1 Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for Defence in light of the recent spike in piracies along the Singapore Straits, what additional measures are being put in place and whether there has been any cases of unauthorised entries to Singapore from such boats.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Questions for Oral Answer. Question No 1. Mr Seah Kian Peng.
\tMr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, could I get your permission to request for withdrawal of my question because the question was addressed in a Written Answer in yesterday's Circular.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Yes, I give my consent. Mr Leon Perera.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Take-up Rate for Adults Following Launch of National Adult Immunisation Schedule","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"2 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Health (a) what is the vaccination take-up rate for adults for conditions like pneumococcal disease and influenza after the launch of the National Adult Immunisation Schedule in 2017; and (b) how do our rates of adult vaccination compare with other developed countries.
\tThe Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health (Mr Amrin Amin) (for the Minister for Health): MOH established the National Adult Immunisation Schedule, or NAIS, in November 2017 to provide guidance on important vaccinations for adults. These vaccinations include catch-up vaccinations and vaccinations that high-risk adults should receive. To encourage more Singaporeans to get vaccinated, MediSave may be used to pay for NAIS vaccinations.
MOH does not have comprehensive data on the total number of adult Singaporeans who have taken up NAIS recommended vaccinations. However, based on MediSave claim data, MediSave use for flu vaccination in adults has almost doubled from 39,000 in 2017 to 74,000 in 2018. MediSave use for pneumococcal vaccinations increased from 9,000 to 12,000. Data from a recent National Population Health Survey indicated that the take-up rate for flu vaccinations in Singaporeans aged 65 years and above was about 24%.
While this increasing vaccination take-up rate is encouraging, we note that the take-up of adult vaccination is higher in countries where there are more established adult vaccination programmes. For example, the take-up rate of flu vaccinations for persons aged 65 years and above in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States is about 70%. We can do more to promote adult vaccinations.
In July 2019, the HealthySG Taskforce recommended that to further boost adult vaccination rates, subsidies should be provided to help Singaporeans pay for NAIS recommended vaccinations. Details of these subsidies will be announced at a later date. The subsidies are targeted to be rolled out before end-2020. MOH is also planning a series of population-level vaccination awareness campaigns to increase awareness on the importance of vaccination.
\tMr Leon Perera (Non-Constituency Member): I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for a very comprehensive answer. I think that information was very useful. Just one supplementary question, which is that, in determining the quantum of subsidies, does the Ministry actually do modelling whereby you look at the cost of MediFund, hospital subsidies and so on and so forth that will be saved if the vaccine take-up is increased? And you sort of use that as a way to calculate how large the subsidy should be, such that it is fiscally neutral or it may even be fiscally positive. Because it would seem to me that there would be savings as the vaccination take-up increases and that should be used as a basis to make these vaccines either highly subsidised or possibly even free in many cases.
\tMr Amrin Amin: I thank the Member for the comment. We will study his suggestion. We are in the midst of crafting the package and we will announce it when we have the details.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Written Contracts for Workers Covered under Employment of Foreign Manpower Act","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"3 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Minister for Manpower (a) why written contracts are not mandatory for workers covered under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act; and (b) whether there are plans to make such contracts mandatory.
\tThe Minister of State for Manpower (Mr Zaqy Mohamad) (for the Minister for Manpower): Mr Deputy Speaker, under the Employment Act, employers are required to issue key employment terms (KETs) in writing to all employees. This covers all workers, whether local or foreign. The mandatory KETs, which must be provided within 14 days from the start of employment, include the job title, main duties and responsibilities, place of work, working arrangements, salary details, leave entitlements, medical benefits, probation and notice period. Employers can issue these KETs in the form of an employment contract or employee handbook.
In addition, for work permit holders, employers are required to ensure that their workers receive a copy of the In-Principle Approval (IPA) letter prior to their departure for Singapore. The IPA letter contains key employment information, including occupation, basic monthly salary, and fixed monthly allowances as well as deductions. This requirement is to ensure that before departing their home countries, the workers are already notified of the most critical terms of their employment. Employers are not allowed to make downward revisions to the workers’ salary information that was declared on the IPA, unless they have obtained the workers’ written agreement and notified the Ministry.
The requirements to provide written KETs and IPA letters already mean that foreign workers will have sufficient clarity of the details of their employment, in written form. There is no further advantage to be gained by requiring employment contracts for foreign workers to be written. In fact, it will create an unintended outcome that if for some reason no written contract is issued, there is no employment relationship at all and the foreign worker will lose whatever protection he should be entitled to under the law.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Assoc Prof Walter Theseira.
