PM calls for cultural shift, announces key CPF changes

SINGAPORE — With the world in flux and society here having new aspirations and needs, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday outlined new and continuing efforts that sought to answer the key questions Singaporeans ask themselves — how to improve their lives, what would happen to them in old age and where the country will be in the future.

The Government, Mr Lee said in providing the answers, would give Singaporeans more work and study opportunities to achieve their potential, help ensure retirement adequacy, and improve public services and the living environment here.

Delivering his 11th National Day Rally speech at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) College Central in Ang Mo Kio last night, the Prime Minister began by returning to a familiar theme — paying tribute to Singapore’s pioneer generation. To an audience which included 50 members of the generation that helped transform Singapore from backwater to First World nation, Mr Lee paid tribute to Mr Yusof Ishak, the Republic’s first President, and announced plans to honour him by naming a mosque, an academic institute and a professorship after the late statesman.

The pioneer generation’s can-do spirit and desire to overcome adversity were themes that Mr Lee, clad in a turquoise shirt instead of the reddish hues of recent years, returned to several times in the two-and-a-half-hour rally.

But while the speech was inflected with references to the past, he made clear that a cultural shift in the way Singapore values its people was needed for the future. Singapore, he said, must “always be a place where everyone can feel proud of what they do and is respected for their contributions and character”.

It must also be where “anyone can improve his life if he works hard, and everyone can hope for a brighter future”.

Mr Lee made clear that the paper chase that Singaporeans have famously immersed themselves in over the years, is not the only route to a bright future — another pathway lies in getting a good job, mastering deep skills, performing well and gaining relevant qualifications to advance a career.

With the right support at work, people can advance in their careers whether they are graduates or not, he said, citing Keppel as an example of a company that recognises the value of acquiring deep skills and knowledge throughout a worker’s career. This emphasis allowed employees such as Ms Dorothy Han, an ITE graduate who first joined as a draftsman 25 years ago, and Mr Abu Bakar, a graduate of Singapore Polytechnic whose first job at the company was as an assistant safety officer, to rise through the ranks.

Both mastered the skills needed to perform well at work, and continued to pick up new ones as their careers progressed. Ms Han now leads the pipe design section of an engineering department and supervises 62 people, while Mr Abu Bakar has risen to be chief executive officer of Nakilat-Keppel Offshore and Marine, a joint-venture shipyard in Qatar.

Mr Lee noted that he had set up ASPIRE (Applied Study in Polytechnics and ITE Review) in an effort to study just such a work and study path to help polytechnic and ITE students. The committee, led by Senior Minister of State (Law and Education) Indranee Rajah, will announce soon its recommendations, which include helping students make better education and career decisions and helping them upgrade later.

Singapore will go further, he said, and seek to implement this work-and-study path on a national scale. Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam will lead a committee involving the Government, employers and unionists to develop an integrated system of education, training and career progression for Singaporeans. It will promote industry support for individuals to advance based on skills.

The Public Service will do its part to engender this cultural shift. It will place greater weight on job performance and relevant skills instead of starting qualifications, merge more graduate and non-graduate schemes to give those on the same career track the same opportunities, and promote non-graduates who have proven themselves to graduate-level jobs, he said.

But for this major change in culture to take place, Mr Lee said, one ingredient is a must: Economic growth. Keppel, he said, could offer many opportunities to its employees because it was successful. Similarly, Singapore’s economy must be competitive so that such companies could do well, and to attract investments here.

Turning to the much-discussed topics of retirement adequacy and Central Provident Fund savings, the Prime Minister announced several major initiatives. Mr Lee, who used various novel techniques to pace his speech, including acting as an interviewer, assumed the persona of a financial planner to a fictitious couple in their mid-50s to explain the need for a CPF Minimum Sum, before announcing that the Lease Buyback Scheme for Housing Board homes would be extended to four-room flats. He also introduced a new plan to help lower-income elderly Singaporeans, called Silver Support, which will pay them a bonus each year from the time they turn 65 to help with living expenses.

Heeding calls for more flexibility in the CPF system, he said he appreciated why some Singaporeans want to take more money out of their accounts. While restating his view that the core purpose of the CPF system is to provide steady income in old age, he nevertheless added that, “after considering this for a long time and discussing it with my colleagues, I have decided I will change my view, I will adjust the policy”.

CPF members will thus be allowed to take out part of their savings in lump-sum withdrawals, he said, but this would be subject to limits, and there would be a trade-off in the form of smaller monthly payments. A panel will also be set up to study if more flexibility can be built into the system and give members more choices.

Finally, Mr Lee also announced that the Minimum Sum would be raised to S$161,000 next year, up from S$155,000 now. This higher amount will affect only those turning 55 from July 1 next year, he said, but added that he does not see the need for any more major increases in the Minimum Sum, though it may have to be adjusted from time to time.

In rounding off his speech, the Prime Minister — as he did last year — announced new efforts to make Singapore the “best place to live, work and play”. To get government agencies working more closely together, he said a new Municipal Services Office will be set up to “single-mindedly focus on service delivery”. The office will be overseen by Ms Grace Fu, Second Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, and Foreign Affairs.

Mr Lee also sketched out ambitious plans for the Jurong Lake District, including a new Science Centre and an effort to transform the tranquil but dated Chinese and Japanese gardens into Jurong Lake Gardens. He noted that the Jurong Gateway had already undergone significant changes, with a new commercial district, among other things, but there was more to the area than shopping malls and industries. The Lake Gardens area, he noted, could become a people’s garden of sorts, “bigger and perhaps better than Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park”, and maintained by community gardeners from across the island.

In the longer term, the Ayer-Rajah Expressway could be shifted southwards to create more lakeside housing, while the High Speed Rail from Malaysia could terminate in the district.

These bold plans, Mr Lee said in concluding a speech that political analysts described as focused on reassuring Singaporeans about the future, were “acts of faith” on what is to come for Singapore.

Returning to the theme he used to begin his speech, Mr Lee once again invoked the spirit of the pioneers.

Recalling how the Singapore Story was written because of the belief “that we can turn vulnerability and despair into confidence and hope … belief that whatever the challenges of this uncertain world, we can thrive and prosper as one united people”, he challenged those at ITE College Central, and a watching nationwide audience, to be “pioneers of our generation”.