Singapore's COVID-19 Response

Mr Speaker, "Our workers fighting in the trenches and workers supporting the fight – from nurses to cleaners, from GP doctors to infectious disease specialists, from medical researchers to delivery persons, and those Singaporeans driving our people to hospitals and quarantine facilities – are our heroes. We should not forget our public officers too. From civil servants and teachers to those guarding our borders and public spaces namely our men and women in uniform, we must honour them for trying to allow Singaporeans to live our lives as normally as possible while keeping us as safe. The same goes for every Singaporean involved in this fight. Thank you for your efforts and for the hard work."

Sir, I first made this statement from this table almost three years ago in reply to the Government's introduction of the Solidarity and Resilience Budgets.

Reciting this today, I feel – as I felt then – that it simply cannot adequately express the appreciation many Singaporeans continue to have, for our frontliners and public service workers, for seeing us through the last three years.

For some, the challenges took a lot out of them – public health workers, in particular are still reeling from the intensity of the last three years and it is important for us to continually consider the long-term impact of the stresses they faced.

The Workers' Party (WP) Members of Parliament will elaborate further on this and on the findings of the White Paper in their speeches. Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (GRC) Member of Parliament, Mr Gerald Giam, will speak on healthcare capacity, including Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) in future pandemic response measures, domestic manufacturing during crises and the role of Temasek Holdings.

Sengkang GRC Member of Parliament Ms He Ting Ru will speak on Government communication, the gender wage gap and the underpaying and undervaluing of work traditionally carried out by women, mental health and the implications of "long COVID-19".

Finally, Aljunied GRC Member of Parliament Mr Leon Perera will cover issues pertaining to the role of general practitioners (GPs) in future pandemics, in addition to making points on the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the situation in our migrant worker dormitories.

For my part, I will speak on the approach the WP as a political Opposition, took on COVID-19. I will make three points. First, I will speak of the role the party played to bring concerns of the public into Parliament over the last three years through our COVID-19 experience. Second, I will cover what the WP did and deliberately did not do, so as to support the national effort; and finally, I will speak on the political posture of the WP during a national crisis.

Firstly, the role of the WP in our Parliamentary system of Government. Sir, throughout COVID-19, the WP kept focused on playing our role as a responsible and loyal opposition. We did not abdicate our role of holding the Government to account, as the design of our political system demands. Even without the full suite of considerations and details that are privy to the Government of the day, we advanced concrete proposals on managing the COVID-19 crisis as part of our General Election 2020 manifesto.

Post-elections, we raised COVID-19-specific measures in Parliament covering a wide range of issues, such as the MOH's suspected adverse events report, recalibration of COVID-19 controls for Singaporeans visiting their terminally-ill family members, vaccination safety protocols for children, clarifying the Government's position on TraceTogether with regard to its applicability for criminal investigations, the inclusion of non-mRNA vaccines into the National Vaccination Programme and the reasons behind the delay in permitting migrant workers to be reintegrated into the community, just to name a few.

During my Fortitude Budget speech in June 2020, I reminded the Government that Singaporeans had a right to expect a thorough review and accounting of the Government response to the crisis. I suggested that a Commission of Inquiry, or some other independent body, be appointed to review specific aspects of the Government's response up to that point. I emphasised that whatever form such a reckoning might take, our position as a constructive opposition required us to communicate the feelings of Singaporeans in Parliament, which necessarily includes a public expectation of Government accountability.

Sir, many COVID-19 reports presented through national parliaments the world over saw witnesses called to give feedback through unvarnished testimony, consistent with the substance of government accountability. On 9 May 2022, in response to my Parliamentary Question, this House was informed that the former Head of Civil Service, Mr Peter Ho, was overseeing the COVID-19 After Action Review (AAR) process and that the Government would share the findings and lessons with the public when the AAR was completed.

To that end, the White Paper tabled before the House today states that it “was prepared by the Prime Minister’s Office” and that it draws on Mr Ho's review, which included interviews with key participants in the crisis, both Ministers and civil servants. It incorporates the findings of various reviews by Government agencies as well as the perspectives of the private and people sectors.

The White Paper adds that it attempts to, and I quote, "synthesise and make sense of the breadth of perspectives gathered, weave them together with the known data and facts, and offer as balanced and objective an account as possible” of the Government’s COVID-19 response. To those familiar with the study of official history, this document would be referred to as a secondary document. There is an original document from which it draws its findings and conclusions. This original document is not before the House.

While the White Paper acknowledges some shortcomings in the Government response, Singaporeans do not know what has been excluded from the original reports and reviews referenced in this White Paper produced by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Are the contents of this White Paper all the findings from the AAR that the Government is prepared to share with the public and Parliament? Presumably, Mr Peter Ho submitted a more comprehensive AAR report to the Government. Can that report be made public to Parliament so that Members of Parliament and Singaporeans can better understand the breadth of perspectives gathered, the known data and facts, and draw their own conclusions? If there is confidential information within the AAR report that could harm national security if revealed, that could be redacted from the report.

Why did the Government decide against publishing the original review report presented by Mr Peter Ho in full? To publish the original AAR report would be consistent with the spirit of the Motion, which seeks to affirm the Government's effort to learn from the experiences of the last three years.

Let me move on to my second point. I will speak on what the WP did and deliberately did not do during COVID-19.

Sir, Opposition parties, including the WP, were not privy to the deliberations of the Multi-Ministry Task Force or taken into confidence on the Government’s planning processes for its COVID-19 response. In some countries, government approaches to COVID-19 were routinely attacked by parties outside of government in order to gain political mileage. The WP did not do this. We did not ride on misinformation or contribute to misunderstandings over national policies which were either intentionally or unintentionally conveyed. On the contrary, we encouraged Singaporeans to be mindful of rumours or unverified information and to clarify their doubts through the proper channels.

For example, in the middle of 2021, Member of Parliament for Sengkang Assoc Prof Jamus Lim came out to clarify that the tragic death of a young resident was not due to COVID-19, as was being openly propagated by some individuals online, ostensibly to sow doubts about vaccine safety.

Clearly, a unity of purpose was the need of the hour.

A most worrisome medical reality of COVID-19 was that it struck hard at our seniors and elderly. We needed to protect them against the much higher risk of severe illness and even death. During our engagement with residents, WP Members of Parliament encouraged our seniors to get vaccinated. Whenever they were undecided or unsure, we encouraged them to clarify their doubts on existing medical conditions with their doctors for peace of mind.

I would like to thank former Member of Parliament Mr Low Thia Khiang for agreeing to a suggestion by some of my colleagues and I to put out a video in Mandarin and Teochew explaining his experience with vaccination and why it was important for our seniors to get vaccinated, so as to reach out to as many Singaporeans as possible. Former Member of Parliament, Mr Png Eng Huat, did the same, speaking in Hokkien and sharing his experience, convincing his 92-year-old father to get vaccinated. Sengkang GRC Member of Parliament Ms He Ting Ru shared with the public that she took her vaccination while she was still breastfeeding as there was a concern and confusion that nursing mothers could be passing something dangerous to their babies.

Hougang Single Member Constituency (SMC) Member of Parliament Mr Dennis Tan and Aljunied GRC Member of Parliament Mr Gerald Giam visited residents in clusters of blocks in Aljunied-Hougang town, where residents in entire blocks were identified for mandatory swabbing. When the news suddenly broke out of such mass swabbing, Mr Giam went door-to-door with words of support for residents while working with the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council to assist in the wipe-down and cleaning of the affected blocks, something our cleaners – predominantly migrant workers – did so many times over the last three years to keep our community safe.

Other WP members and volunteers donated generously to the Courage Fund under the National Council for Social Services which sought to provide support to lower-income households affected by COVID-19. I would like to thank them and our volunteers and supporters for playing their part in the fight against COVID-19.

Finally, I will speak on what the public can expect from the WP in future when crises such as COVID-19 strike, as they must be expected to. It seems a long time ago now, but, as early as February 2020, when the Unity Budget was announced, the WP made clear the tone we would take on the COVID-19 crisis. We called for a unity of purpose and for politics to take a backseat. In June 2020, as we exited the circuit breaker, and a few weeks before the elections, I reiterated in my speech on the Fortitude Budget, that the WP did not come in to publicly criticise the Government on its handling of an unprecedented crisis. We were determined to support, and not undermine, the national effort.

As a political party that is not in Government, the WP will continue to lead with this approach in times of national crisis.

In WP Town Councils, we implemented the necessary protocols effectively. When some residents expressed frustration at some safe management measures in common areas that came under our responsibility, such as hawker centres, playgrounds and void decks, we dealt with them with empathy and open-mindedness, but without compromising the national measures or the safety of Singaporeans.

We realised that some rules could prove problematic when operationalised on the ground, and our Town Council officers diligently submitted their feedback to the agencies concerned. We took the view that any feedback would be taken seriously by civil servants and we endeavoured to work as one Singapore. As has come to be expected of our public officers, they did not let us down.

In conclusion, the opening quote of my speech paid tribute to those in our community who played a massively oversized role in saving lives. However, there are many outside this House who played an equal part in saving livelihoods. As COVID-19 brought our economy to a near halt, many individuals saw their incomes evaporate. I will never forget my engagement with a group of private-hire bus drivers at the start of COVID-19. These drivers had mouths to feed and vehicle loans to repay, but no business to generate income. Their worries, and even fears, were palpable. These drivers, and others like them, were helped by the diligence of public officers who engaged with financial institutions to withhold the repossession of vehicles. I wish to restate my acknowledgement of these efforts.

My appreciation also goes out to the many volunteer lawyers, assessors and SMEs and all businesses that exercised compassion by providing temporary relief to Singaporeans from their contractual obligations and potential enforcement actions.

Sir, the Motion today bookends our main COVID-19 chapter. It seeks to internalise the lessons learnt from our COVID-19 journey and to improve preparedness for the next health pandemic. Doing so would honour the sacrifices made by Singaporeans and the community in our fight against COVID-19. We also stand in solidarity with Singaporeans and our non-Singaporean friends who have lost family members to COVID-19 and to those who suffer from COVID-19 or vaccine-related ailments. I hope the MOH will proactively follow-up with all individuals who have not succeeded in their vaccine injury claims and consider their circumstances and the well-being of their mental health, as appropriate, on an ongoing basis.

Finally, thank you to the Multi-Ministerial Task Force for your efforts and exertions in guiding Singapore through COVID-19.

Sir, the WP supports the Motion to the extent that it expresses gratitude to all in Singapore who contributed to the nation’s fight against COVID-19 and affirms the Government’s efforts to learn from lessons of the last three years.

Mr Speaker, COVID-19 was the crisis of a generation. Our frontliners, including nurses, doctors, cleaners and drivers, responded heroically in the face of an enemy that we knew little about before 2020. Words cannot repay the debt of gratitude we owe each of them.

COVID-19 also took the lives of over 1,700 people in Singapore. I extend my deepest condolences to their families for their immeasurable loss.

While I acknowledge that the Government has performed well in many aspects of its response to this pandemic, it is important that we do not get carried away, patting ourselves on the back to the exclusion of implementing the important lessons we learnt during the crisis. We need to better prepare ourselves for future pandemics, which are likely to be more frequent and severe, not least because of increasing globalisation and urbanisation.

Healthcare capacity was stretched even before COVID-19 hit. The pandemic exacerbated this capacity crunch. Many healthcare workers reported working long hours overtime, being recalled for duty on their days off and even having no time for toilet breaks. The White Paper highlighted challenges in staffing hospitals with healthcare workers, resulting in existing workers feeling fatigued and burnt out from the prolonged crisis.