\tAssoc Prof Walter Theseira (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister of State for that reply. I would just like to ask whether the Ministry has conducted any studies that look into the extent to which these written agreements between the foreign workers and the employers, to what extent are they actually upheld in the labour market? And if there are any violations, for example, are they enforceable and so on? I think the concern here is with the imbalance of power between the foreign worker and the employer, it is possible to push them into doing things which are maybe even illegal or prohibited because they are not aware of their rights and they cannot enforce them effectively, even with these written contracts in place.
\tMr Zaqy Mohamad: I thank the Member for his clarification. Certainly, we share the same concern. Based on a survey of foreign domestic workers in 2015, for example, 94% of foreign domestic workers indicated that they had signed an employment contract with their employers. Today, in fact, we have got new programmes in place, like the Settling-In Programme (SIP) for both foreign workers and foreign domestic workers.
We do checks as well as part of the process when they come in, to understand their employment rights as well as advisories on how they can settle in better in Singapore. We do a check to make sure that when they come in, they have their IPAs in hand. Our recent checks through the SIPs from August to December 2019 showed that 98% of foreign workers and almost all foreign domestic workers had the complete set of IPA letters with them before coming to Singapore. So, technically, they already have that written contract.
That is good progress. Certainly, there is still that remainder, a small minority, which we need to keep on working on. We do, from time to time, enforce against employment agencies as well as employers who do not comply.
\tMr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): On the point of salary reduction, I raised this earlier and MOM did say they are reviewing the ability of an employer to reduce the salary after the IPA was issued. Could I ask if there is an update on this review?
\tMr Zaqy Mohamad: Today, if you wish to reduce the salary, it has to be (a) with the agreement of the employee and (b) you have to notify the Ministry. The check is, you have to notify the Ministry before you can do it. That is your check and balance today.
Of course, if foreign workers have a concern, they can always report to the Ministry and we will take a look at it, for example, if there are other deductions that were not originally agreed by the employee.
Was there a specific area that Member was after?
Mr Deputy Speaker: Yes, Mr Louis Ng.
\tMr Louis Ng Kok Kwang: I understand that you can do that, but as the other Member had raised, there is a power imbalance here. So, if you are offered a salary in the IPA and then you have come to Singapore already, having paid all your deposits back in your home country, and the employer then says, \"I am going to reduce your salary. Take it or you go back home\", very likely, they will take it and very likely, they will not dare to report to MOM. I hope we can close that loop.
The previous reply to me was 2% of workers faced this problem. But with the number of Work Permit-holders, 2% actually is quite a big number.
\tMr Zaqy Mohamad: The 2% was not the number that faced the problem; but rather, the 2% was the number that came in without IPAs. We said 98% of foreign workers came in with IPAs. This is something that we can certainly work on. Today, the additional mechanism that we have is the SIP. What has been enhanced since then is that workers do have to come through SIP and they spend a day with not just the trainers, the facilitators, but there are also NGOs onsite like Migrant Workers Centre, for example, who conduct the SIPs themselves. One of the reasons we do that is to ensure that there is that check and balance from the NGO side, trainers, as well as teaching them their rights.
I do understand the Member's concerns. It is something that we will continuously improve on. The main difference in the last few months is that the SIPs have come in place and we have expanded them, especially for sectors that are most vulnerable. We have given focus to construction, manufacturing and process. That was where most of our disputes were in the past.
As you have seen, 98% of foreign workers come in with IPAs. It is an improvement from the past. But, yes, I do agree that we still have to work on that 2% who come in without the IPAs. Today, they cannot complete their SIPs if they do not come in with IPAs. That is something that we hope to expand and we will enforce against employers who do not comply.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Catalyst Role for Singapore in Addressing Climate Change Issues","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"4 Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources given Singapore's small land size, what catalyst role can we play on the local, regional and international fronts to tackle climate change.
\tThe Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M): Mr Deputy Speaker, to effectively address a global problem like climate change and its impacts, we need a strong global response. This is why Singapore is a strong advocate for a multi-lateral, rules-based approach to addressing climate change. We work with other like-minded countries at the United Nations (UN) to push for the best possible multi-lateral deal on climate change.
We are privileged to have played an instrumental facilitator role in these talks, which culminated with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the agreements on the Katowice Climate Package in 2018 as well as the Chile Madrid Time for Action in 2019. While not perfect, these agreements will help to establish a virtuous cycle of climate actions by all countries. The challenge is to maintain this momentum of global climate action at a time when the multi-lateral system is under strain.
