Opening Remarks by Minister Desmond Lee at MND EDGE Scholarship Ceremony 2024

Jun 25, 2024

Good afternoon to colleagues, scholarship recipients and families. Welcome to MND, and welcome to URA in particular, from all of us at the MND Family.

Let me begin by congratulating all our scholars as well as your families on being awarded the MND EDGE Scholarship!

This year, we have a total of 29 EDGE scholars – 18 undergraduate, 2 mid-term undergraduate, and 9 postgraduate scholars. That means some of you are going to join us, some of you have already been with for some time and are going for postgraduate studies.

The scholarship is a proud testament of your achievements;

And also a reflection of the trust we have placed in you, to learn, grow and contribute to MND’s work in shaping the future of our island city-state. 

Singapore’s Challenges and MND’s work

As our society and the world around us changes, MND’s work will keep evolving. There is never a dull moment, and there will always be something exciting to work on and look forward to. I would like to go through four key challenges that drive MND’s work today. These will be some of the issues that you will have to grapple with, when you join us after returning from your studies. 

First, the demand for housing is not just  growing, it’s also changing and evolving.

As the demographic profile of our society and our nation shifts, so too do the needs and aspirations of our citizens for their homes. In navigating this evolving landscape, we have to accommodate and balance diverse and sometimes competing priorities.

Our society is rapidly ageing. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, one in four people will be aged 65 years and above. That means more than 1 million seniors above the age of 65. We will need more homes that can support ageing-in-place, and provide seniors with the autonomy they desire and the care they require. 

Household sizes are also getting much smaller than a few decades ago. While larger, 3-gen families were common in the past, today, young singles and couples now seek independence earlier and desire living spaces that offer privacy, freedom and autonomy.

In Singapore, majority live in public housing, and it gives us the opportunity to shape housing products to meet evolving needs. We do this through a series of important conversations, such as the one we recently had through Forward Singapore, so we can get a better feel of these changing needs and aspirations. Then adapt our strategies and policies to support these aspirations, while ensuring that public housing remains affordable and accessible for Singaporeans from all walks of life. 

For our seniors, we will continue to upgrade our HDB flats by subsidising a wide range of senior-friendly features - like wall-mounted foldable shower seats to help our seniors feel safe and comfortable at home.

We also recognise that there are seniors who will benefit from assisted living options. They live independently but would like to have some assistance. Hence, we have Community Care Apartments (CCAs), which is a new public housing typology that does not just provide a home – it also provides social programming and senior-friendly housing designs with on-site care. Residents who bought the first ever CCA project, in Bukit Batok, will be moving into their new apartments in just a few months’ time.

For young Singaporeans who want more flexibility to configure the spaces in their homes based on different needs and life stages, we are piloting “White Flats”. These are flats where homeowners can opt for a beamless, contiguous space, so the flat can be personalised according to the owners’ needs and preferences. So these families can minimise wastage and save on costs of having to hack and throw away material that they get when they collect their keys. 

For Singaporeans who wish to live in more central areas, either to live closer to work or to have a lifestyle that’s closer to the city – we have designed the HDB Prime Location Public Housing model to keep the flats in prime, central parts of the island affordable and accessible for a wider group of Singaporeans. In fact, we have just launched three new Prime Location Public Housing projects, two located in Kallang Whampoa just across the River from the Sports Hub, and one in the heart of Holland Village.  

To address the growing demand for housing from singles and their aspirations of not just housing but better locations, later this year, singles will be able to purchase 2-Room BTO flats in any location and are no longer limited to just those in non-mature estates. We have also enhanced the CPF Housing Grant for singles to purchase HDB resale flats.

As we pursue these various strategies, we must work within the very real and tight constraints that we face – in terms of land we have and resources that we expend on housing.

And so having talked about housing and the type of land and resource constraints we face, it segues into the second major point. Which is that we are a very small country with limited land, and we need to plan carefully and plan for the long term.

