Opening Remarks by Minister Desmond Lee at the Last-Mile Delivery Focus Group Discussion

Jun 26, 2024

A very good morning to everybody. I am very glad to have you all here at the URA Centre. I know many of you have taken time off from your busy schedules, duties, things that you are working on day-to-day, to join us here.

This is a culmination of a few months of work. I'm sure that in the course of the past few months, our colleagues have had the opportunity to converse with you individually. Today, we are coming together as a culmination of those efforts.

E-commerce is on the rise, and of course COVID had a part to play in accelerating it. We enjoy the benefits of e-commerce. In fact, over the last five years, data showed that online retail sales have more than doubled, as a proportion of overall retail. And for F&B delivery, it has tripled, as a proportion of overall F&B sales. As a result, Singaporeans enjoy the benefits of the convenience of this.

But, we have our delivery riders and drivers – the unsung heroes – to thank for that convenience that sometimes we might easily take for granted. But this is part of the overall value chain, because many people are involved in the whole value chain to have this service, of delivery of food and of products that we buy, to our doorsteps. These are the retailers, wholesalers, the business community, and the platforms to help organise the technology to enable this to happen. The people who enable the goods to arrive at our doorsteps, include our logistics people, our condo MCSTs, our managing agents, our security teams that provide important gate-keeping, and of course, the recipients, whether you are a business or a consumer, or an individual who benefit from the items delivered to your doorstep. But the key people who create that possibility are our delivery platform personnel who work hard day and night to make that happen.

Over the years, as we start to see e-commerce going up, we have observed and have heard from many of our riders, as well as people at the frontlines – security teams, people in charge of MCSTs – about some of the friction points along the way. And I speak candidly here, because all of us are involved in this conversation.

People who do delivery sometimes say that the signages are not clear. It is not so easy to fulfil the expectation of consumers and platforms and be able to deliver within a certain timeframe. The developments are large; making my way from the point where I stop to the doorstep takes time. Because of the lack of familiarity, I find it difficult to clear security.   Some developers may say that because of the way the development is designed or the way in which they allocate spaces, entry is restricted. There might be, for instance, pressure on some of the riders to park in a particular way, which then inevitably cause issues to members of the public or other commuters, and so on.

When we talk to the security community, they say that they have an obligation and duty to ensure that the people whom we are providing security for, are indeed secure, and likewise for everyone involved.

We benefit from e-commerce, but as it grows, there will be issues that we need to resolve, in order for it to be even more effective. And more importantly, so that the people who make it happen for us, day in and day out, find it smoother, so that all of us benefit collectively.

What we are doing is not new. In fact, some of you may recall in 2021, we ran a Courier Hub pilot. It was in the midst of COVID, and colleagues from URA and LTA, as well as some platforms like Shopee Express and Ninja Van, came together to try out the Courier Hub concept, because there are parcel walkers who deliver, and then there are the delivery drivers who need to unbox and sort out the parcels, and have them sent to the homes.

And then, there is a bit of pushback from local communities. They say: why are you taking up our parking lots? We need spaces. Why is there inconvenience? But everyone is trying to do their part, and everyone’s points are valid. So, we ran the Courier Hub pilot with good results, and we will continue to study further to scale it up.

In fact, in 2022, there were guidelines issued by URA and relevant agencies to encourage best practices. We come up with guidelines so that building owners, malls, and condos, are able to learn from best practices, and follow some of these guidelines.

LTA has also been reaching out to share the safe riding practices with riders and platforms to enable them to overcome some of the challenges they face, and yet be able do their jobs. All this has been put in place, and you see good progress – quiet work being done by agencies on the ground with many of you to make things happen.

There are still issues to be resolved. There are issues with implementation, or there may be site-specific challenges that building owners face. There may be issues where riders are finding it difficult to be able to do their job.

All of us want to solve the problem. The three of us discussed – Minister Chee Hong Tat, NTUC Sec-Gen, and myself – we had conversations about this, because each of us look at different parts of the issue, but we all hear from the community. We hear from the riders; we hear from property owners; we hear from businesses. And we thought that in Singapore, we can afford to do things differently. We have been doing things differently, with Forward Singapore, and we want to continue riding on this spirit, in order to make good use of the strength of tripartism, and allow us to resolve the last-mile delivery challenges, so that our guidelines, best practices and rules can actually solve problems on the ground.

In November last year, we discussed and brought our agencies together – MOT, MND, the Labour Movement, as well as our government agencies to form a tripartite workgroup on this last-mile delivery. The focus is on last-mile issues that may seem very micro, from a macro policy perspective, but these are the most important gaps to close.

We formed a Tripartite Workgroup last November, and over the last few months, they've been working assiduously with all of you,  and having conversations with my colleagues, chaired by LTA as well as URA, they brought together a tripartite alliance, labour movement, government agencies, associations representing security, representing the managing agents, the MCSTs, logistics, the people, the platform, operators, our delivery riders, and NDCA, associations and so on. Brought you all together.

In the course of the last few months, we also have a very significant survey that has more than 2,000 responses that have given us very practical, deep insights into specific issues, pain points, opportunities, ideas, as well as very location-specific issues, that give us tremendous insight at the local level. Because we can talk about it at the national level, but local perspectives, local hurdles, local opportunities are what really matters for e-commerce to break through this last mile. With these surveys, we’ve understood the terrain for 400 over condos, hundreds of office buildings, hundreds of commercial buildings and so on. And we are going to take the next step today.

Today, we have this opportunity, taking this platform, to bring together people who represent the different aspects of this value chain. We come together because we want to break the ice, we want to be able to hear from each other, understand each other, hear each other's concerns, bounce ideas off each other. With the facilitation of the labour movement as well as the government agencies, we want to be able to come up with some good ideas about what we can do – what can building owners do more of, what can security agencies do more of, what can government departments do to help support this process. What can our delivery riders do as well, in order to help us to help them, to help the consumer, to help the SMEs. All these are why we came today.

We want to create a safe space, for building trust and strengthening relationships, so the session later will be closed-door. Please feel free to speak openly, respectfully, candidly, constructively, be very specific about issues.  

Later on, we’ll hear from you, hear your ideas. NTUC Sec-Gen, Minister Chee Hong Tat, myself, we want to work more closely with you beyond today, to come up with better ideas, come up with some possible policy solutions, and most importantly, solve the friction points and be able to create better value for our workers, for our SMEs and be able to break through these friction points.