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‘My team did its best and I’m proud of them’

SINGAPORE — After it was announced on Tuesday that he will be stepping down as Transport Minister and leaving politics, Mr Lui Tuck Yew (picture) received an email from one of his staff. “I was very troubled by it,” he told TODAY.

SINGAPORE — After it was announced on Tuesday that he will be stepping down as Transport Minister and leaving politics, Mr Lui Tuck Yew (picture) received an email from one of his staff. “I was very troubled by it,” he told TODAY.

In the email, the employee said some of the staff felt bad that they had let him down as a leader. “There is absolutely no need for them to feel that way at all. I could not have asked for a better team,” Mr Lui said in an interview with this newspaper yesterday. “They gave it their utmost. They did their best and I’m proud of them.”

Asked to look back on his four-year tenure helming the Transport Ministry, Mr Lui spent much of his time talking about his staff. Echoing what he had said at the Ministry of Transport’s (MOT) SG50 gala dinner on Wednesday, Mr Lui said: “Everything we do is never about a small group of individuals in senior positions. You’ll never accomplish much if your sole focus is on that small group. It really is about the team, about everybody pulling together, supporting one another, working towards a common destination. And I think I’ve been really blessed to see that happen.”

Nevertheless, he had this to say of his experience: “Overall, I dare say it’s a challenging but rewarding portfolio.” He added: “I saw it as a challenge. PM asked me to come to transport in 2011. We both knew that it was not going to be something easy to tackle. I was happy to accept it … no qualms.”

During the interview, Mr Lui was reluctant to talk about his stepping down. He also did not bring up the criticism directed at him, although his Cabinet colleagues had taken up cudgels on his behalf and questioned the constant mocking and vilification of him, especially online. Asked if he would have wanted to stay and witness the Government’s efforts to improve public transport bear fruit, Mr Lui would say only that he had made “a personal decision” to leave.

He was more forthcoming talking about his staff. Like him, they also see their work as challenging and rewarding, he said. He noted how returning scholars would choose, as their top option, to work in the Transport Ministry or the Land Transport Authority. In fact, the ministry has three Presidents’ Scholars on its books, he said.

Mr Lui, who graduated with a degree in Chemistry from Trinity College, University of Cambridge, was described by Cabinet colleague Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K Shanmugam as someone who has an “excellent engineering mind and understood the issues in transport”.

On the dearth of engineers here, Mr Lui felt what is needed is good career guidance and counselling for school leavers. “It’s far easier for somebody with an engineering or science background to branch into so many different fields, because there’s a rigour, there’s a discipline in the sciences and engineering that puts them in good stead.”

Nationally, there is a concerted effort to “try to make sure people understand and appreciate the work an engineer does”, he added.

He noted that it was not only engineering that was facing this issue. “It always amazes me how many people struggle hard to get into the law faculty and then two, three years, they decide ‘I’m actually better off starting (my) own business’,” he said.

“If there was a little more direction and mentoring upfront, then maybe you can get an improved situation overall … in terms of how people make choices.”

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