Outside of housing, we still have to set aside land to meet many other needs that must be carefully balanced, while conserving nature in our city as well as our heritage and our memories.

As an island city-state, we need to fit everything that a fully functioning country needs, within the boundaries of our city. But as our urban landscape becomes more dense, this will become more challenging. As such, we have to plan long-term, and carefully steward our land and resources. This sometimes requires making difficult decisions, to weigh land planning trade-offs that are getting increasingly starker. So we have some processes for this and some of your children will be involved in working on these processes.

One of them is the Long-Term Plan Review, which is quite unique in this world here in Singapore and happens every 10 years, helps us to plan for strategic land uses and infrastructure 50 years ahead and beyond. Every five years, we use the Long-Term Plan to carry out what we call Master Planning. And in fact the Master Planning is happening right now during this season. A It helps to translate these big strategies into detailed plans for every single neighbourhood in Singapore – plans for  the next 10 to 15 years.

So if you look at the Master Plan, you will be able to find your home and your workplace, and see what the plans are and contribute ideas. In fact, as I said URA’s Draft Master Plan 2025 is ongoing – I encourage you to participate in the exhibitions and engagements where you can.

This principle of setting long-term targets and fine-tuning detailed plans to achieve them, and it allows us to develop sensitively and meet our land use needs. 

Third, I will say something about having to deal with this looming and existential threat of climate change, and planning for our city involves also defending our city from climate change.

You would know, we are experiencing the impacts of climate change through flash floods, through warmer temperature, though heatwaves. Singapore is a very low-lying island, and we are especially vulnerable to climate change. Higher temperatures, more adverse, unpredictable weather, water insecurity and food insecurity are challenges we have to grapple with.

And, of course, rising sea levels. In fact, by the year 2100, rising mean sea levels, combined with high tides and storm surges, could mean that sea levels around Singapore rise by up to 4 to 5 meters compared to what we see today. And this is high enough to potentially flood around one-third of Singapore island, if we do not take any measures to protect ourselves. 

At East Coast for instance, we will create a ‘Long Island’. This is a reclaimed land, much higher than the land we see today, to act as a protector against rising sea levels for that part of Singapore. It will act as a buffer, but also provide water, because it will enclose a freshwater bay, and it also creates land for future uses – your great-grandchildren’s and grandchildren’s uses.

A wide range of strategies are also needed to make Singapore more climate-resilient. Over the next few years and decades, we have to undergo major changes as part of the Green Plan. What are they? 

We have to green Singapore to mitigate the urban heat island effect. That is one.

We have to transform Singapore into a City in Nature, by conserving, by planting more aggressively, and extending our greenery and natural capital all throughout our island.

Third, we have to redesign our homes, retrofit our homes, plan for new home designs, so that our buildings are more green and sustainable, more energy efficient, and more adaptable to warmer temperatures.

Fourth, we have to invest a lot more in R&D to develop new technologies, as well as nature-based solutions so we can better adapt to climate change.

We also have to work with our partner ministries and partner agencies, and the private sector and people sector, to also green our energy sources and green our transport. 

Lastly, the fourth challenge, our workforce needs to be more productive.

At MND, we also have a part to play, because in addition to a shrinking workforce with an ageing population and falling birthrates, we learnt lessons from COVID-19. It taught us that we need to reduce our over-reliance on low-skilled foreign workers as well.

Especially in the way we construct and build things – our homes, our offices, our shopping malls, our polyclinics, our roads, our bridges, and so on, We need to transform the way that we build and maintain our homes for greater sustainability, to cope with tighter workforce constraints, and also to create more meaningful and impactful jobs for Singaporeans in the building sector.

In the construction sector, it is very technical but to the sector, they are anticipating it, there is some excitement. They have been waiting for it for a long time, but some of them are also nervous because they are going to undergo a very major change in the way we build. We have been doing so for the last few years, but with this new system called CORENET X – it is highly technical, some of you may know what I am talking about – which is a new digital platform that will streamline the existing way in which we get approvals to build.