Singapore will continue our active and constructive engagement in the negotiations. We will work with other countries, including the incoming UK COP-26 Presidency, to strengthen the multi-lateral framework of cooperation on climate change and push for a good outcome at the next Climate Conference in Glasgow.
Regionally, we have taken an active role to galvanise climate action. As Chair of ASEAN in 2018, we convened the first-ever Special ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Climate Action (SAMCA) and Expanded-SAMCA, where ASEAN and China, Japan and the ROK reaffirmed our political commitments and discussed ways to step up regional climate action.
We have collaborated with partners to improve our understanding of climate change and its impact, through research and institutions like the ASEAN Specialised Meteorological Centre, which is based in Singapore. Through our Climate Action Package, we have partnered and supported fellow developing countries to implement their Paris commitments and enhance climate action. In October 2019, we co-organised with New Zealand a workshop on the Paris rule book to help countries in the region better understand their obligations under the Paris Agreement and to identify concrete actions and strategies that can be pursued. Just last month, we co-organised with the NDC Partnership and the UNFCCC Secretariat another workshop to discuss how ASEAN countries can update their climate pledges. We hope that this workshop will facilitate the submission of updated climate pledges from ASEAN countries this year. Looking ahead, we will work with Vietnam as ASEAN Chair this year to sustain the momentum of climate action in the region.
We are also taking strong action at home. Notwithstanding our constraints in deploying renewable energy at scale, we are committed to playing our full part to tackle climate change, and transform our economy towards a low-carbon future.
Singapore implemented an economy-wide carbon tax last year – the first in Southeast Asia to do so – as a key plank of our mitigation strategy. The revenue will be used to support emission reduction projects and help businesses become more resource and energy efficient.
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We will also push the bounds of innovation, such as deploying floating solar photovoltaic systems on our reservoirs and offshore, to make up for our shortage of land area to deploy them. Such innovations have given us confidence to raise our level of ambition to double our solar deployment target from 1 Gigawatt peak (GWp) beyond 2020 to at least 2 GWp by 2030.
We are also greening our physical and transport infrastructure. We are aiming for 80% of buildings in Singapore to be green by 2030 and for 90% of peak hour commuting trips to be via public transport, active mobility or shared transport by 2040. Our Zero Waste Masterplan will transform Singapore to a Circular Economy, where materials are retained and reused in the value chain for as long as possible. This will help to reduce our carbon footprint and complement our efforts to address climate change.
The Government can only do so much on our own. We are therefore heartened that Singaporeans, especially our youth, understand the importance of this issue and are prepared to take climate-friendly actions in a whole-of-nation effort to address climate change. In 2018, we had a successful Year of Climate Action rallying community groups, grassroots organisations, corporations, schools and non-governmental organisations to take action for a sustainable future. Collectively, we held more than 800 climate action-related events across the People, Private, Public (3P) sectors – equivalent to two events a day. More than 342,000 individuals, organisations and educational institutions have pledged to take climate action. In 2019, we sustained the momentum with an inaugural Climate Action Week which featured ground-up activities organised by our 3P partners. This year, we continue to encourage Singaporeans to work with us to co-create and co-deliver solutions to game-change climate change.
Climate change is an existential challenge for Singapore. To ensure that future generations can continue to enjoy a vibrant and liveable city, we will continue to put sustainability at the centre of everything we do and work with 3P partners and Singaporeans to combat climate change and transition towards a climate resilient and low-carbon future. We recognise that by our actions alone we cannot stop climate change. But we hope that through our actions, we can play our small part to catalyse change and contribute to international and regional efforts to galvanise climate action.
\tMr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): I thank the Minister for his very comprehensive answer. I am very encouraged by the very pro-active affirmations that Minister has made. Notwithstanding what we do to tackle this global issue, we will inevitably be affected by what others in the region do or not do. My question to the Minister is, is there anything that we can do to encourage and get, in particular, the neighbouring countries to also do their part, so that, as a whole, no one needs to suffer the consequences of another country's inaction in this regard.
\tMr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: Actually, until 2015, the whole world was waiting for everybody to do something, but not themselves. In fact, there was always an argument about who started it first, who had a bigger responsibility and who should do more. But, with the Paris Agreement, every country now, has agreed to at least put their best foot forward and try to do what they can do within the constraints of their own country, to try and reduce emissions by 2030. This is what we call the \"Nationally Determined Commitments\".