We are now no longer fighting COVID-19 like before, yet the shortage of healthcare facilities and manpower still persists. For example, median waiting times for emergency cases that require hospital admission from January to September last year was about seven hours. This can spike to 50 hours during infection waves.

In October 2016, then-Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong launched the Healthcare Manpower Plan 2020, which highlighted the need for 30,000 more healthcare workers from 2015 to 2020 to look after Singapore's fast-ageing population. It is now 2023. How many of these 30,000 additional healthcare positions have been filled? During the debate on the Healthier SG motion last October, Minister Ong Ye Kung said that another 24,000 nurses, allied health professionals and support care staff are needed to operate hospitals, clinics and eldercare centres by 2030.

Recruitment alone is not sufficient. There needs to be a corresponding transformation in the remuneration of healthcare workers. The group that bore the heaviest burden of caring for COVID-19 patients were nurses. Their long working hours and lower starting pay compared to territories like Australia, Hong Kong and Canada, could have contributed to their high attrition in recent years. In 2021, the proportion of nurses resigning hit a five-year high, with 7.4% of local nurses and 14.8% of foreign nurses leaving their jobs.

Why are so many nurses leaving the healthcare sector? A study on healthcare workers conducted by researchers Celene Ting and others from the Saw Swee Hock School for Public Health, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the NCID highlighted that healthcare workers reported burnout from being overworked, emotional exhaustion and at times feeling a lack of appreciation or support at work.

This was exacerbated by having to care for difficult and sometimes abusive patients. Nearly a third of healthcare workers witness or experience abuse each week, according to a tripartite workgroup's findings, which the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Rahayu Mazam, shared earlier this month during the Committee of Supply debate.

Additionally, some healthcare workers are also drawn to work opportunities overseas, where they can receive higher remuneration and more societal recognition. For example, a nurse that CNA interviewed mentioned that after moving from Singapore to the US, he felt more highly esteemed by the public, citing an example of how his car loan was approved immediately after he said he was a nurse, despite having no credit history.

Urgent changes are needed if we are to reverse the departure of nurses and boost their numbers in Singapore.

Nurses' basic pay should be benchmarked to that of their contemporaries in other essential public services. This is a point made by Assoc Prof Jeremy Lim from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health during a recent CNA interview. Such services could include the Police, army and the education service. The salaries of nurses in other jurisdictions like Australia, Hong Kong and Canada should also be considered in the benchmarking.

It should take into account the longer hours that nurses have to work compared to many other professions. This is to ensure that the opportunity cost of taking up nursing instead of another profession would be minimised. We also need to make the nursing profession more highly esteemed by the general public.

Another way to attract more Singaporeans to take up nursing and increase retention would be to enhance their professional development opportunities. Nurses in Singapore are often still seen as the assistants to doctors instead of being professionals in their own right. They should instead be granted more autonomy and entrusted with higher level responsibilities. In the UK, nurses run clinics, diagnose patients, take on high-level management roles and help to lead medical research. We should accelerate efforts to achieve the target of 700 Advance Practice Nurses by 2030.

Beyond pay, management culture, work recognition and working hours are also areas that need to be examined for a holistic improvement of the profession.

Next, during the pandemic, many persons with disabilities (PwDs) experienced difficulties coping with measures such as the blocking off of regular exits and entrances, shifting access points for PwDs and having to locate and scan SafeEntry codes. Many wheelchair users and people with developmental disabilities, visual impairments and autism spectrum disorder had difficulties with SafeEntry scanning. Measures such as COVID-19 swabbing and mask-wearing were difficult for some people. I recall a resident of mine who was very worried that her son, who had a mental disability, would struggle and hurt himself when made to undergo mandatory swabbing at his block when an outbreak occurred there.

While support for PwDs was eventually introduced, much of this was reactive. This could be due to an absence of meaningful participation by PwDs when safe management measures were implemented. Moving forward, it would be advisable to have at least one member of the disability community on emergency task forces so that the community's views can be adequately represented. More importantly, all policies rolled out need to take into account the unique needs of PwDs, to ensure that they are not excluded.

The next section of my speech deals with the public communication on pandemic mitigation measures.

In January 2020, the Government issued an infographic titled "Advisory on wearing masks" which highlighted that "masks are generally not needed for people who are well."

The infographic, which was also posted on social media, added that "there are sufficient masks in the warehouses and Government stockpiles."

The then-chairman of the PAP's Government Parliamentary Committee for Health, Dr Chia Shi-Lu, echoed the Government's line later that month when he told the New Paper that "surgical masks can prevent the passing of virus from a wearer, but when it comes to protecting (a healthy wearer), the masks won't protect from viruses."

The Prime Minister, in January 2020, said Singaporeans should follow doctors' advice on how best to protect themselves from the virus, which includes not wearing a mask when they are unwell.

The Prime Minister rightly pointed out though, that the "Wuhan virus" – as it was then called – was "probably more infectious than SARS, and possibly infectious even before people have symptoms." This was on 31 January 2020.

The fact that the Government knew in those early days that asymptomatic transmission of the virus could occur should have prompted them to advise everyone to wear masks when in contact with other people.

On 10 February 2020, four local doctors did just that by issuing a statement urging Singaporeans to wear masks always when leaving home, even if they were well. Dr Colleen Thomas, Dr Judy Chen, Dr Tham Hoe Meng and Dr Lim Pin Pin acknowledged the difficulties in obtaining new surgical masks every day and urged the use of creative solutions like washable cloth masks or scarves. They pointed out that these measures were better than no mask at all.

In response to the four doctors a few days later, the Director of Medical Services at MOH said that "it is not wearing masks that's most important, it's hand washing" – even though the two actions were not a binary choice. The Straits Times ran an article to "educate" the public on questions like "Is it really true that you do not need to wear a mask if you are not sick? Is hand washing better protection against viruses than a mask?"

These statements were incongruous and did not seem to be consistent with common sense. People intuitively knew that any layer preventing the spread of droplets would be better than not having one.

It took a leaked recording of a Minister at a closed-door meeting in February 2020 to reveal that Singapore was rationing masks to save them for healthcare workers.

The White Paper stated that "in hindsight…the Government could have encouraged Singaporeans to devise their own face masks while we set up manufacturing lines to ramp up production of surgical masks." This was not hindsight – it was what the four doctors advised in the first place, which the Government did not heed.

It took another three months for the Government to stop discouraging people from wearing masks by updating the guidance on 3 April 2020.

The result of this about-turn, as acknowledged by the White Paper, was that public trust in the Government was eroded. Singaporeans saw through the Government's initial statements – that the real reason why they were discouraging those who were well from wearing masks was because there were insufficient supplies of surgical masks, not because mask wearing was less effective than hand washing.

While concerns over panic buying and hoarding by the public were not unfounded, the Government had stockpiles of surgical masks for healthcare workers and should have had the power to requisition more masks from the commercial market.

This brings me to my next point – why did Singapore not have the sufficient domestic capacity to manufacture items as basic as face masks? Was the Government not able to marshal local companies to accept and prioritise contracts for the manufacture of materials deemed essential for our defence against COVID-19, including face masks and ventilators?

The White Paper mentioned that the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act gave the Government the option of mobilising civilian resources, using the Requisition of Resources Act (RORA), but it chose not to use those powers. Instead, the Government said it will leverage alternative structures, for example, through strategic partnerships or cooperation agreements, to effectively harness civilian resources for crises.

I agree that it would not have been appropriate to use RORA for the COVID-19 pandemic, given that the Act is a rather blunt tool which is meant more for wartime scenarios than a public health crisis. In any case, RORA does not appear to give the Government the authority to ask the private sector to prioritise orders from the Government, short of requisitioning the entire line of services.

For example, it is not clear the Government can ask a company to prioritise orders from the Government for the manufacturing of masks without requisitioning and running the entire mask production facility on its own.

Will the Government consider legislation akin to the US Defense Production Act, which empowers the executive to direct private companies to prioritise orders from the federal government and take actions to restrict the hoarding of needed supplies?

I now turn to the role, during the pandemic, played by one major local company – Temasek Holdings. Temasek-linked companies played an outsized role during the pandemic. Almost all the private sector partners named in the White Paper are Temasek-linked companies.

The White Paper stated that private sector companies like Temasek were indispensable sources of support during COVID-19. This may point to an over-dependence on the Temasek ecosystem. Would it be better to diversify the base of private sector partners that can support the national effort in times of crises?

During Question Time on 3 March, I asked Senior Minister of State for Finance Chee Hong Tat if the Government's total COVID-19 spending of $72.3 billion included the amount spent by Temasek Holdings, Temasek Foundation and other Temasek-linked companies for their COVID-19 activities. The Senior Minister of State gave a rather convoluted answer, but I believe the answer was no.

This being the case, can I ask – how much did Temasek and its related organisations spend out of their own budgets on COVID-19 initiatives like face masks, hand sanitisers and oxygen concentrators, which were made available locally and overseas?

The White Paper stated that while Temasek's main goal remains to deliver long-term returns on its assets, it plays a unique role in supporting a robust portfolio of local companies that can anchor important capabilities for Singapore in a crisis.

Does Temasek have goals other than to deliver long-term returns on its assets? Is this unique role part of the Government's mandate for this Fifth Schedule company?

I appreciate the work that Temasek companies and their employees did to keep Singaporeans safe during the pandemic and the resources they spent doing so. But I think it is important for the House to know if Temasek's expenditure on COVID-19 constitutes a draw on our Reserves and, if so, whether the approval of the President was sought and obtained?

Sir, it is a truism that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. Notwithstanding the absence of a Committee of Inquiry, which the Workers' Party had called for, we still have many lessons to learn from in the White Paper and this debate.

For the sake of our future generations who may have to go through catastrophic pandemics like these, we have to both learn and implement these lessons. In this spirit, Sir, I support the Motion.

Sir, COVID-19 was a trying time. We pulled through together as a nation. A silver lining of this difficult period is that it shone the spotlight on the invisible in our community.

One such group is our low-wage migrant workers.

COVID-19 highlighted their plight. These were very difficult times. I received desperate messages from workers confined in their dormitories, photos of poor living conditions and photos of poor quality of food.

But COVID-19 also showed how the community came together to help our migrant friends and to address many of these problems that existed for many years. I thank the many NGOs, activists, citizens and Government agencies who worked tirelessly through COVID-19 to help our migrant friends.

During the pandemic, we made great strides in improving dormitory conditions and enforcing electronic payment of salaries.

The Government and the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) have worked very hard to make these changes a reality with the support from civil society. The pandemic showed us that many things which we previously thought were impossible could in fact be done with willpower and collaboration between the Government and civil society.

The pandemic has passed. But many of the problems that our migrant workers face will not.

I want to celebrate our wins in my speech today in improving dormitory conditions and enforcing electronic payment and partnership between the Government and civil society. But I also hope that we do not take this progress for granted.

The pandemic was a painful lesson that the fight for good living conditions and electronic payments are not just issues that are good for our migrant workers. They are also good for the Government, for employers and for public health.

These were painful lessons to learn. I hope we do not unlearn these lessons and use the momentum from COVID-19 to continue our fight for a more inclusive and fairer Singapore for our migrant workers.

The first win I hope to celebrate is the progress that we have made in improving dormitory conditions. I first spoke up in 2017 about the living conditions of migrant workers. Our migrant friends leave their homes to build and clean ours. The least we can do is give them proper homes in Singapore while they are here.

Before COVID-19, there were an average of 12 to 16 residents per room. Their beds, which were usually double-decker beds, could be crammed together without any minimum spacing between beds. Each resident usually had less than 3.5 square metres of living space. Sleeping spaces and communal facilities for cooking, dining and laundry did not have to be separated. Up to 15 residents could share one set of common toilets. Imagine being confined in this space with nowhere to go for months.