It helps us to use digitalisation and automation in the way we build. This in turn will support more integrated design and prevent abortive work downstream. Upcoming over the next two, three years, we will go through a major change in construction.  

But, many of you are also concerned about what happens in your estate around you – whether it is cleaned, whether the grass is cut, whether the litter if picked up, whether the estate is safe, whether there are pests that are dealt with. These are the municipal issues that from a Ministry point of view seem very localised but actually for all of us, they are our everyday experience. And so, in the municipal sector, it is a very important part of MND’s work.

Currently, we are piloting an integrated delivery of common municipal services by a single operator. Now, you may not think this is very major, but it is a pilot because it is a big change in the way we handle things on the ground, in your estates. Instead of having individual agency contractors, we are one single operator, and we hope this will achieve faster, better ways of resolving municipal issues, greater responsiveness, greater efficiency, all while using less manpower. 

Call to Action

I have given you a quick overview of just four of the key challenges that here in MND Family, your children who are joining us will face. In the future, we could face these same challenges, and new ones that emerge.

For example, fast advancements in technology, particularly generative AI, will transform our lives and work profoundly, and certainly, the sectors that MND looks after, we expect generative AI to also make an impact. Either we command the technology and make the changes, or these things will come and just change our way of life, and then we would be on the defensive.

How can we stay ahead of the curve, use and master these technologies properly, and ensure their benefits are shared fairly across our society? In a fast-changing society, with greater diversity of our people, outlook and aspirations, how can we continue to stay together as a cohesive society, and how can we build our estates and communities to facilitate that, and yet provide adequate support for those who may fall behind? Another challenge that we face.

To our scholars who are joining us, we need people like you, with fresh ideas, with good ideas, with fresh perspectives, to join us to create and shape the policies to tackle them, and importantly, roll up our sleeves and go on the ground and make them happen, too.

In your hands, and in your hearts and in your heads, lie the responsibility and burden, for example, to redesign our policies on public housing, on conservation, on urban planning, on sustainability, and so on.

On you rests the burden of stewarding our land and resources to not just meet our needs today as consumers, but, as stewards, to ensure that there are resources for future generations, leaving behind a Singapore better than the Singapore that we inherited. And to how do we build a better future for Singaporeans?

As you embark on your studies, whether it is engineering, environmental studies, policy, horticulture, economics, and so on, I encourage you to just keep in mind, and I summarise them as, head, heart, and hands.

Head: How do you hone your analytical skills; How do you hone your sense of perspective to be able, when you comeback, to craft policies to address the known challenges of today and the unknown challenges that tomorrow will being.

Heart: How do you serve with passion and purpose, listen with empathy and understanding? Because it is not just about the head, it is about how people react to what you are doing. How do you look out for people who might get hurt by possible sharp edges of policy and implementation? How do you smoothen those edges? How do you take care of it? Policy-making requires us to foster trust and nurture stronger relationships and partnerships with the public, with interest groups and NGOs, and so on, so we can create policies that resonate with our community’s needs.

Hands: In a world that is increasingly more complex, we must partner and collaborate with each other – within the Ministry, between the Ministry and our different statutory boards, across government, and certainly with the wider society, because the truth is, none of us has a monopoly of knowledge or good ideas. It is through building bridges across government, and with our people, that we can operate effectively as one, and come up with the best solutions for Singapore. 

On that note, I want to thank you for your commitment to integrity, to service and to excellence, and to the future of Singapore. Meanwhile, while pursuing your studies, please enjoy yourselves. We want you to invite experiences. If you are abroad, go around, see how people live, pick up the little things that never get reported in the newspapers. That is what we encourage – you see some interesting thing that is done in the city, bring the idea back. Take videos, ask people – how is it done? Why do they park their bicycles this way? How do they handle their park management, and so on.

Be observant; do not just look at your books, also look at life around you as a student, whether in Singapore or overseas. Enjoy yourselves, remain open to new experiences, and we look forward to your contributions when you return.