By 2030, we will also be asking all these countries who have agreed to the Paris Agreement framework to do even more. While in the first stage was to get everybody to do their best and to follow the rules in committing to deliver their best, in reality, Science is telling us, you have to do much more than what you are doing today. That will put us on a better footing, once we get the 2015 Paris Agreement actually operational. It is already a big problem facing many countries, as we see, as we go year after year, trying to get the rules agreed. In particular, the last instance, on the trading rules, \"how can we – if we do not meet our commitments – be able to trade carbon with countries that have extra credits\". Even though it looks quite mechanical and simple, it fell through in the last agreement.
But I am quite optimistic that at the end of the day, leaders, politicians are listening – leaders and politicians all over the world are listening to their youths, loud and clear, they want to make sure that their future is a sustainable future and even in Singapore, we really have to re-steer our economy, the way we live, to make sure that what we do now, will also deliver a sustainable future for our children and generations to come.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: May I remind Members to keep your phones on silent mode and not to press something inadvertently. Mr Louis Ng.
\tMr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Thank you, Sir. I think Minister shared the good news that Singapore will be updating our climate pledge. Could i just check when will we be doing so?
\tMr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: We are finalising; I hope very soon.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Assessment of Climate Risk in Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Annual Industry-Wide Stress Test","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"5 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Prime Minister (a) whether the Government plans to include climate risk, particularly climate change-related risk, in the Monetary Authority of Singapore's (MAS’) annual Industry-Wide Stress Test (IWST), in line with what the Bank of England is doing and what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommends for central banks; and (b) if not, why the Government is choosing not to do so.
The Minister for Education (Mr Ong Ye Kung) (for the Prime Minister): Mr Deputy Speaker, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) takes climate change-related risks seriously as a financial supervisor. Financial institutions are potentially exposed to such risks, because they provide financing and insurance services to businesses that can be impacted by a wide range of climate change-related events, including natural catastrophes. There are also risks arising from changes to public policies, technologies, or consumer preferences that can impact businesses significantly.
Climate change is therefore increasingly relevant to financial institutions, both because the risks will be on their balance-sheets and because they will play a role in enabling their customers and the economy at large to make a transition – here in Singapore as well as abroad.
MAS is, in fact, a founding member of the global Network for Greening the Financial System, which develops best practices for a more sustainable financial industry. Locally, we will be issuing a consultation paper on Environmental Risk Management guidelines for various financial institutions in the first quarter of this year.
MAS has already started to stress test for climate change-related risks. For example, in the 2018 Industry-Wide Stress Test, MAS subjected insurers to a scenario featuring extreme flooding and they had to consider the impact of higher claims on their balance sheets arising from damage to insured properties.
But the methodologies for stress testing climate change-related risk are still at a nascent stage, as international regulators all recognise. The Bank of England, as mentioned by Mr Ng, has acknowledged that central banks and the financial sector are still building capacity to model financial risks arising from climate change. The IMF, too, is working to improve its climate change-related stress scenarios.
MAS is working towards incorporating a broader range of climate change-related risks in thematic scenarios as part of a future Industry-Wide Stress Test.
\tMr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Just one follow-up question, I am just wondering whether if we can also get our financial institutions to report on the amount of emissions they are financing. That way we can also see just how at-risk they are.
\tMr Ong Ye Kung: Today, that is not the rule, as far as I know. But I think many of our financial institutions see it as in their own interest to report it because shareholders and stakeholders are all watching the data. I think in the end, this will succeed when we can converge commercial interest with social good and environmental good. What is very positive and optimistic is that, such a convergence is happening. It will happen in terms of stress tests, it will happen in terms of their financial evaluation of certain deals, of certain investments; and all these are happening and I think it will be within their own interest to disclose those data.
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\tMs Anthea Ong (Nominated Member): Mr Deputy Speaker, could I ask the Minister if MAS is considering consulting with experts in civil society in the development of these scenarios, these stress test scenarios?
\tMr Ong Ye Kung: I do not see why not, but for the time being, the priority is actually a much more basic one, which is there is not even the data to conduct a proper stress test. You really need to collect the data, the climate-related data, how does it impact the financial institutions and then you can do the stress test. I think as we do that, that is why I said it is at the nascent stage, the taxonomy has not been worked out. When it is all worked out, I am sure then there will be more conversations, including with civil society.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Public Service's Response to TAFEP Guideline on Mental Health Declaration","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"6 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Prime Minister (a) what is the public service’s response to the latest TAFEP guideline on mental health declaration as a discriminatory practice; (b) which Government agencies are still asking for this declaration from job applicants; (c) how many applicants who declared their mental health condition have joined the public service and how many have not; and (d) what is the public service’s workplace mental health and fair employment strategy in the hiring and support of persons with mental health conditions and the fostering of a mental-health friendly environment for all employees.
