Speech by MOS Desmond Lee at the Asia-Pacific Tree Climbing Championship 2015 Awards Ceremony

Jul 26, 2015

Good evening. It is a pleasure to see so many world-class landscape professionals gathered here for the annual Asia Pacific Tree Climbing Championship.

This year, we have the highest number of overseas participants and participating countries in the history of this event. Over the last two days, more than 60 arborists from seven Asia-Pacific countries have pitted your tree climbing skills against one another for the chance to represent the region at the World Championship next year.

A Green Legacy

In Singapore, our landscape professionals play a pivotal role in greening Singapore. More than just a competition, this event also celebrates how the landscape industry has helped transform Singapore into a City in a Garden. 

Ensuring that Singapore remains green has been and will always be important. In the 1960s, even when he had to grapple with serious unemployment, housing shortage and illiteracy, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, made greening a national priority, for 3 reasons: First, to create a city that was green and liveable for Singaporeans. Second, to promote social equality, because back then, only areas that the rich lived in were well-greened. And third, to signal to foreign investors that Singapore was well-run and worth investing in. We have come a long way since Mr Lee planted a Mempat tree at Farrer Circus in 1963, launching our national greening campaign. 

Today, NParks manages about 1.5 million trees in our parks and streetscapes. As you walk around our city, you cannot miss the majestic mature trees, beautiful flowering shrubs and diverse plants. We have our landscape professionals to thank for keeping our city green, vibrant and beautiful. 

Encouraging more Singaporeans to join the Industry 

With increasing urbanisation, we expect landscape work to be even more challenging, both in scale and complexity. We must therefore continue to grow our pool of landscape professionals, and attract more Singaporeans to join the industry. We can do this by leveraging on new technologies and improving the career pathways for landscape workers.

The Landscape Productivity Grant was launched in September 2013 to support companies in mechanising their operations to increase efficiency. You may have seen some of the high-tech equipment on display at the trade show here. We hope that more companies will make use of the grant to not only improve your operational productivity, but also to ease the manual workload of your employees. 

As we increase the use of technology in the industry, we must also ensure that skills and wages keep pace. The Tripartite Cluster for the Landscape Industry has recently introduced the Progressive Wage Model to boost the professional image of the sector, and help companies recruit and retain Singapore workers. Each occupation level in the Progressive Wage Model is pegged to specific wages and training requirements. NParks is working closely with landscape companies to implement this. We hope the wage requirements in the wage model will encourage more young people to enter the industry, and help provide clearer pathways for career progression as they become more skilled. 

In fact, we can start even earlier in helping our young ones learn more about landscape professions. At the Young Arborist workshop today, I understand that the children were surprised and very excited when they learnt that they could get paid for climbing trees! Certainly, an event like this one is a great platform to promote public awareness and appreciation of professional arboriculture skills and career opportunities in the industry. 

Conclusion

Finally, I would like to thank the contestants for your active participation and dedication to your profession. I would also like to express my appreciation to all participants for joining us here, as well as the organisers and sponsors for promoting greater awareness of arboriculture and the benefits of trees. Together, let’s continue to work together to create a thriving, professional landscape industry, so that we can make Singapore a distinctive City in a Garden. I wish everyone a good evening ahead. Thank you.