I am glad this has now changed for some workers.

After a comprehensive review of existing dormitory standards, we have now improved standards for new dormitories. Our new standards include a maximum of 12 residents in a room, en-suite toilets, no more than six residents to one toilet, adequate fans, more spacious rooms, adequate space between beds and even in-room Wi-Fi.

I thank MOM for engaging with employers, dormitory operators, migrant workers, NGOs and architects in preparing these standards. I am also glad that our Foreign Employee Dormitories Act has been extended from larger dormitories with 1,000 or more workers to smaller dormitories with seven beds or more.

These are improvements that civil society has been calling for. Today, they are a reality – but only for some workers.

While new dormitories after September 2021 must comply with the new dormitory standards, existing dormitories or those before September 2021 can operate based on past standards. We reviewed dormitory conditions and decided 3.5 square metres per person and 15 residents to a common toilet is unacceptable. We cannot say these standards are unacceptable for some but continue to live with these standards for others.

I understand that MOM is looking into how existing infrastructure can be converted to meet the updated standards. I hope we can set a concrete timeline for all dormitories to meet these minimum standards. Again, I hope it does not take another pandemic for living conditions to improve further.

The second win is increased enforcement of electronic payment of salaries. Electronic payment protects low-wage migrant workers against underpayment or illegal kickbacks by creating a paper trail.

I first spoke up in 2016 for electronic payment for Work Permit holders. At that point of time, MOM's response was that electronic payments could not be made mandatory. This was because of difficulties in maintaining minimum bank balances. SMEs also faced operational challenges and costs. We were stuck at only about two-thirds of all workers receiving salaries electronically for years.

When COVID-19 struck, electronic payment was made mandatory for workers in dormitories because employers had no other way of accessing workers who were in lockdown. By January 2021, 97% of all employers were paying salaries electronically. It took a pandemic for us to achieve the last mile in electronic payment for workers in dormitories.

While we celebrate this win, let us not forget that we are only talking about workers in dormitories. What about other workers not living in dormitories?

MOM has said that electronic payments help prevent salary disputes as there are digital records for each transaction. This benefit applies workers whether or not they live in dormitories.

We have proven that it is possible for virtually all workers living in dormitories to be electronically paid. We once thought this to be impossible. Let us go the further step and mandate electronic payment for all work permit holders.

Last, the final win that I hope to celebrate is the strong partnership that we have forged between the Government and civil society through this pandemic.

Many, many NGOs and ground-up initiatives sprung up to support our workers on all fronts. Civil society truly stepped up to provide material items from masks, sanitisers, daily necessities and food to the less tangible but no less important needs such as mental wellness helplines and other initiatives to provide emotional and psychological support. Regular sharing sessions between the Government and NGOs ensured that we could work in tandem towards the common goal of improving conditions for our migrant workers.

In times of need, we saw how the Government and civil society can work as one and complement each other's efforts. It was a win-win partnership and can continue to be.

As our work for migrant workers continue beyond COVID-19, so should this partnership. I hope we maintain the channels of communication and continue the collaboration between the Government and civil society for migrant workers issues – in fact, for all other issues as well.

Sir, the progress that we achieved over COVID-19 did not happen overnight. These were issues that civil society has called for, for many years. I hope these efforts continue and we do not wait for another pandemic to further improve living conditions, enforce electronic payment for all workers and sustain partnership with civil society. I also hope that we ride on the momentum of the progress we have made and continue to improve conditions for our migrant friends. Another pandemic is too high a price for us to pay to learn the lessons again.

Let me end with a quote I have used in many speeches to remind all of us in this House that, "There is no us or them, only us, one human family connected in ways we sometimes forget."

Mr Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join this debate on Deputy Prime Minister's Motion. I declare that I am a council member of the Singapore Business Federation.

Before proceeding with my speech, I will ask us to remember for a second all who have succumbed to COVID-19. May they rest in peace. My deepest condolences to their families.

Sir, I would like to start with a moment of gratitude on behalf of the business community: firstly, for the leadership by the Government and this House throughout the 37 months from DORSCON Yellow in January 2020 to DORSCON Green in February 2023; secondly, to all of Singapore, especially our frontline workers, for doing what they do every day for the rest of us, especially through the darkest days during the pandemic; and thirdly, for everyone involved with this White Paper, which I believe will become a valuable resource of actionable insights for the nation.

The business community is glad to see that we did not waste the crisis and that the Government chose to professionally and honestly reflect and learn from the events and the actions taken, including the U-turns that had to be made along the way. The findings are objective and balanced. The frank analysis on what we did well and what could have been done better provides valuable takeaways for us as a country to handle the next pandemic. Overall, Singapore has done well in protecting both lives and livelihoods.

In an August 2022 Pew Research Center Survey involving 19 countries, including Singapore, it was found that many countries believed the pandemic has revealed weaknesses or strengths in their political systems. In the US, the Netherlands, Greece, Germany, Japan, Australia and South Korea, the majority of their people see their countries struggling to handle the COVID-19 outbreak in ways that reveal political weakness. Only in Singapore, Hungary, Israel and Sweden does the majority feel the opposite, that the way their country has handled the COVID-19 virus outbreak highlights their country's political strengths. At the end of the day, it is the high trust and confidence that Singaporeans have in one another and in our leaders that have gotten us through the crisis of a generation. And having our reserves was a real blessing.

For the rest of my speech, I will speak on the key impressions of the White Paper from the various trade associations and chambers (TAC) leaders I engaged with.

Consistently, the business community has brought up the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) as the lifesaver for many companies, especially the SMEs. JSS was critical in keeping most businesses afloat during the pandemic and preserving jobs for workers by providing wage support for the companies to retain employees. To quote Mr Farid Khan, President of the Singapore Malay Chamber of Commerce and Industry: "The swift action taken by the Government in implementing this scheme has undoubtedly saved jobs and businesses."

In parallel, businesses, especially SMEs, are grateful to the Government for the quick rollout of the temporary relief measures, including rental rebates, bridging loan programmes, deferment of loan repayments, access to credit and so on. All these measures, which were urgently needed, were passed into legislation in record time. Looking back, Mr Kurt Wee, President of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME), said: "COVID-19 brought unprecedented collaboration and cooperation between SMEs and Government. Coordination with ESG was almost on a daily basis, at times, with two to three advisories being disseminated to the business ecosystem. TACs played a critical information bridge hand-in-hand with Government to usher the whole ecosystem throughout the crisis. Strong levels of trust were established. It was also an event that demonstrated the strength of the 4G team, which businesses highly recognise and appreciate."

Add to that, Government support to help businesses to pivot to e-payment to e-commerce and to reach customers online was transformational for many businesses, but, for many others, it was a lifesaver. There were several industries that were particularly hard-hit during COVID-19 and I asked three of them for their perspectives.

First up is the hotel industry. Given that, in general, 90% of hotel business comes from international travel, with the closure of our borders and subsequent border restriction measures, this industry was severely impacted. I would like to quote Ms Kwee Wei Lin, President of the Singapore Hotel Association: "Hotels are thankful to the Government for lifelines, such as the Jobs Support Scheme, which had helped to protect the livelihoods of our local employees. This, in turn, ensured that the industry had talents to restart effectively when recovery eventually came. Additionally, the rollout of the Enhanced Training Support package by the Government worked really well for the industry as hotels could optimise the downtime to upskill and reskill their employees to cater to a post-COVID-19 tourism landscape. Additionally, the launch of STB's Singapore Rediscover vouchers in December 2020 was another scheme which helped hotels to keep the lights on and retain its local workforce. The SHA would like to record its appreciation to the Government for helping the industry stay resilient. Hence, the number of SHA hotel members has remained unchanged from pre-COVID-19 days at 160."

Hon Members of this House, many of us would recall ourselves or loved ones having to stay away from home while serving isolation, quarantine or Stay-Home Notice (SHN). Ms Kwee shared how all the hotels stepped forward swiftly to repurpose their properties into isolation facilities to help our nation fight against COVID-19. Isolation, quarantine and SHN was an important line of defence against the pandemic and, at one point, more than half of the 67,000 hotel rooms in Singapore at that time were used in our battle against COVID-19. I am sure all of us in this Chamber will join the Singapore Hotel Association (SHA) to express our gratitude to all hotel employees, especially the frontliners, who very quickly adapted to their service delivery to offer compassion and care to guests who had to undergo isolation, quarantine or SHN. Ms Kwee said: "Hotels have made good use of the crisis by enhancing manpower capabilities and adopting technology solutions to accelerate their transformation journey. With the support from the Government, the industry has emerged stronger from this crisis of a generation."

The next industry that was badly affected by COVID-19 was the construction industry. The President of Real Estate Developers' Association of Singapore (REDAS), Mr Chia Ngiang Hong, recalled the chaotic condition at the beginning of COVID-19 breakout due to the lack of direction and coordination among the various Government agencies. I quote Mr Chia Ngiang Hong: "We agree with the finding in the White Paper that the handling of migrant workers was rather disappointing. As migrant workers are a lifeline to the construction industry, the impact to the industry and consequences were quite significant, as evidenced by the long delays in many construction projects and the collapse of a few big contractors. The reopening of worksites after the stabilisation of the migrant worker situation was rather painful, with volumes of new rules and requirements resulting in painfully slow progress on sites. Fortunately, Minister Desmond Lee stepped in to personally supervise the situation. With his very regular meetings with relevant stakeholders and agencies and very frank exchanges of views and feedback, the situation recovered well and inched towards normalcy. In hindsight, much could have been done differently by everyone, and the White Paper was objective and frank in calling out the issues and the lessons learnt."

As we read in the White Paper, MOM has since set up a new primary healthcare system for migrant workers. There are now six medical centres for migrant workers across the island. In partnership with MOM, the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) foundation, with the support of our SBF members, set up MigrantWell, an IPC charity, to establish one of the centres, St Andrew's Migrant Worker Medical Centre, at Penjuru Walk. MigrantWell is also providing care gaps, for example, in dental care for pain management, rehab physiotherapy and mental wellness for our migrant workers. Mr Govindaraj Mathiyalagan, a migrant worker with BJ Harvest Services, joined us at the launch of MigrantWell and shared that he and his fellow migrant workers are thankful to Singapore for doing this for them.

The silver lining of COVID-19 is that, through the dormitory saga, Singaporeans are now more aware of the contributions of our 600,000 to 700,000 migrant workers whose lives are just as precious as our own. These are people who are here in Singapore to earn an honest living to support their families back home. During COVID-19, when the plight of migrant workers came to the forefront, Singaporeans and residents opened their hearts and their wallets with generous donations with care packs and warm meals for our migrant workers. This is the SG Cares spirit.

Third, I would like to speak about the public transport industry. During COVID-19, among the heroes of our frontline workers include our 21,000 public transport workers. Notwithstanding that I am involved with the Public Transport Council, I submit to you that our public transport workers, as do our healthcare workers and all the other frontline workers, deserve our heartfelt appreciation. The Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the public transport operators kept our buses and trains running so that our healthcare workers and essential workforce can get to where they need to get to, to save lives, to connect Singaporeans to their families even during the phases when it was only two per household allowed, to keep Singapore humming in spite of the pandemic. At the peak of the pandemic, average daily ridership dropped to less than 25% of pre-COVID-19, but it was decided that public transport must be kept available for our essential workers and bus and MRT train service levels were sustained at largely pre-COVID-19 frequencies.