\tThe Minister for Trade and Industry (Mr Chan Chun Sing) (for the Prime Minister): Mr Deputy Speaker, on behalf of the Prime Minister. Since 1 May 2017, the Singapore Public Service has removed declaration questions on medical health from our public service job application forms. We do not track the number of applicants with mental health conditions who have joined the Public Service.
The Public Service is also committed to providing our officers with an inclusive and mental-health friendly workplace. Our public agencies provide support at different levels to our officers. Alternative work arrangements such as part-time work can be explored between officers with mental health conditions and their supervisors to better manage their condition or recovery.
The Public Service Division is actively encouraging and facilitating public agencies to provide their officers with access to counselling services and as such, 24/7 hotlines and face-to-face counselling are available in the majority of public agencies who have put in place Employee Assistance Programmes.
However, we understand that this alone is not enough. We need to establish higher awareness of mental health and a strong culture of peer support. Therefore, we are promoting wider training of our managers and HR officers to extend appropriate care, when necessary. We tap on training programmes, such as the Health Promotion Board’s (HPB's) Management Training workshop, to equip managers with skills to detect early signs of distress and to support employees in managing them. More than 500 public officers have participated in the HPB workshop so far and we continue to send more officers to the programme. Several public agencies have also built up a network of officers to provide first-in-line peer support to their colleagues who are in distress. For instance, the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) has a group of Wellness Warriors to provide a listening ear to their colleagues who need one.
Our officers' overall well-being is important to us. PSD seeks to continually learn and enhance our initiatives to enhance workplace mental health. Therefore, we welcome and participate in the Workwell Leaders Workgroup, which is a useful platform to learn best practices. The Public Service Division will continue working with our public agencies to strengthen a caring workplace culture for all.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Ms Anthea Ong.
\tMs Anthea Ong (Nominated Member): Thank you, Sir. I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response. I appreciate the Minister's assurance because, as the largest employer and given that one in seven Singaporeans has a mental health condition in their life time, we would not want to turn Singaporeans away who want to serve in the Public Service.
I just want to read this from someone who wrote to me: \"I tried to register as a relief teacher with MOE but was rejected just because I have a history of depression.\" Now, I understand, obviously, it is very textured. But I just want to ask the Minister, how are we ensuring that all Ministries and agencies will adhere to the TAFEP guideline. In addition, can the Minister also share if the Government allows for medical claims for psychiatric treatment and if mental health leave is given for Government employees. If not, are there plans to do so?
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\tMr Chan Chun Sing: Mr Deputy Speaker, I cannot comment on the specific case without further details. If Ms Anthea Ong has the specific details, we welcome her to provide MOE or the Public Service Division with the details and we can follow up on that.
We do not have \"mental health leave\" at this point in time. But I am sure if somebody, for medical exigencies, needs extra care, they can contact their respective supervisors and we can work out the appropriate arrangements.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Government Strategy for Growing Economy and Good Jobs without Over-reliance on Foreign Manpower","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"7 Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Trade and Industry what is the strategy for growing our economy and creating good jobs for Singaporeans without an over-reliance on foreign manpower.
\tThe Minister for Trade and Industry (Mr Chan Chun Sing): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, we strive for economic growth to achieve three objectives: to give our people better jobs and better lives; to provide our people the opportunities to fulfil their potential and aspirations; and third, to grow Singapore's economic strength for strategic relevance in the world.
Our economic strategies are developed to improve the quality of life and livelihoods for Singaporeans. Quality jobs provide good wages; and good wages and opportunities enable Singaporeans to pursue our dreams. Quality jobs come from quality investments, both local and foreign. The competition for quality investments has never been easy. Without natural resources, we strive hard to create our own competitive advantages and build up a strong reputation and trusted brand name for Singapore based on the following: political stability, rule of law, a progressive business environment, cohesive tripartite relations, skilled workers, physical and non-physical connectivity of air, land, sea, data, finance, talent, technologies and regulations, intellectual property protection and consistency of policy execution over the long term.
However, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, beyond all the above factors, the size and quality of our talent pool still matters. Size confers certain economies of scale. Too small a talent pool and our enterprises will find it hard to compete with the big global players; an inability to scale or transcend our geographical size and location will hinder our overall competitiveness.
The quality of our talent pool is equally important. It allows us to overcome the limitations of size to attract high-quality and high value-add investments.
