Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at Chinese New Year Celebrations Dinner @ West Coast
Feb 8, 2025
Good evening, and happy Lunar New Year! 祝贺大家，蛇年大吉，身体健康！
In just a few days’ time, we will be celebrating “Chap Gor Meh” or “Yuan Xiao Jie” (元宵节). It is also a reminder of our responsibility to care for our seniors.
This year, we are celebrating 60 years of independence, SG60.
We have come a long way over the years, from providing basic infrastructure and basic needs, to creating a quality living environment for Singaporeans.
Our goal is to create vibrant, liveable and inclusive neighbourhoods – where we can enjoy convenient access to amenities, spend time with our family and friends, and keep ourselves fit and healthy.
As we grow older, daily activities that once seemed so simple may require some effort.
Even navigating familiar places may prove challenging. This is why we need to make sure our neighbourhoods remain liveable even as we enter our silver years.
Under Age Well SG, we want to support ageing-in-place, where our seniors go about their daily activities safely and comfortably in their homes but also, in our neighbourhoods.
We have rolled out many initiatives to do this in our HDB estates.
Under the Enhancement for Active Seniors (EASE) 2.0 programme, which we enhanced in April last year, we subsidise a wide range of senior-friendly features, such as grab-bars, foldable shower seats, slip-resistant floor, widened toilet entrances, in HDB homes.
Other initiatives like the Silver Upgrading Programme (SUP), and Neighbourhood Renewal Programme (NRP) improve our HDB estate’s infrastructure to better support our seniors.
Just last year, two blocks in West Coast Drive and four blocks in Clementi West Street 2 were selected for the NRP.
We want to make sure that all our seniors, including those living in private housing estates, also can age well.
Through the Estate Upgrading Programme (EUP), we upgrade our private residential estates to make them more accessible and to improve recreational facilities. So far, MND has rolled out 10 batches of the EUP, benefitting 54,000 households in 74 private estates across Singapore.
For the next bound of the EUP, we want to continue to improve our estates for all ages, for young as well as for our seniors.
But we also want to take this next bound as the opportunity to make a big, concerted push to prepare our private estates for an ageing society. It is not just about restoring physical structures.
We want to reimagine and revitalise our neighbourhoods – to refresh the infrastructure, install new features, and design spaces that cater to the needs of our parents and grandparents.
Under Age Well SG, we announced last year that MND will be expanding the scope of EUP to include senior-friendly enhancements, such as wayfinding and dementia-friendly features, barrier-free ramps, and community gardens.
We will also introduce a new EUP for Silver Estates – which are estates with a higher concentration of seniors and which had previously benefitted from EUP some time ago. Although they have been upgraded, because it has been some time ago, and we have many seniors living there, I think we must come back to these estates.
These estates will now receive additional senior-friendly enhancements to better support their ageing residents and improve accessibility and safety within the estates.
I am glad to announce that we will be launching the first batch of the Silver EUP this year. We have selected 7 Silver Estates, covering over 3,700 households.
Residents in these estates can look forward to:
- clearer signages that make it easier to find your way around or make your way home,
- barrier-free ramps that allow wheelchair users to move around,
- or maybe even therapeutic gardens to mingle with friends, and other enhancements, depending on needs.
We can even consider putting in place infrastructure, such as pavilions and fitness corners, where we can organise programmes for active ageing, in the private estates, just as we have active ageing facilities and centres in the HDB heartlands.
MND will be setting aside $11 million for these upgrades, so this is for the first batch. We have also set aside $124 million to upgrade another 25 private housing estates, covering over 16,600 households, under the Regular EUP. What could we do?
For example, we can make our estates more walkable by adding and widening the footpaths with covered drains, and enhancing lighting, markers and signages across the estates.
We can better promote active aging and community bonding by enhancing the neighbourhood parks with features such as 3G playgrounds and fitness corners, and community gardens, thereby benefitting all residents both young and old.
Together, $135 million has been set aside and we are expecting to benefit over 20,300 households island-wide. Upgrading works for the selected private estates will commence progressively over the next few years.
We will work closely with the project teams and the community to ensure that the enhancements are not just well-intentioned, but also, practical and meaningful for residents, especially our seniors.
Here in West Coast, I am glad to share that the estates next to Clementi Stadium and around West Coast Green have been selected for the Silver EUP.
The West Coast Park estate, and the estates at Mas Kuning Terrace (in the Pasir Panjang Gardens estate), and near Qifa Primary School (in Hong Leong Gardens) have also been selected for the Regular EUP.
Please share with us what upgrading works you would like to see.
With that, thank you everyone, and have a good evening ahead.