Our public transport workers put our commuters before self and worked tirelessly with a smile. We salute them for that. When Malaysia announced the closing of borders, our public transport operators (PTOs) worked around the clock to find accommodation to house our Malaysian bus captains and engineers. When the vaccination programme was launched, our public transport workers were given priority access to vaccines. And when there were concerns with the mental well-being of the public transport workers, especially the foreign workforce having to be away from their family and loved ones for prolonged periods, the PTOs leaned in. The CEO of SMRT, Mr Ngien Hoon Ping, shared how SMRT stepped up their engagement with the staff and provided strong support to the team throughout to maintain high staff morale. This is the SG Cares spirit.

During the pandemic, it became also more important than ever to promote a caring and inclusive public transport experience and the PTOs leaned in. The CEO of SBS Transit, Mr Jeffrey Sim, shared how SBS Transit staff partnered Dementia Singapore and rolled out the "Find Your Way" initiative to make bus interchanges and MRT stations frequented by seniors more friendly for them. This is the SG Cares spirit.

For all the positives of how well Singapore has managed during COVID-19, there was one low light besides the dormitories that caused us a PR hit and the Deputy Prime Minister mentioned it just now as well. There were various points in time when Singapore temporarily suspended the entry of long-term passholders, who are, generally, the family members of tax-paying Employment Pass (EP) holders.

It was a judgement call not without reason. However, the implication is that many of our EP holders had to endure prolonged family separation and disruption to their work or schooling for the children. It was a painful time for them. Mr Per Magnusson, Immediate Past President of the Singapore International Chambers of Commerce, shared with me that the White Paper, having included this issue and suggested improvements to better handle this segment of the community who also had their homes here, makes the already excellent report an outstanding one. He said, and I quote: "Singapore did a great job at handling the difficult situation during COVID-19. The international community was especially impressed with the equal approach, whether Singaporean or not, to vaccinations during COVID-19. Even more importantly, it shows an open and eager attitude towards learning from what went well and what could be improved."

Last but not least, I would like to speak to what I believe has saved jobs and livelihoods and prevented lost cohorts of young people who graduated during the COVID-19 years and, that is, the SGUnited Jobs and Skills programme. It was a good thing that the National Jobs Council was already in place, pre-COVID-19, to help workers acquire new skills and competencies necessary for adapting to the changing business landscape. Amid the COVID-19 situation, MOM very quickly was able to roll out the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package, which helped local jobseekers access jobs, company-hosted traineeships and attachments, as well as training opportunities.

SBF was one of the administrators for the programme and approved and onboarded around 19,500 placements from May 2020 to December 2022, about 10% of the total placements as reported in the White Paper. The common feedback which SBF received from companies is that both the SGUnited traineeships for fresh graduates in 2020 and 2021 and the current SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways for mature individuals are useful in two ways: (1) helping companies lower their risk in taking near-fit on non-fit individuals through the six to nine months of attachment before offering them permanent jobs and (2) helping fresh graduates and mature individuals secure opportunities to get permanent jobs.

SGUnited skills have also provided very good support for Singaporeans who were displaced due to the pandemic. This is not just because of the allowance that the Government gave to the trainees who signed up for the courses, but the skills that they picked up and the employment opportunities that they secured after the course. Singapore Polytechnic (SP), which I am involved with, participated actively in supporting the SGUnited skills programmes, training about 1,200 jobseekers. SP itself hired more than 100 of the trainees under the SGUnited Traineeship (SGUT) Programme and put the trainees to work in producing online videos to support the home-based learning during COVID-19.

The SGUnited skills trainees hired by SP, in fact, contributed to SP scaling up and accelerating the transition to a more digitalised pedagogical model and ready for the post-COVID-19 hybrid model where 20% of class time in lectures are conducted online increasingly, while tutorials are still face-to-face on campus. When the traineeship was over, seven of the trainees got employment contracts with SP. And while we did not track where the rest of them went to, the anecdotal feedback from employers is that the SGUT experience is appreciated.

Over the past three years, I am sure most of us would have come across graduates or mid-career professionals who benefited from the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Programme and, even if not said, all are grateful in one way or another.

SGUnited Jobs and Skills, in my opinion, has become a brand unto itself. I believe that it is a programme which can have a long tail, even as we are now operating in DORSCON Green.

I would like to ask the Government to share some updates on the following.

One, what is the Government's assessment of the impact of SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package and tripartite efforts in mitigating unemployment and supporting the recovery of the labour market and whether we will continue to do so?

Two, how has the setting up of SGUnited Jobs and Skills Centres in every HDB town been helpful to jobseekers and do we see this as a permanent support for our workforce?

Three, the Job Growth Incentive (JGI) supported businesses and local jobseekers during COVID-19 and was very helpful for a wide pool of jobseekers, especially the unemployed and mature workers. It can be helpful even in post COVID-19 to motivate and encourage workers to enter certain industries which traditionally may not be attractive or to incentivise employers to invest in certain persons for jobs in their organisation. How does the Government plan to use tools like JGI and SGUnited Jobs and Skills to correct some of the structural employment misalignment in our industries for our Singaporean workers and also for persons with disabilities and vulnerable jobseekers?

Moving forward, the strengths of our tripartite partnerships must be further leveraged. With Budget 2023, business community is assured that the Government will continue to support businesses and workers in their efforts to recover and rebuild from the pandemic. It is crucial for the Government to continue to work closely with industry stakeholders, including TACs to develop targeted measures that address the specific needs of businesses and workers in different sectors and industries.

We are blessed to have survived COVID-19 relatively well and have emerged from the pandemic, ready to take on the opportunities ahead of us. What is before us unfortunately is not yet clear skies as we grapple with rapid inflation, supply shocks and energy price hikes from the Russian's invasion of Ukraine and the threat of global growth slowdown. The scares of a financial system meltdown sparked by the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank in the US being brought down in the past weeks and quickly spiralling related or otherwise to the near failure of Credit Suisse Bank add further dark clouds looming ahead of us.

Singapore, once again can rise above these troubles if we, like during COVID-19, stand together, shoulder to shoulder, hand-in-hand, SG United and resolved to handle whatever this next crisis lies ahead of us with strength, with hope and with love for our country.

Mr Speaker, I support the Motion put up by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance that this House expresses gratitude to all in Singapore who contributed to the nation's fight against COVID-19 affirms the Government's effort to learn from the experiences of the last three years and to that end, endorses Paper Cmd 22 of 2023 on "Singapore's Response to COVID-19: Lessons for the Next Pandemic."

Mr Speaker, I declare that I am a medical doctor in a public hospital. I will speak today on our pandemic defence and our national capabilities – our frontliners and our healthcare workers.

In a crisis, we learn something about the world around us and we learn something about ourselves too. And from the crisis of a generation, we need to learn the lessons of a generation. Because the next pandemic may be Disease X, more severe, more contagious and less forgiving.

The fight against a pandemic does not begin when the virus lands on Singapore soil. It starts in the preparation – 10 years, 20 years ahead. And that is what we must do for the road ahead as well. We must strengthen our national capabilities ahead of time, across multiple sectors.

First, our supply chains. Our supply chains are our lifeline, whether it is face masks, surgical gloves or personal protective equipment (PPE), whether it is oxygen supplies, ventilators, or medications. These are the battle armour and ammunition that our healthcare frontliners used to protect and save Singaporean lives. These supplies need to be ready and they need to be uninterrupted, going beyond just-in-time delivery and moving towards preparing for just-in-case.

We saw what happened in some other parts of the world, when the healthcare system and its supply chains broke down elsewhere, and cost lives and livelihoods and cost hope for many people in other countries. We cannot let that happen in Singapore.

So, can I ask the Minister, what are we doing to strengthen our supply chains internationally? What is the Ministry of Health (MOH) doing, to work with the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) on this? Are we mapping our supply chains carefully, not just the superficial layer, but the dependencies? Who supplies the suppliers? Are we identifying the acupressure points, the points whereby if the supply chain comes under stress, there is disproportionate impact? Are we searching for the shatter points – the vulnerable points in our supply chains, so that we can strengthen, defend and protect ourselves better in a crisis? Because you can have three suppliers providing a tender to supply eggs to Singapore, but if the eggs all come from the same upstream source, from the same basket upstream, it is still a concentration risk for us and we need to learn from this.

On our legal capabilities, in a crisis, our ability to assess the legal situation and the rule of law around the world – that is also how we protect ourselves. For certain essential goods which Singapore needs to survive in a crisis, can we look better at the legal process of procurement? How can we defend our interests better?

I asked this two weeks ago, during the MOH debate on the Budget. I asked whether MOH is working together with the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) to study whether certain essential supplies required for our survival, whether such supplies, once the purchase is done, can these supplies be gazetted as sovereign state property at that moment, even if the items are still in the suppliers' warehouse overseas. I am sure there are international lawyers with experience in the Ministry, our agencies should be able to study this. And I encourage the Ministry to look at this as well.

On our vaccine capabilities, we saw first-hand how important vaccines are; saving Singaporean lives, saving patients, changing what could have been a fatal outcome to a severe disease, a severe disease to a mild illness and protecting fellow Singaporeans and people throughout our island. We saw how important those vaccines were.

There has been talk of "fill-and-finish" production of COVID-19 vaccines. "Fill-and-finish" means filling the containers and vials with vaccine and then finishing the packaging and process for distribution. But we must ask ourselves, is this good enough or can we aspire to more? If there needs to be a new vaccine against a new COVID-19 variant or a new pandemic, does Singapore have the capability to research, develop, produce the vaccine on shore, either through our own companies or through international partners working with us, based on Singapore's soil?

I called for this two years ago, during the debate on the 2021 Budget. Can the Ministry give an update? Because this capability would be good for Singaporeans, good for Singapore and good for the region and the world.

On our scientific capabilities, how might we get better at understanding new pandemics, better understanding to make better policy? For example, in testing for COVID-19, what tests and how often? One key early decision was whether to go with ART or PCR tests and in what situations? Whether a frequent ART swab with instant results, compared to a PCR test that is harder to do which may need a healthcare facility and which cannot be done as often as frequent ART tests at home. It is an important difference – a test which is less sensitive but done very often at high frequency, compared to a more sensitive test which can only be done one at a time, less frequently.

The concept of frequent rapid ART tests at home to supplement PCR tests in healthcare institutions was already being discussed in expert journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine as early as September 2020. Could Singapore, with hindsight – and hindsight is always 20/20 – have moved earlier on this? How could we have opened our assessments and minds more in advance? Or for that matter, studying how a new virus is transmitted – is it by droplets or airborne? Is it something we can detect in the surfaces we touch or the air that we breathe?

International organisations like the World Health Organization (WHO) play an important role. They advise countries on whether masks are needed and other such safety measures. But we must still develop our own capability, in-house, in Singapore, to research and understand new diseases, test the evidence and draw our own conclusions as well.

On pandemic surveillance, we need to get better at detecting new germs in the environment. Not just what we know but what we do not know. And importantly, to learn about what we do not know and about what we do not yet know. One such technology is metagenomics.

In October 2021, I asked MOH on the use of metagenomics. You take samples from the environment – whether it is surfaces, sewage and so on – you then sequence all the DNA, both what is known and unknown, and if the pattern of that metagenomics study, if the pattern of DNA in the environment and the sewage changes at the same time as many people are falling ill, that could be an early indicator of a new pandemic.

The Minister in his 2021 reply mentioned technical challenges, such as the complex mix of germs in the environment, complex microbiome. But we should keep on exploring these new technologies. This kind of hard work on sewage – I do not think Speaker will allow me to use the Hokkien phrase – this kind of hard work on sewage research can help save Singaporean lives.

This brings me to biomedical research capability. It is 20 years since Biopolis opened – big investment, biomedical research. There were naysayers back then. But the investments created jobs and helped Singaporeans to build up skills and knowledge so that when a new virus came, we could understand it faster, sequence the genome faster, and develop our own tests, kits and equipment faster.