Talent is an even more critical success factor for our new growth sectors, such as ICT, Finance and Advanced Manufacturing, which compete on the basis of ideas, knowledge and skills – more than just size. Talent is thus critical to ensure that we are able to win the quality investments not only for this generation but also for future generations.
On the other hand, the loss of a quality investment means more than the loss of competitiveness and good job opportunities for this generation of Singaporeans. It also means the loss of competitiveness and good job opportunities for future generations, where we run the risk that our children and grandchildren will end up having to seek better job opportunities elsewhere because these high and higher paying jobs are no longer available in Singapore.
Hence, to allow our people and enterprises to punch above our weight, we need a certain local foreign complement, both in terms of quantity and quality.
Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, with your permission, may I illustrate with a simple model using the slide on the LED screen, how we create good jobs for Singaporeans with a foreign workforce complement, but without being overly reliant on foreign manpower.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Yes, please. [A slide was shown to hon Members. Please refer to Annex 1.]
\tMr Chan Chun Sing: The red Lego bricks we see in Figure 1 represents the Singapore workforce. If we only have the Singaporean workforce, the size of our economy will only be so big and the wages of our people only so high, as shown in Figure 1. That is the baseline case.
If we bring in some foreign manpower to complement our local workforce, we can grow the overall size of the economy and, more importantly, allow our people to take on higher wage jobs that are commensurate with their education and aspirations. The foreign complement is the one in yellow. However, even at this stage, there will still be many Singaporeans with the talent and aspirations to achieve even better prospects and higher wages, either in Singapore or elsewhere in the world. To achieve that, we need higher quality investments that can create even higher paying jobs. This will often require us to bring in some foreign workers at different skills levels to complement the local workforce to win the next slate of high quality investments that can provide more high-paying jobs for Singaporeans, as shown in Figure 3. Otherwise, our globally mobile and competitive Singaporeans will leave for greener pastures elsewhere.
We may ask, \"Why do we not have all the Singaporeans doing the highest paying jobs immediately?\" This was where I left off in the last Parliament session where I explained the dilemma and the trade-offs, and asked if we would take a new investment that provides many good jobs for Singaporeans, but some of the higher paying jobs in the company are initially filled by foreigners, as shown in the diagram in Figure 3. At the first step, we did not have all the Singaporeans taking all the highest paying jobs.
Do we want such an investment in Singapore or should we turn it down and let the company invest in another country? If we turn it down, we immediately lose the large number of good jobs that Singaporeans can have, brought about by this investment. We also lose the opportunity for Singaporeans to take on higher level positions over time, as these jobs are no longer in Singapore.
Our strategy is to win the investment first and work hard to quickly upgrade the skills of our workers to take on those higher paying jobs as soon as possible. Our strategy is to win the investment first not just for this generation, but for the next. Work hard to quickly upgrade the skills of our workers to take on these higher paying jobs as soon as possible. Progressively, our workers will have opportunities to take on those jobs. And, certainly, the next generation who are better educated, will have better opportunities as shown in Figure 4.
Over time, more and more of the lower wage and lower productivity jobs will be moved out of Singapore. Within Singapore, these jobs will be increasingly filled by foreign workers as companies are unable to attract enough Singaporeans to take on these positions, as shown in Figure 5. In this process, we have grown the size of the economy, created better job opportunities for Singaporeans, higher paying jobs for Singaporeans, with a foreign complement appropriately sized.
This is not the end of the story. This process is repeated for every generation. Every generation, with a combination of a local and foreign workforce working together to win the next better investment for this generation and the rest. Every generation, working hard to upgrade the skills to take on the higher skilled jobs progressively, earning higher pay in the process. And throughout the process, making sure that the red bricks that represent the Singapore Core remain the foundational pillars of our workforce.
Is this story far-fetched? No. This was the story of electronics to semiconductors that I shared in Parliament in the last sitting. For example, Esther Ng and Alice Low – two ladies – went from being operators in Texas Instruments in 1969 to become a document control assistant and a technician in the yield enhancement lab of Micron respectively, earning higher wages than when they first started. They have since retired and they have both contributed to developing the industry for future generations to benefit from.
Our local businesses have also benefited from attracting high-quality investments. A local SME, CK Shipping, went from a traditional logistics player to be a specialised aerospace logistics provider for SAESL, a joint venture between Rolls Royce and SIA Engineering. CK Shipping also worked with Enterprise Singapore to reskill their workers to build capabilities in the new sector, allowing Singaporean workers to benefit from the new opportunities created. Esther, Alice and CK Shipping would not have risen in their stations had we not attracted new investments and progressively upgraded our economy.
