‘Rely on community, not the state, for future solutions’: PM Lee

SINGAPORE — With the Republic’s sights trained on the next milestone, SG100, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has urged Singaporeans to participate proactively in developing the agenda for the nation’s direction forward and for future growth.

“Community engagement is basic to the way we solve problems — working together and bringing people together, rather than relying on the state to do everything,” Mr Lee said, referring to one of the key issues discussed today (Dec 6) during the PAP Convention.

The party’s panel discussions focused on three key issues: The future of lifelong learning, the future of caring and the future of community engagement and sustainable living. These dialogues with Singaporeans will continue, Mr Lee reiterated.

On sustainable living, Mr Lee said this was essential so as to “maintain a high quality of life in a city in a garden”.

“As the panel suggested, we have to keep improving our public transport, so that Singaporeans can ultimately embrace a car-lite society and be able to travel around Singapore and connect with one another easily,” he added.

With Singapore’s ageing population, it is also crucial to enable seniors to continue to work if they can and to professionalise caregiving jobs so as to be one step ahead, not forgetting those with physical disabilities, he noted.

“You are Singaporean; you are family; you will have a place in our home,” Mr Lee added.

And to keep Singapore as a nation of opportunity, Mr Lee said, the Government is focused on the creation of possibilities for Singaporeans to learn, upgrade, be employed and contribute at all stages of life.

“The panel’s suggestions on mobilising intergenerational learning and getting seniors more engaged and involved in mentoring younger ones are useful ideas for our SkillsFuture programme,” he said.

Senior Minister of State (Defence and Foreign Affairs) Maliki Osman echoed Mr Lee’s point that the future was about what the Government and the people could do together to “build on the foundations”.

“We had a good past 50 years, but the next 50 years may not be the same; circumstances are very different today. The past 50 years were not easy, the next 50 years will not be any easier,” said Dr Maliki, who is also the South East District Mayor.

During the discussions, PAP activists were urged to pledge their actions to contribute meaningfully and passionately to the party and to Singapore.

“For the activists to be given a platform to put down on slides what they think should be done, in a micro as well as macro way, bodes very well for the party because it’s a (cognitive) function — we’re actually thinking through what needs to be done,” MP Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah) said.

PAP member Melvin Kwek said: “We need to be in a situation where we’re able to have a mentality that transcends to a behaviour of continually upgrading ourselves such that Singapore does not become another mediocre country, but always remains special in terms of lifelong learning.”

The discussions, Member of Parliament Koh Poh Koon (Ang Mo Kio GRC) said, also revolved around what Singaporeans must do within their homes to inculcate values in the younger generation, such as raising children to be less oriented towards grades and more focused on building up their strengths and lifelong learning. “It’s not something that we can change through policy alone. It’s something for us as a nation to think in a longer term, how we ourselves want our future to be,” Dr Koh added.

The panel discussions, which focused on the convention’s theme, Forward with Passion, Together in Action, had panellists from various districts and was in line with the SGFuture engagement series Mr Lee had announced at the opening of the “Future of Us” exhibition.