Some R&D is about short-term commercial results. Safe and conventional; everyone agrees it should done, the market already thinks it should be done. But there can be market failure. We know this, especially when planning for what is over the horizon, beyond a five-year plan, but looking at 10 or 20 years into the future. We need to make sure that our R&D, our research projects include a diversity of approaches, including research which might not bear fruit straightaway, but which might be useful in 10 to 20 years' time. Research that can build skills or act as an insurance policy if we face new and unusual challenges in the future.

We also need to strengthen Singapore's artificial intelligence (AI) capability. AI is no longer a niche technology. It is everywhere today. It will change how we work, how we analyse data, even how we do research and shape public policy. Five years ago, during the 2018 Budget debate, I called for Singapore to make a big push towards AI because, for certain key capabilities and skills, it is not good enough to depend on the private sector or outsourcing. We want to build in-house capabilities, suited for Singapore's needs and to build these skills in-house as well.

In the five years since then, the world of AI changed as well. We now have ChatGPT and GPT-4 has come out. It is moving very, very quickly. Computing power has increased with lower energy cost. We must continue investing in AI to see how it can help us prepare for the next pandemic and strengthen our healthcare system.

Sir, I want to talk about our frontliners and our healthcare workers. Our frontliners made many sacrifices during the pandemic. I remember a young healthcare worker, a young mother, married to another healthcare worker. She had has just given birth, newborn baby, born during the pandemic. But because of concerns about COVID-19 transmission between the husband's healthcare workplace and the wife's healthcare workplace, the husband had to move out of the home right after his wife had given birth, in order to keep her and her colleagues safe. It was a big sacrifice.

There were nurses who were kicked out of their homes, evicted at short notice by landlords who were consumed by fear about this new and unusual virus. And some frontliners were outsourced workers, worried about falling between the cracks because they were not sure who would take responsibility for their care and support, because although they work in a frontline role, their job contract was with an outsourced company and not the frontline organisation.

So, we must learn from our people's stories. See through the eyes of our people and prepare ourselves better to support our people through the next pandemic.

I want to speak on outsourced workers in hospitals. Our hospital cleaners and healthcare attendants are part of the frontline, together with our medical, nursing, allied health staff, facing COVID-19 together. Our hospital cleaners helped clean the COVID-19 ward, the toilets of a COVID-19 patient in the ward.

Our healthcare Ah Mahs – the uncles and aunties, the attendants – they helped transport COVID-19 patients' samples during the pandemic. They were part of the frontline, too.

In years gone by, these brothers and sisters were hired directly by the public hospitals. Today, many are outsourced. Same job, same workplace, same COVID-19 risks, different contracts and now outsourced to a service provider.

But, sometimes, outsourcing leads to unintended outcomes. Again, 20/20 hindsight is always clearer. But looking back, in 2020, the then Finance Minister had stated in the Budget debate round-up speech, "The Government will award public officers on the frontline who are directly battling with the COVID-19 disease up to one additional month of special bonus. This will include many healthcare officers in MOH and the restructured hospitals."

But as I pointed out in Parliament in February 2021, there were Clementi residents and brothers and sisters in the Labour Movement who found that some cleaners serving in restructured hospitals did not qualify for this bonus because their contracts were outsourced.

In the era before outsourcing, these workers would have been direct hires and qualified for the bonuses and support which in-house staff received.

Later that year, in November 2021 and in reply to my January 2022 Parliamentary Question and my March 2022 questions to MOH during the Budget debate, the Minister for Health confirmed that the subsequent COVID-19 Healthcare Award for "all staff of public healthcare institutions" would include frontline healthcare workers from outsourced service providers serving at public healthcare institutions.

This was an important step forward, but the deeper lessons from COVID-19 remain.

In a pandemic, nobody is safe till everybody is safe. Migrant workers, outsourced workers, gig economy platform workers, informal workers – no one is safe till everyone is safe.

Second, on the pandemic frontline – same job, same workplace means same risk, even if the contract looks different and says the worker is outsourced. And, importantly, every worker matters, including outsourced workers, because the COVID-19 virus, a pandemic virus, does not ask to read the terms and conditions of your job contract before infecting you, and we need to learn from these lessons of COVID-19.

As I highlighted during the MOH Budget debate in 2021, the policy reasons for outsourcing hospital cleaners and hospital attendants are not compelling policy reasons. The demand for hospital cleaners and attendants is not seasonal. It does not fluctuate that much throughout the year. In a COVID-19 world, it is better for the healthcare team to be all based within the same healthcare institution rather than moving between different hospitals, as may happen with an outsourced arrangement.

Outsourced cleaners already receive protective gear from public hospitals, recognising they are part of the same workplace. And it also sends a message when our cleaners and hospital attendants are in-house staff. It sent a message that you are part of the same team, you are shouldering the same risk as everyone else, you are one of us, and we are together. We need to send that message.

So, I call upon the Government to look seriously at this as part of the post-COVID-19 review and the lessons from COVID-19 for governments around the world because it is part of how we think, how we think beyond pure efficiency, "just in time" towards resilience "just in case".

Mr Speaker, I have said this before during the debate on MOH's Budget in the Committee of Supply (COS). With your permission, may I say, once again, through you: thank you to our frontliners, our healthcare worker brothers and sisters, our public officers. Your courage, contributions and sacrifice made the difference, got us through this, saved so many lives. In Mandarin.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Many thanks to our frontliners, healthcare workers, public officers. Through your contributions and sacrifices, we have today’s reopening and sunny skies after the storm.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Thank you so much to our public officers, healthcare workers and frontline workers. As a community caring for one another, as a community united, as a community of friends from multiple races, languages and religions, we were able to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

(In English): In Tamil. எங்கள் மனமார்ந்த நன்றி or thank you very much.

Our sincere thanks for all that you have done and all that you continue to do.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, seven years ago, in my maiden speech in this House, I spoke of the "outside context problem", when a society encounters a life-or-death existential crisis that it did not foresee. So, we must continue exercising our imagination, having the imagination to see what challenges may come ahead from over the horizon. So, we must imagine the unthinkable and prepare to confront the unexpected, preparing not in fear, but with imagination, resolve and togetherness, so that no matter what happens in a dangerous world for small countries, nothing and no one will ever knock Singapore down. I stand in support of the Motion.

Mr Speaker, Sir, first and foremost, I wish to express my greatest appreciation to all the healthcare and other frontline workers whose hard work enabled our lives to continue throughout the pandemic. Without them, we would not have been able to pull through this crisis. I hope we will not forget that and will recognise their contribution by improving their remunerations and working conditions.

The White Paper has laid out a self-appraisal of our handling of the pandemic. I wish to add on in areas that I felt had not been addressed or insufficiently addressed.

Firstly, was the $72.3 billion in COVID-19 packages well spent? Based on what is written in the White Paper and the two occasional papers from the Ministry of Finance (MOF) on the COVID-19 Budget measures, what is missing is an assessment on whether each of the different measures was a good use of funds. In future crises, should they be deployed and, if so, should they be modified?

In particular, I feel that the support given to businesses should have been more discriminate. For example, $30 billion was distributed to businesses in wage support. As this was a broad-based measure, even companies that continued to be highly profitable throughout the pandemic were included. It is difficult to understand why companies who can afford to continue paying millions of dollars in executive pay should be receiving wage support from taxpayers. Thirty billion dollars is a big amount and equivalent to a GST collection of 17%. The Deputy Prime Minister has told us that the $40 billion draw from our past Reserves is unlikely to be paid back. I think greater scrutiny is merited on whether we had spent our Reserves prudently.

We can learn from the experience of other countries in past crises when banks had to be bailed out, when assistance was given in the form of equity purchase which, subsequently, recovered in share prices, and restrictions were placed on executive pay.

If the need for swiftness is paramount, we can, nonetheless, incorporate clawback provisions that will allow us to recover payments made to non-qualifying companies after the crisis is over. Companies that remained profitable throughout the pandemic, those that turned profitable after the crisis and those who paid excessive executive remuneration should return the grants given. Why were there no such clawback provisions? We should use our Reserves more prudently.

The second point I wish to bring up is inclusivity. Being an inclusive society means that we need to respect decisions that may be different from ours and protect the freedom of choice, especially medical choices.

There remains a significant segment of our population sceptical about vaccinations and, in particular, the mRNA ones. From a full vaccination rate of over 90% to the 60% up-to-date vaccination rate, we can see the true level of reservations on vaccination.

In the interest of inclusivity and unity, we should respect the choices and decisions made by individuals and continue to engage them. However, some of the policy decisions have instead alienated a segment of our population and caused a division.

For example, a definite preference for mRNA vaccines was seen when traditional vaccines were approved later and not given the same financial support initially. I recognise that the Government had good intentions in pushing for the mRNA vaccines. Initial clinical data showed that mRNA vaccines are more efficacious than traditional vaccines, so, it was justifiably a better use of public funds to use them in the national vaccination campaign.

However, since mRNA vaccines are new to many people and not without health risks, especially myocarditis, there are understandable concerns, and adopting a forceful approach would instead foster mistrust and make some people more susceptible to fake news and rumours.

Some of the vaccination-differentiated safe management measures (VDS) were too harsh and disproportionate, particularly the ban on the unvaccinated from going back to their workplace even if they tested negative, which threatened many livelihoods. This is a point I have raised before in an Adjournment Motion in January 2022. I urge the Government to look into the circumstances of those who had lost their jobs due to their unvaccinated status. They have paid a heavier price than average in the country's efforts to get the pandemic under control and I think special consideration in the form of employment assistance and financial compensation is in order.

Even today, when VDS have been lifted, many unvaccinated Singaporeans still feel discriminated at the workplace. For example, a recent recruitment advertisement from the National University of Singapore (NUS) for an Administrative Executive stated that "Applicants are strongly encouraged to have themselves fully COVID-19 vaccinated to secure successful employment with NUS".

I continue to feel strongly that an individual's medical choice should not jeopardise their livelihoods. Where there is no occupational requirement for vaccination, it should not factor into the employment decision or even appear in a recruitment advertisement. This should be addressed as soon as possible. I hope we can uphold the principle that any policy or strategy to tackle a national emergency should unite our people and not divide them.

Lastly, I believe that our efforts to engage the public on the response to the pandemic would have benefited from a more visible involvement from a team of medical experts, instead of a panel comprising mostly of politicians. If policy decisions on vaccination, COVID-19 treatment and quarantine measures were fronted and explained by a team of doctors and medical experts, it would have lent greater credence and depoliticised the situation.

Mr Speaker, three long years of pandemic living was announced to be at an end just last month and many of us heaved a sigh of relief that the remaining measures of our pandemic response were finally behind us.

Given the serious and uncertain nature of the pandemic, it was a testament to the hard work, dedication and resilience of our nation, especially our frontline workers, that we pulled through.

We have, before us, the Government's internal review of our response being debated today, from which we all hope to be able to better inform our actions and decisions when facing the next public health crisis. While we have comments about the way the review has been conducted, I do believe the report is helpful in identifying the lessons we can take away to build back stronger.

First, I will touch on some comments and observations about the communications surrounding our pandemic response before speaking about where I feel our focus should be as we move forward to build our resilience as a nation and as a people.

The White Paper states that effective communication and high levels of public trust were crucial in handling the crisis.

Indeed, many of us remember being glued to our screens each time the Prime Minister spoke or a press conference was held by the task force, wondering what the latest updates would be and what changes were awaiting us. Yet, I think it is worth reiterating some observations that I made in my speech in this House in July 2021, just after the second Heightened Alert phase was announced.

