Temasek Foundation running pilot for households to get free surgical, N95 masks by presenting utility bills: Ho Ching

• Temasek Foundation is looking to offer households free surgical and N95 masks
• Households will be able to present SP Group household bills at various malls and supermarkets to get the masks
• The foundation is conducting a pilot of the scheme before it is made widely available

SINGAPORE — Temasek Foundation is working with various malls and supermarkets to trial the collection of free medical-grade surgical masks and N95 masks by households using their SP Group household bills, Temasek Holdings chief executive officer Ho Ching said.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday (Aug 4), Ms Ho clarified that a photo of a poster about the free masks that went viral online is “half true, half not true” as it relates to a pilot. The scheme is not open to the general public yet.

Temasek Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Temasek Holdings.

Ms Ho said that the foundation is working with malls owned by CapitaLand and participating supermarkets to trial the collection of the masks.

While the pilot starts on Wednesday, Ms Ho said that the public may be able to collect their masks only at the end of August, or maybe only in September.

Under the scheme, 50 medical-grade surgical masks and 25 N95 masks will be provided to each household coming forward with their household bill.

The teams behind this initiative initially wanted to start mask collection next week, after National Day, which is on Aug 9, but it has been rescheduled towards the end of August to give the various organisations involved more time to test and complete their systems.

The idea behind the trial is to integrate SP Group’s household bills into the backend systems of supermarkets and malls, Ms Ho said.

These organisations will first scan the barcode of a household bill, and through the backend system, link up with SP Group’s master database to check if someone from the household referenced in the bill had already collected the free masks.

Ms Ho said that there may be outstanding backend issues that require more time to be resolved, and hence the mask collection could be pushed back into September.

She said that Temasek Foundation is providing these masks for free to households as the Delta variant is twice as contagious as earlier strains of Covid-19, and that each patient infected with this variant can infect five or six other people.

“We need 80 per cent of the population to wear 80 per cent effective masks or better to squeeze down the infection numbers,” she said.

The medical-grade surgical masks, as well as the N95 masks, have a 95 per cent filtration efficiency or higher.

Reusable double-layered masks and pleated disposable masks offer protection of about 80 per cent, she added.

Ms Ho said that these masks can last beyond their expiry date if kept away from the sun and under dry and airtight conditions.

She also said that pharmacies are not part of this collection exercise, unlike the free oximeter collection, as they do not have enough physical space to cater for a mass collection of these masks since they come in boxes much bigger than the oximeters.

In June, Temasek Foundation provided free oximeters, which are devices to monitor oxygen levels, for collection at supermarkets and pharmacies.

Ms Ho added that the physical space required is also why only larger supermarkets will be helping out with the free mask exercise.