PAssion card, vouchers among perks for national servicemen

SINGAPORE — National servicemen will receive a complimentary NS50 PAssion card with a five-year membership, on top of benefits announced previously to mark 50 years of National Service (NS).

Announcing this on Sunday (April 9), the People’s Association (PA) said the card will give servicemen access to perks such as discounts offered by its community clubs, Water Venture sports outlets and PAssion card merchants.

“We hope our national servicemen can pick up a new skill, bond over interests and make more lasting friendships at our various community activities and programmes,” the PA added.

Instructions on how to apply for the card will be available in the NS50 Recognition Package. 

Apart from the card, the serviceman will get S$100 in vouchers for use at selected merchants, as announced earlier this year.

The vouchers, valid until the end of next year, may be used to extend Safra or HomeTeamNS memberships or redeemed at 250 merchants across 6,000 outlets. These include food and beverage outlets such as TWG Tea and Swensen’s, shopping and lifestyle establishments like CapitaLand Mall Asia and Fossil, technology retailers such as Samsung and Harvey Norman and healthcare outfits like Raffles Medical Group. For the first time, air travel is on the table, with Jetstar among the merchants. 

CapitaLand is also pumping in S$500,000 towards NS50 privileges and initiatives, it said on Sunday. The CapitaLand Hope Foundation will, for instance, donate up to S$300,000 to children’s charities under this year’s President’s Challenge for tributes the public pays to servicemen during the upcoming NS50 Showcase at the Army Open House.

The developer is also offering more than 380 hours of event space at its properties here for NS50 commemorative activities.

Meanwhile, operationally ready national servicemen (NSmen) who are serving or have completed their service will get a year’s membership at either Safra or HomeTeamNS. Full-time servicemen and NSmen with existing memberships will receive their Recognition Packages in the mail later this year.

All other servicemen will be notified by post of their eligibility for the package. They have until June next year to register online for the package, which will reach them four to eight weeks thereafter.

NSman Ashwin Selvarajan, 30, was among the first to receive the package at an appreciation ceremony in Safra Toa Payoh on Sunday. The schoolteacher, who completed full-time NS about a decade ago, said the benefits would motivate servicemen, since it showed that their service was valued.

“To be honoured ... (is an) added source of inspiration going forward, to take national security (as a matter of) great importance, especially in these times,” he said.

But accountancy undergraduate Chan Shun, 22, felt that while such benefits were nice, they were not absolutely necessary.  “(NS) is part of my duty; I don’t think I need this recognition,” the NSman said.