It may seem like a distant memory today, but it was a time of great difficulty, especially for our businesses. The spread of the Delta variant from the breach of our barriers at Changi Airport, along with the Jurong Fishery Port and infamous KTV clusters, meant that our businesses and our restaurants, in particular, had to constantly change plans at short and sharp notice, lurching from trying to adapt their operations to cater from one highly complicated set of rules to the next. It was also a source of great frustration for businesses and organisations that they often had to wait a few days for rules that were specific to their sector to be announced.

I, therefore, believe the call we made in July 2021 is still relevant and that we should ensure that we develop a roadmap for future use, clearly laying out support measures pegged to specific restriction levels. It would also be important to share how the authorities weigh up various factors in deciding what restrictions to impose, along with the level of support that will be meted out to individuals.

While we all acknowledge that it is difficult to set these matters in stone, having more information and understanding about how decisions are made would be important for both businesses and individuals to plan forward and be psychologically prepared for the various ups and downs that come with any large-scale pandemic, like the one we have just come through.

Still on communications, one area which we perhaps could look into is to work out a system of improving our existing structures to ensure that our agencies are able to more smoothly integrate the information they have and to be efficient in processing this.

I make this comment after receiving feedback from residents and friends who were subject to quarantine orders, who told me that they often received numerous calls from different departments of various Ministries, each asking them for the exact same information which they had already provided. One even told me that an officer turned up at his house to issue a quarantine order the day after he returned to Singapore, after he had spent much time on the phone with and sending documents to various departments and was already cleared from needing to quarantine earlier that same morning due to being a recently recovered patient.

The shift to home-based quarantines, otherwise known as the Home Recovery Programme, rather than quarantine in dedicated facilities, likewise, also resulted in much confusion and jammed hotlines as worried Singaporeans tried to find out more about the new protocols.

One area which we also feel warranted more attention in the review and also our future plans has been the impact that COVID-19 has had on the mental well-being of our population and the development of our children.

As I mentioned in the recently concluded Budget debate, we appear to be reporting increased feelings of isolation and loneliness and this has a direct impact on our life and healthy life expectancy. Also, many educators have said that they have noticed our younger children appear to be struggling more with mental health and developmental issues and that the Singapore Youth Epidemiology and Resilience Study found high numbers of youth have reported mental health symptoms.

Just yesterday, The Straits Times reported the findings of a Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) poll that while most Singaporeans believe they emerged from the pandemic in good shape, more households with children and elderly reported drops in quality of life, compared with the general population. Likewise, 38% of youths aged 15 to 19 reported drops in the quality of life, compared with 28% for the general population.

Yet, there has been scant mention of well-being and mental health in the White Paper. The pandemic led to job losses, business failures, school closures and families spending extraordinary amounts of time together indoors, which have, in turn, led to unprecedented stress and pushed our coping mechanisms to breaking point. On top of everyday anxiety over catching an unknown and possibly fatal illness, individuals, families and businesses have had to cope with movement restrictions and ever-changing rules relating to what we can or cannot do.

I hope that the promised protocols and provisions for mental health for Healthier SG will be made available as a matter of urgency and that they will sensitively take into account the after-effects of COVID-19 and the findings of the Mental Wellness Taskforce.

Even as we move forward from COVID-19, we must not forget to pay special attention to the gaps that were exposed by the pandemic.

A 2021 paper by the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) stated that residents in the lower-income groups were more disproportionately hit by lockdown and movement restrictions and that Malay respondents to the study were more likely to report adverse economic effects as a result of the movement restrictions. These areas bear special attention, as such groups may have fallen further behind, particularly in the wake of the high inflation we have been experiencing over the last year.

Additionally, as I mentioned in my speech during the Government's White Paper on Singapore Women's Development, I asked about the effect the pandemic has had on the gender wage gap and the effect of the chronic undervaluing and underpaying of work – paid and unpaid – that is traditionally done by women. This is despite this work being deeply important and essential, as all of us learnt first-hand during the lockdown days in particular.

While we have seen some wage adjustments to various sectors from education and care work, this does not address the hard work that needs to be done to ensure that our structures reflect the great value that we must place on the work that these often invisible and overlooked workers do.

These points have also been backed up by studies and data, such as the United Nations' (UN) findings on the disproportionate adverse effects that COVID-19 had on women and girls, including the negative impact on economic, physical and mental well-being. There was also concern that women and children were being exposed to higher levels of domestic violence and, indeed, in Singapore, there have been findings that family violence has increased from 2020 to 2022.

I also hope that attention can be given to the still little-known phenomenon that we often refer to as "long COVID". This is what happens when survivors of COVID-19 find themselves being plagued with a variety of effects long after they have recovered from the acute phase of the illness. These can range from gastrointestinal problems, fatigue, respiratory symptoms like shortness of breath to cognitive impairments, alongside psychological conditions, such as depression and anxiety.

While findings are mixed, some studies have even suggested that women, older people and those of minority ethnicities appear to be more severely affected. There is natural concern about economic and health impact, adding to the hidden toll of the pandemic that we must not forget.

Indeed, a recent meta-analysis published in The Lancet even seems to have found a worrying 45% of patients, regardless of hospitalisation status, still suffer from unresolved symptoms four months post-infection. Indeed, The Lancet also recently estimated, too, that approximately 65 million people worldwide are estimated to struggle with "long COVID" and that one in 10 people with "long COVID" stop working. This results in an extensive economic loss.

Given that we have reported more than 2.2 million COVID-19 cases, even a small percentage of this would be significant. While I acknowledge that the condition is poorly understood, complex and variable, the Ministry of Health (MOH) stated in April last year that it did not track the incidences of "long COVID".

This is a missed opportunity, not only because it means many recovered patients, particularly those for whom these after-effects may not be severe, may be suffering in silence, and it affects their productivity, both at home and at the workplace. They also do not have access to the treatment and care that they need to have a better quality of life.

It also means we are not capturing data about whether certain groups are more adversely affected. We are, therefore, missing the chance to be able to provide more efficient, targeted measures of support and education for these groups, to be given the timely and adequate levels of help that they need. This has implications on the physical and mental well-being of our population, with an impact on our recent moves to a different approach to health and the expected increased care cost burden as our population ages.

Equally alarming, too, is the finding by Mercer Marsh Benefits that Singapore ranks lowest in Asia for help given by employers to make adjustments to the job to cater to employees suffering from "long COVID". Additionally, many people I speak to would mention that they are not quite the same after coming down with COVID-19 but are either unaware of or do not understand what "long COVID" is.

How do we ensure that sufferers are seeking both treatment and help, particularly for those whose livelihoods and abilities to either work or study have been affected by poorer or sub-optimal health?

There is also a sense that weakened immunity post-infection, coupled with the removal of social interventions to curb the spread of COVID-19, has also led to the circulation of more cases of infectious illnesses like upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) and I hope that we can be mindful of this as we track workplace and educational performance for these affected individuals.

I would also like to seek a clarification. Now that we have fully shifted to living with COVID-19, I understand and appreciate that the full subsidies previously offered to patients suffering from COVID-19 are being stepped down. In particular, COVID-19 antivirals, such as Paxlovid, will remain fully subsidised for clinically eligible patients in outpatient settings. I further understand that hospitals will now start to charge for these important medications.

Would the Minister be able to confirm that this is, indeed, the case and to explain the rationale behind such a move? After all, the drugs are meant to be prescribed to high-risk patients who are more likely to be seen in hospital settings.

Finally, to close on a personal note, I would like to record my deep gratitude to the dedicated individuals who pushed through their stress and fatigue to provide high standards of care for all of us who were in the hospitals and other care settings. This included my then-one-year-old when he was warded at KKH after suffering from a COVID-19-related emergency just a little over a year ago.

Your compassion, kindness and understanding never wavered towards a bewildered and confused pandemic baby unused to strangers and foreign environments despite him crying through the night at 15-minute intervals. I am forever thankful for how you cheerfully suited up each time so that you could hold him and try to calm him while I snatched precious moments, seconds, to use the toilet.

We owe our post-pandemic freedoms today to our everyday heroes and I hope that we do right by them in repaying the debt that we owe them by valuing them in concrete ways and also by ensuring that the sacrifices made and lessons learnt along the way are implemented in any future public health crisis that we face. For that, I support the Motion.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I wish to start by expressing my appreciation to all our frontline workers who have made sacrifices and worked extremely hard to get Singapore through the pandemic to emerge stronger.

This COVID-19 After Action Review (AAR) process provides us with an opportunity to learn and improve for the next pandemic.

My clarifications on the White Paper will focus on the areas of health and manpower, given my roles in the two Government Parliamentary Committees (GPCs).

First, Mr Speaker, Sir, on healthcare-related measures, it is important to acknowledge the roles of international bodies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), in shaping our pandemic response.

We adopted many WHO-recommended measures, including mask-wearing and border restrictions. But every country has different traits, such as demographics, population density, geography and so on, that require different approaches to managing pandemics. Therefore, our response should be tailored according to Singapore's unique traits.

It is, thus, essential to ensure that we have access to independent data and research to make informed decisions that align with our best interests. We should not blindly follow the advice of international bodies. Such advice can serve as a general guideline but may not apply to individual countries' interests.

Likewise, the recommendations may only be announced after an incident has happened, making it difficult to implement them in a timely manner. Can a Ministry explain how we can develop access to such independent data and research, especially from overseas?

How do we develop the capability to evaluate global data and guidance critically, with a view to adapt them to our local context? How can we pre-emptively develop our own guidelines to shield our population from the next pandemic?

Another area of concern is vaccine approvals, given there were many types of vaccines to tackle COVID-19, for instance, mRNA versus non-mRNA, each manufactured by different pharmaceutical companies. How can Singapore further hasten the process of vaccine approval for future pandemics, learning from the COVID-19 experience?

How can we also support our local research and developments, like the COVID-19 vaccine that was developed by Arcturus Therapeutics and Duke-NUS?

Next, Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to raise several manpower-related questions.

Firstly, was the implementation of vaccination-differentiated safe management measures (VDS) necessary in the workplace in January 2022? Looking back, were safe management measures (SMMs) and mandatory mask wearing sufficient in managing the risk of COVID-19 spreading through the workplaces?

How were the measures enforced at workplaces? Were the efforts deemed successful? I believe that implementing SMMs can help prevent the spread of diseases in the workplace. However, their effectiveness depends on both employees and employers following them diligently.

It would, certainly, be too intrusive and resource-intensive to monitor workers to ensure that they wear masks at all times and keep the recommended distance between them. So, how can we strike a balance in future pandemics to ensure that everyone takes responsibility for good personal hygiene and follow SMMs?

Secondly, there were employees who lost their jobs due to VDS. What was the assessment of the support given to these employees? How did the tripartite partners provide guidance to employers through advisories, like the tripartite advisory on managing excess manpower and responsible retrenchment? Were these advisories sufficient and effective?

How did the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) ensure compliance or should we have done more, like move legislation, to ensure that retrenchments were necessary and done as a last resort?

Lastly, due to the pandemic, numerous businesses had to downsize, shut down entirely or pivot operations, which led to retrenchments. How did the Government assist workers who were retrenched, particularly older workers, who face challenges in finding new employment?

What were the lessons learnt and how can we apply these lessons as we move ahead to promote senior employability in the workplaces? By addressing these issues, we can improve our approach to manpower management in future pandemics. It is already challenging enough to navigate a pandemic and we should strive to prevent additional job losses and financial insecurity.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, Sir, the key question is what if the next pandemic strikes tomorrow? Three years have passed since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Yet, many aspects of how we should respond should a novel virus emerge and spread remain uncertain and fiercely debated. How do we get our population vaccinated as quickly as possible, without knowing the full side effects and safety aspects of new vaccines?