What was true for the electronics to semiconductor story and shipping is true for all sectors. Today, we are seeing the same story unfolding before us in the data, digitalisation and ICT sectors. This is what we are doing – to grow new sectors like Advanced Manufacturing, Agri-tech and to transform our existing sectors like logistics and hospitality. Our fresh graduates from Universities and Polytechnics are progressively filling up these higher skilled, higher paying jobs. And we will step up our mid-career upgrading programmes for our middle-age workers to keep pace with these new technologies and new industries.
So, we need a balanced approach to our talent strategy. We understand. Too many foreign workers – and not necessarily just the lower skilled ones – our local workforce feels overwhelmed. Too few, our local enterprises and workers are unable to achieve scale or competitiveness for the global market. Hence, it is a strategy that requires constant fine-tuning to get the balance right for enterprises and workers.
Beyond quantity and quality, we must also diversify our foreign manpower sources and there are good reasons for this. From a business continuity perspective, we must manage the risk of overly relying on any particular source for any particular type of foreign manpower. From a social perspective, we must manage the externalities associated with too high a concentration of any particular foreign labour source.
Singapore is a diverse, cosmopolitan and inclusive society. But we must also not ignore the public discomfort that can surface with too high a concentration of any particular foreign worker group. We are keenly aware of these challenges. Again, this is a work in constant fine-tuning, based on the acceptance of foreigners by our society and the manpower needs of our companies.
We will also ensure that Singaporeans are fairly treated. We have the Fair Consideration Framework, which we tightened recently. We will not hesitate to act against companies that discriminate against Singaporeans.
To grow our economy and job opportunities, we will always need a certain local-foreign complement, both in terms of quality and quantity – to keep it to a manageable level – we must, first, continuously improve the skills and productivity of our Singaporean workers. We are doing this through our education system and continuing lifelong training system, such as SkillsFuture programmes, and we will continue to invest heavily in this area.
Second, we must manage the number and quality of the foreign complement to strike a good balance between economic needs and social acceptance.
Third, we must ensure that Singaporeans are fairly treated at work and errant companies which treat their Singaporean workers unfairly can expect to face enforcement action and penalties.
Last but not least, progressively enable more and more Singaporeans to take on the higher paying jobs from our investments. This was how we transformed from Third World to First and this was how we secured and will secure a brighter future and better lives for all Singaporeans.
\t
Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Liang Eng Hwa.
\tMr Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah): Thank you, Sir. While I agree with the Minister the need to remain open, given our circumstances, and the benefits of complementarity between the local and workforce, I would still like to ask the Minister to explain why can we not work towards zero-foreign manpower growth in Singapore?
\tMr Chan Chun Sing: Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, the question raised by Mr Liang Eng Hwa has often been raised, not infrequently. In fact, if I recall, I believe the Workers' Party also raised this possibility previously. I do not know if the Workers' Party still advocates this, but I remember hearing this as well, sometime back in Parliament. Mr Pritam can correct me if I am wrong.
Let me explain why, while this is a theoretical possibility, it is actually very hard to achieve in practice without serious implications and trade-offs for our economy. Let me use an example to illustrate the challenges and trade-offs, supposing we adopt this policy of zero-foreign manpower growth. Maybe the best way for me to do is to follow on from the example that I used at the last Parliament sitting, where I said that: supposing we have a Singaporean working in a job that pays $5,000 now. And we are able to attract an investment that comes in and creates two new jobs at $7,000 and $10,000. But bearing in mind that, essentially in Singapore, we are almost at full employment and our labour force participation rate is already one of the highest in the world. Which means that cumulatively, we have very little spare capacity.
So, now what do we do? The Singaporean is now holding the $5,000 job. We have the prospect of having two new jobs – $7,000, $10,000, with a new investment. Supposing, as a thought process, we say that we will not allow any fresh foreign worker to come in. Then, what does it mean? The only way that we can bring in that investment is: first, there must be two Singaporeans available to do those jobs. But the Singaporeans are already in jobs. So, the chances are that if we do not have circulation space for our manpower, chances are that we will forgo that investment, because we have essentially full employment, one of the world's highest labour force participation rate, but we have no spare capacity. And we cannot free up two in time to take the new investment. That is one possible scenario. So, we will lose the investment for this generation and the next.
