance to compete. ActiveSG also recently ran a camp for youth sports leaders, so that they can give back to the community by developing sports programmes for others.
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We are also working with companies. So, building on the successful partnership with Comfort Delgro to encourage taxi drivers to participate in sports, ActiveSG will now engage other corporate partners to design sports programmes for their employees.
Overall, we want to ride on the momentum of a successful SEA Games and, as I had mentioned earlier just now in my reply, ActiveSG will aim to increase its outreach and offerings, so that more Singaporeans can live better through sports.
I thank the Minister for the response. ActiveSG has received a very good response from all Singaporeans and that is the main reason why I tabled this question. Two supplementary questions.
The first is that many Singaporeans who are in the programme would like to know how long this programme would be continued and whether there are any parameters for determining what is the period that this programme will run, whether there will be a limit to it and if there are any parameters which will determine this.
The second is that there is some feedback about how we can best expand the use of ActiveSG. There have been calls to allow the use of these credits, for example, to participate in so-called privately organised events, such as marathons and cycling events and so on. There have also been some calls, for example, to allow the use of credits for people to spectate at sports events, for example, at the recently-concluded SEA Games. So, I was wondering whether the Ministry would consider thinking about some other avenues in which ActiveSG credits can be used.
Madam, on the first question on the duration of the programme, there are two different parts.
One, ActiveSG itself will continue forever. It is not a programme. ActiveSG is really meant as a national movement in the way we want to excite, mobilise and provide opportunities for people to participate in sports. So, it is core to what we are doing in the Ministry and in Sports Singapore.
I believe the Member is talking about the credits, whether there is a time expiration to the credit and the answer is no. We will let people take their time to use their credits.
As to the usage of the credits, whether it can be broadened to a wider range of activities, my sense is that I would not want to use the credits just to watch sports events because that was not the purpose of the credits. The purpose of the credits was to encourage people to take part in sports and that is why we have allowed the credits to be used specifically for
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SportSG facilities in our sports centres as well as programmes within the centres. We can consider whether or not this can be expanded to a broader range of activities, but our main intention is to get people to want to participate in sports.
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