How do we build stronger supply chains without overspending, in order to improve our resilience? Most importantly, how does the Government instil trust whilst making hard policy decisions with little details when the next Disease X hits us?

COVID-19 brought out tremendous resolve, scientific innovation and individual and collective steadfastness. But, even so, millions across the globe died and economies were set back around the world. Disease X could be a similar threat like COVID-19. It also could be far worse.

So, the question remains: what if the next pandemic happens tomorrow?

Our experience taught us that things happen quickly with little information. Our Government must have the gumption to make hard policy decisions swiftly, as each decision has huge ramifications on our people, Singapore and for the costs of the pandemic.

This was how it was like in the early days of COVID-19; it is also how it will be like for future pandemics.

To me, this boils down to one thing. We must build and maintain the trust that Singaporeans have in our Government to do the right thing and to do things right. And we must do that by learning from past pandemics and preparing for our pandemic response now.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the COVID-19 pandemic put our society to the test in every way. It tested our healthcare workers, our companies and small businesses, our workers, our Government and politics, our NGOs and, indeed, every citizen.

The costs and sacrifices were borne unequally, as is the case everywhere in the world that this pandemic touched. For example, in the business sector, some companies prospered exceptionally while many SMEs struggled or closed. But what we can say today is that all the key stakeholders in our system, on the whole, pulled together and acted in the best interest of all. This is what history will remember. When we were tested, we rose to that call. If we had not, the losses and the scars would be far worse today.

On that note, I would like to register, alongside all Members of this House, a profound debt of gratitude that we all owe to the frontline workers who toiled at the coalface of this crisis – healthcare workers and many other frontline staff – without whose sacrifice we would have, collectively, paid a much higher price.

Mr Speaker, Sir, my speech will touch on four aspects of the post-COVID-19 review, namely, the role of general practitioners (GPs) in the pandemic response, the approach we take to migrant workers, the role of NGOs and some observations on the COVID-19 White Paper itself.

Firstly, on the role of GPs, Sir. There are about 1,800 GP clinics in Singapore providing around 80% of primary healthcare services to our citizens. Under the newly-launched Healthier SG, the role of GPs will be enhanced to become more proactive on the preventive healthcare front.

In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, a great deal of public funding was deployed to engage private healthcare companies to administer vaccinations and to conduct telehealth check-ins and surveillance of quarantine orders and so on.

No doubt, at the time, it may have been problematic for GPs to have played more of a role in this effort, at least at the initial stage, due to the very slender staffing and administrative resources that most GPs have. But given the enhancements to the role of GPs that will come about due to Healthier SG, which should see GPs enhance their access to IT and data, for example, I wonder if, in case there is a future pandemic, could GPs play more of a role in the initial response, in terms of vaccination and surveillance?

Why do I ask this? It is for a few reasons.

Firstly, GPs are locally based across the island. Citizens would have to travel less, be inconvenienced less and interact less with large crowds of people at collective vaccination centres if they obtain vaccinations at GP clinics.

Secondly, GPs may be familiar with patients personally, and that familiarity may facilitate better communication and education and a better and less anxious patient experience.

Thirdly, anecdotally, it would seem that many GPs are not fully utilised throughout the day in terms of doctor consultation time, though, of course, this is uneven. But I suspect many would have the capacity to take on more of this sort of a role at certain times a day.

It could be argued that GP clinics lack the manpower and equipment to play such a role. However, manpower and equipment could be deployed to these clinics from a central pool, as needed. It could also be argued that GP clinics lack the physical space to handle large crowds. However, could this not be addressed through scheduling systems that could be run off a centralised IT backbone?

Of course, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not have the time to put in place all of these systems and processes to enable GPs to play more of a role in the initial phase. But for future pandemics, and given the changes we will make for Healthier SG, could we give some thought to how our GP clinics could play more of a role vis-à-vis private healthcare companies?

Mr Speaker, Sir, next, let me move on to the subject of our migrant workers. All Singaporeans ought to recognise the vital role migrant workers play in our society and all of us should be in favour of treating them with the respect and dignity that should be owed to all workers. In fact, I believe many, if not most, Singaporeans these days strongly favour such principles.

The COVID-19 outbreak in the migrant workers' dormitories in Singapore will remain a blight on the report card in the way Singapore managed the pandemic. Our health protocols for the next pandemic must include protecting the most vulnerable communities among us. They must not be an afterthought in the next health crisis.

On this note, I am glad that the COVID-19 White Paper does recognise some of these issues. And I quote from the White Paper: "In retrospect, the early precautions we took in the dormitories were insufficient. Given the communal living environment, the dormitory outbreak had every possibility of becoming a major disaster. We should have probed deeper and conducted better and earlier ground surveillance, such as by doing dipstick testing on sample populations to make the most of limited testing resources. We also had to make a difficult judgement call on when and how to relax movement restrictions on migrant workers living in dormitories. We could have eased some of the restrictions earlier, especially after most of the workers had been vaccinated and boosted… In the end, we decided to act with an abundance of caution to keep the workers and the broader community safe. But the extended restrictions did take a toll on their well-being."

Before I go on, I should acknowledge that it was good that the White Paper recognised the room for improvement on the migrant worker front. I also acknowledge Prime Minister Lee's video message to migrant workers during the pandemic, which was helpful.

Widespread infection of the workers could have been mitigated if the Government had taken more decisive action earlier. The light of the oncoming train was flagged out by the NGO Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) as early as 23 March 2020. In its letter to The Straits Times Forum, TWC2 said, "We call on the Government to announce in advance what plans they have to rehouse workers should clusters break out in dorms. This would give reassurance to the resident and non-resident community."

The outbreaks at the migrant worker dormitories exposed the cramped conditions that they lived in to many members of the general public for the first time and many Singaporeans were shocked. Despite the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) announcing improved standards for dormitories, anecdotes from migrant workers on the ground show that there is uneven enforcement for the smaller dormitories and there is no timeline yet for the purpose-built dormitories which meet these standards.

As an example of the cost to migrant workers of these measures, here is an excerpt from The Guardian newspaper, 17 April 2020, relating to migrant workers in Singapore: "The restrictions, an attempt to reduce further transmission, have left the dormitories even more crowded than usual as only essential workers are permitted to leave. One construction worker, from Bangladesh, told The Guardian there were long queues to use shared bathrooms…"

Also, migrant workers lived under prolonged lockdowns when others in the wider Singaporean community could already move freely, despite their vaccination rate already being higher than the average for Singaporeans, affecting their mental health. All movement restrictions were only wound down for migrant workers on 1 March this year. It is good that the White Paper acknowledges that this could, perhaps, have been done sooner.

A study conducted by Yale-NUS in 2020 concluded that migrant workers under lockdown conditions in dormitories suffered from higher levels of stress and anxiety. A report in the media outlet TODAY in August 2021 read: "The large number of mental health symptoms reported among workers under complete restrictions suggests that while isolation of whole facilities may be expedient for limiting COVID-19 transmission, this comes at the cost of an increased mental health burden, researchers said."

Hence, I would like to ask what is the timeline for the improved standards in migrant worker dormitories to be rolled out nationally, including the role of NEST? And will the Government build on this unfortunate experience to develop a clear plan to manage a major infectious disease outbreak in migrant worker dormitories, with all of the massive logistical challenges that will entail?

I also hope that the COVID-19 episode with migrant workers serves as a powerful reminder to all of us to take the well-being and dignity of workers seriously. In particular, enforcement of rules and norms over all kinds of matters like food quality and access to bank accounts and payslips, for example, and hotlines to aid in enforcement, should be in place and be seen to be working properly by the migrant workers themselves. In this House, I recently called for rewards for migrant worker whistle-blowers who expose genuine safety lapses.

There are, potentially, many such ideas through which we can improve the system. And the best generators of ideas are those NGOs who have been working tirelessly and fruitfully to bring migrant worker issues to the forefront of public debate – groups like HOME, TWC2, HealthServe and many others. I hope the Government will lend an active listening ear to such groups, so that, in future, they will not again become like the mythic Greek princess Cassandra, who was fated to utter true prophecies which no one believed and who had to see her prophecies realised.

For at the end of the day, taking care of migrant workers is an urgent question of social justice and fairness. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” But there is more to it than that.

By taking care of our migrant workers, we may be able to attract the more effective workers to come and work in Singapore, those who have more experience and a track record and who are capable of becoming more productive and perhaps innovative workers and supervisors. After all, there is competition for migrant workers from other countries, like the Gulf states for example.

A robust migrant workers’ rights regime will help us attract workers who can become more skilled and productive and thus help us to reduce the size of the migrant worker population in Singapore, thereby lessening overall population pressures.

And, as I have argued a few times in this House, very skilled tradesmen and technicians from among this migrant worker population should be given an accelerated pathway to Permanent Resident (PR) status and eventually citizenship, so as to strengthen the Singaporean Core in such trade fields.

Next, Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to touch on the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). I spoke of the migrant worker NGOs who played such a valuable role in the COVID-19 crisis. A more general point I would like to make here is that in future pandemics, there can be a stronger role for NGOs as partners, working with the Government to execute initiatives, but also to inform and critique policies and decision-making, and to disseminate accurate information to their communities.

The COVID-19 White Paper refers to the role played by some food aid charities, migrant worker charities, PEERS as well as organisations under the People’s Association (PA) umbrella. However, these organisations were, for the most part, referred to as partners in the execution of projects and workstreams.

If a future pandemic or other national crisis happens, I hope the Government can assign a more institutional capacity to involving NGOs who are close to their various constituents on the ground, not only in executing projects but also in formulating and refining policy approaches and in making decisions. I had earlier referred to the pertinent advice that TWC2 had publicly aired back in March 2020, and I believe earlier as well, which we would have done well to heed at that point.

One area where NGOs could play an important role is mental health – something my colleague, Sengkang Member of Parliament Ms He Ting Ru referred to. The COVID-19 pandemic took a heavy toll on the mental health of many Singaporeans and people around the world. Due to the general fear and anxiety level, the economic devastation felt by some groups of people even as others prospered and having to work from home and learn from home for prolonged periods.

I am aware that the Health Promotion Board (HPB) is developing a national portal for mental health resources to be curated by experts and hosted on HealthHub.

In future pandemics and crises, mental health-related NGOs should be empowered, resourced and given information to reach out and persuade those at risk to use the helping resources available, which is not always an easy task and may best be handled by non-state agencies.

One area also where we can boost our mental health care capacity for future crises is in terms of our population of psychologists. In reply to a Parliamentary Question from Sengkang Member of Parliament, Ms He Ting Ru, the Government revealed that our number of psychologists per 100,000 of our population is 9.7. This compares to around 30 in the US and 49 in Canada and France, for example. The same ratio for psychiatrists places Singapore under five, versus, for example, 15 for Canada and 24 for Finland.

Government scholarships are one tool to increase the number of trained psychologists in the public sector. Training to be a clinical psychologist takes as long as that for medical doctors. Currently, the Healthcare Graduate Studies Award is open to post-graduate courses for Clinical Psychology as one of the 10 other courses of study, such as Audiology, Health Economics and Epidemiology. By contrast, the PSC Scholarship for Medicine and Dentistry targets applications for study only in Medicine and Dentistry. So, the number of post-graduate scholarships dedicated to clinical psychology is probably not as high as for medicine and dentistry and there is no clearly targeted number for clinical psychology alone, for the reasons I explained. This should be addressed.

And lastly, Mr Speaker, Sir, let me conclude with some observations about the COVID-19 response White Paper itself.

The White Paper appears to be a public communication document. In terms of format, evidence of academic and analytic rigour as well as granularity of detail, it stands in stark contrast to a different paper that was published in 2010 by academics on Singapore’s H1N1 pandemic response. That paper was entitled “Influenza A (H1N1-2009) Pandemic in Singapore – Public Health Control Measures Implemented and Lessons Learnt.” The authors were academics Joanne Tay, Ng Yuek Fan, Jeffrey Cutter and Lyn James. No doubt that was an academic paper rather than a Government White Paper, but that paper seems, at the very least, more detailed and, if I may, more clinical in how it marshals facts and uses them to build conclusions. That paper was also authored by independent academics who drew on interviews with MOH and other officials but did not represent the views of MOH. And it has a much fuller methodological note.

In the spirit of these observations and to reiterate the arguments put forth by the Leader of the Opposition on this very same point, I hope the Government would consider making public the original internal AAR report developed by Mr Peter Ho and his team, with redactions as regards any matters pertaining to national security or which have commercial sensitivities. This would serve the purpose of greater transparency and a fuller and better-informed public debate on what should be the lessons we learn.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, Sir, the pandemic was a terrible crisis that exacted an awful price in lives, livelihoods and peace of mind. But Singapore did not fail the test when called upon to exert ourselves and come together for the greater good. That should inspire the current and future generations with a true story of what we can do if we put our minds and hearts to it.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the overwhelming scale and speed at which COVID-19 unfurled in the migrant worker dormitories caught Singapore off guard, but because of the selfless and immediate contributions of our first responders, medical workers, volunteer groups, individuals, public sector agencies and their collaborative work with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Singapore was able to react swiftly to care for our migrant workers.

As the dormitories went into lockdown in April 2020, the Inter-Agency Taskforce supported migrant workers and dormitory operators in the large purpose-built dormitories that each housed several thousands of workers. They ensured timely access to food and medical services and looked into the hygiene and cleanliness of each dormitory.

Despite the mammoth task of having to secure and distribute food to tens of thousands of workers on extremely short notice, several misses in food quality, cleanliness at the beginning, the gaps were promptly addressed.

At the same time, our medical workers dived in full on. Doctors from various specialisations closed ranks all to serve migrant workers in Accident and Emergency (A&E) wards and mobile clinics, risking their own lives for the migrant workers as they fought a then unknown virus.

Concurrently, NGOs came in to support the well-being of those in the smaller Factory Converted Dormitories (FCDs) across Tuas, Jurong, Kranji, Woodlands and Ubi. These amazing organisations include HealthServe, Migrant Workers' Centre, COVID-19 Migrant Support Coalition, Alliance of Guest Workers Outreach and Crisis Relief Alliance.

Volunteers took the effort to walk the grounds, talk to migrant workers to identify where the FCDs were and searched out those with limited access to daily essentials.

NGOs supplied food to these FCDs where employers did not and went the extra mile to cater to early morning food deliveries during Ramadan, which fell during the lockdown period. Apart from care packs, some provided SIM cards with data plans so that migrant workers could occupy themselves and stay in touch with their families.

The NGO volunteers also unexpectedly served as community mediators. Under lockdown conditions, tensions rose in some dormitories between workers across different faiths and nationalities. I understand from one of the NGOs, that without the volunteers' intervention, one of these conflicts would have led to bloodshed as weapons had been involved.

We must also remember individuals such as Ms Sudesna Roy Chowdhury, then a fresh graduate from medical school. Within eight hours from the breaking news of widespread infection in the dormitories, she produced a website to provide the English-Bengali translations for clinical consultations.

We shall also not forget the many individuals who have stepped forward to serve as interpreters in medical, formal and informal service settings. The selfless and collaborative spirit between the Government, medical workers, NGOs and members of the public in the early days saved lives. Thank you.

Over time, we saw MOM move to make further improvements to the well-being of our migrant workers – updates to accommodation standards, quick and prioritised vaccination roll-outs for migrant workers and the quick development of the FWMOMCare app that gave workers access to prompt and accurate information, including medical services.

MOM also worked with employers to give workers online access to salary accounts and remittance services, a service that is greatly valued by the migrant workers even till now.

Meanwhile, NGOs continued to support the mental well-being of our migrant workers by organising social activities, celebrations, outings and the provision of tele-counseling services. Their commendable work continues today.

Mr Samuel Gift from Alliance of Guest Workers Outreach shared that one positive outcome of this crisis response has been a greater trust in the migrant community for our authorities. This is credit to MOM's Assurance, Care and Engagement (ACE) Team, who showed up meaningfully for the migrant workers when they needed help.

One migrant worker shared that they used to worry that if they spoke of any regulatory lapses in the dormitories to MOM, they would lose their jobs. But because the ACE officer attending to their case took time to build trust, they felt safe to freely share their concerns, knowing that their identities would be kept anonymous. To the ACE officers who have laboured much on the ground to care for our migrant workers, what a tremendous difference you have made in the lives of our migrant workers.

For all the good work that was done, I understand that the Government's motivation for the White Paper is not so much a pat on the back, but to bring light to blind spots so that Singapore will bounce back stronger in our next crisis.

I wish to highlight five lessons and actions for consideration from the migrant workers' dormitory crisis, with a focus on the smaller FCDs that house a third of the 300,000 workers staying in the dormitories.

First, enforcement of regulations in FCDs. The COVID-19 crisis in the dormitories was perpetuated due to the poor living conditions. This is most evident in the smaller FCDs that were not regulated by the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act (FEDA).

However, the call to improve living conditions in FCDs had been made years before the pandemic started. In July 2016, the Migrant Workers' Centre had published photos of the poor housing and hygiene conditions of some of the FCDs and flagged the issue to MOM. In response, MOM announced new and improved living conditions that must be met by FCDs, starting from 1 January 2017.

The four conditions include: (a) the provision of feedback channel for workers to report issues related to the housing conditions of FCDs; (b) provision of personal locker for each worker; (c) provision of at least one sick bay in the FCD – alternatively, the operator can develop a contingency plan to deal with cases of infectious diseases; and lastly (d) provision of Wi-Fi within the FCD.

As NGO volunteers have witnessed while supporting the FCDs during the crisis, many FCDs did not fulfil the above conditions stipulated by MOM. If a contingency plan for infectious diseases was indeed in place, could the COVID-19 crisis have been better dealt within the FCDs? It appears then that there has been a lapse in the monitoring and enforcement of these new conditions that FCD operators were supposed to have met since 2017.

MOM had also launched the DormWatch app in 2018, with the intention for it to be used by migrant workers to give feedback to dormitory operators on issues faced at the dorm. However, NGOs reflect that few migrant workers used the app as many were concerned that reporting issues would cause trouble to their employers and hence also put their jobs in jeopardy.

As I understand, the DormWatch app was eventually evolved to be used by dorm operators to manage their list of residents for MOM reporting and will be discontinued later this month in March. I believe the original intention of the DormWatch app remains relevant today and would serve the migrant workers and dorm operators well.

In leveraging the trust the ACE team has built with the migrant workers since then, may I propose that the ACE team conduct a survey with the migrant workers to better understand how feedback on dormitory issues can be received from them in a manner that they feel safe to provide? If an app remains the best means for the workers to give feedback, it could be integrated in the FWMOMCare app that the workers already use on a regular basis.

To summarise, as FEDA kicks in for the FCDs on 1 April 2023 for the safety and long-term resilience of our migrant workers and Singapore, we must learn from the lapses of 2017 and its impact during the pandemic.

It is encouraging that we have set in place new regulations and standards. But as we have observed, what is needful is the ongoing monitoring and enforcement of regulations over the FCDs as they tend to be most prone to lapses in living conditions and require greater support. I trust MOM will do the needful.

Second, accountability by employers of migrant workers residing in FCDs. As mentioned earlier, at the start of the pandemic, NGOs stepped in to serve migrant workers in FCDs that were left by their employers to fend for themselves. Some migrant workers had been without food for two to three days before the NGOs found them. Meals were supplied to the FCDs for an extended time period between eight and 12 weeks before NGOs put a hard stop to food supply after informing MOM, calling for employers to be responsible for their workers.

The question begs – why did it take so long for employers to step in to care for the workers?

Some employers reflected, given the pandemic and lack of business income, that they were financially unable to support the costs of providing food for their workers. However, employers could have taken ownership to work with MOM or the NGOs to support the migrant workers in other ways, especially in maintaining lines of open communication, updating the workers with key information or providing assurance of income. This, instead of leaving the task to NGOs or going off the radar, as it was the case in some FCDs.

I would like to ask MOM whether and how these employers have been held accountable for their unacceptable act of leaving their workers without food access during the height of the pandemic.

I would also like to ask MOM two further questions relating to our crisis response moving forward. First, what are the available means by which employers with genuine needs could flag for help during a crisis so that workers are not left to fend for themselves due to cost pressures? Second, how will errant employers be held accountable in the event they abandon care for their workers as they did in this last crisis?

Third, including migrant workers in crisis communication. One of the greatest challenges faced at the start of the crisis was communicating with migrant workers who spoke different languages. Even NGOs struggled with this, as some were not resourced with volunteers that spoke different languages.

Without a crisis communication system that incorporated the workers' native languages, there was much confusion as quarantine measures saw frequent changes and workers moved from one place to another. Some workers were uncertain if having COVID-19 meant certain death and if they would be left to perish.

With the dearth of information in their native tongue, workers sought information from alternative news sources from their home country, which may not have provided accurate reflection of the situation here in Singapore.

The missing communications also negatively impacted the migrant workers' health-seeking behaviours during the onset of the pandemic. Some workers who felt ill would not seek medical help and continued to head to work, out of fear that their income would be affected.

Clear communications in their native language providing assurance of their income and jobs despite contracting COVID-19 would have made a difference.

I am glad to hear that now, through the FWMOMCare app, essential health information and MOM advisories are now disseminated in the various native languages of the migrant workers.

This recent crisis is a reminder that we must include our migrant worker population in crisis communication, especially when it concerns public health. I trust we will continue to leverage the app to provide centralised and timely communication to our migrant workers in our next crisis.

Fourth, identifying multinational representatives within dormitories. As workers from different nations do not always enjoy friendly relations with each other, NGOs have found that in migrant workers' communication, it was helpful and important to have a representative from each nationality staying in each dormitory. Where this was missing, NGOs faced situations where food or resources were not evenly distributed to workers from other nationalities in the same dormitory, leading to even greater tensions.

Moving forward, MOM could consider the nationality profile of each dormitory and then identify representatives for each nationality. These representatives can help with the prompt dissemination of information and fair distribution of resources. This will support the work of dormitory operators in times of crisis.

Fifth, the coordination of NGO resources. Given the scale of the dormitory crisis, many NGOs and informal groups stepped forward to serve the workers in whatever way they could and wherever they saw need. However, the NGOs had observed that this led to some dormitories being overserved and others underserved as there was no coordinating body across the NGOs.

May I propose for the Government's consideration for MOM to provide a platform or coordinating body that could support a more even distribution of resources provided by NGOs or informal groups in times of crisis?

To close and summarise, my speech calls for five things for us to learn from and act on: first, MOM's enforcement of regulations to improve living conditions in FCDs; second, accountability of employers of migrant workers residing in FCDs; third, inclusion of the migrant worker community in crisis communication; four, identifying multinational representatives within dormitories; and fifth, coordination of NGO resources during crises.

We all know that infectious diseases are no respecter of persons. They do not discriminate between nationalities, social or work pass statuses. In a war against all or any pandemic, Singapore is positioned to win when we secure the safety of those most vulnerable among us. Let us close the health and safety gaps of our migrant workers and see Singapore win in the next pandemic.

Mr Deputy Speaker, once again, I am grateful to our Government, first responders, medical workers, NGOs and volunteers for giving your best in our fight against COVID-19. May we never forget the good you have shown to our people in Singapore.