There is another possible scenario, which is that we also keep to the zero-percent foreign workforce growth. What it means is that we give ourselves a small discount that in the short term, we allow a surge of a foreign workforce complement to come in. So, we shift the Singaporean over to the new jobs – the $7,000 and $10,000 jobs, if possible. Then, we have to ask ourselves what do we do for the two jobs that are being vacated in the $5,000 job company?
If we have zero-foreign workforce growth, that means that the company with the $5,000 job will not get a foreign substitute in place of the two Singaporeans that have left, which means that that company will likely be unsustainable, which means that the rest of the Singaporeans in that company will also likely be displaced once that company becomes not viable. So, this is the difficulty.
While it is theoretically possible, there is a third possibility, which is we will tell everyone to improve the productivity as much as they can to release the two workers. Retrain them and then we can take on the new investment and we do not need new foreign workforce. Now, that is ideal. That is ideal. But we also know that in the real world, it is not easy to do because different industries will have different opportunities for productivity growth. Manufacturing will be much higher than services, for example.
And the speed and skill at which we can retrain and upskill our workers, are dependent on many factors. Whether we can do it in time to catch the new investment, is always uncertain. So, the foreign workforce growth is one way to overcome this circulation for the companies to transit, just as the model I showed during the slideshow just now. Over time, some of the lower value-add and lower productivity jobs will have to be displaced, in order for us to take on the higher value-add, higher productivity jobs.
But it takes a process and it takes circulation space, which is why while we maintain the overall growth trajectory over a period of time, we must be careful not to crash the gears and make our enterprises suffer the consequences of the lack of capacity to circulate and regenerate capacity. We must also be cognisant of the ability and the pace which we can reskill and upgrade our workers.
So, while it is a theoretical possibility, we should not take it lightly and assume that there are no serious implications with a crashing of gears. But we are obviously cognisant that foreign workforce growth cannot grow indefinitely. Over time, there must be circulation, where the higher quality ones displace the lower quality ones, and that is how progressively generation by generation, we created space.
So, we refer back to the model that I used. If from Figure 1 to Figure 5, and the total number of Singaporeans is still the same, and everything is foreign complement, then the balance would be totally lopsided. But over time, you would notice that by the time we reach Figure 5, the bottom part is hollowed out; and that is how we maintain the overall stance.
I will conclude by sharing one other aspect with this House.
Over the next 10 years, our local labour force will peak. Labour force participation, even with the extension of the retirement age, the local labour force will peak because of our Total Fertility Rate (TFR). We have to make a difficult decision.
Supposing we go on zero-foreign workforce growth. When local labour force peaks and foreign labour force does not grow, it means that the total labour force will peak and then decline. That is a tremendous challenge for the enterprises to make the necessary adjustments. We will have to ask ourselves how do we get to that stage and emerge stronger. Everything that we do now must prepare for the day where our local labour force peaks, because the choices are stark.
If we maintain the current ratio of local-foreign, when local workforce peaks, foreign workforce must peak. When local workforce falls, foreign workforce must fall, and the total must fall. If we maintain a stable total, as local workforce peaks and falls, foreign workforce must take up the slack, which means that the ratio must change. But whether the ratio can change will depend on whether our society can accept the change.
It is not a straightforward issue and different sectors will have different ratios. That is how we must navigate this carefully in the next 10 years to make sure that we take care of the prospects for fellow Singaporeans; at the same time, make sure that our enterprises have the opportunities to generate new capacity to compete with the world.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh.
\tMr Pritam Singh (Aljunied): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Just a few points. Firstly, on the point that Minister Chan raised about the Workers' Party proposal, I believe that was in the context of the 2013 debate we had on population, the overall population policy. The position then was keeping the foreign workforce numbers constant, as the Minister shared, but if 1% resident workforce growth target was achieved – there was a caveat to that. So, that is just as a matter of clarification; notwithstanding Minister's reasoning as to how difficult that balancing act will be and the situation as the numbers peak in this decade.
There was another point that came out of that debate, if I remember, and I do apologise if I get my facts wrong here, but I do believe that the entire population policy and the way we are moving forward would be up for review at the end of the decade. Those were the terms – end of the decade. So, the debate happened in 2013. We are in 2020 now. My question really is are we going to have a debate, a Motion on this matter, on the population issue, very much because Minister raises an important point about how significant the upcoming decade will be for overall strategy.
And finally, I think this is a Point of Order more than anything. I think for Question and Answer time, the Standing Orders do say that it should not be a pretext for a debate. That is the word in the Standing Orders, but I think we probably need a longer and more extensive discussion in Parliament about this matter.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Is Mr Pritam Singh asking me for a ruling on your third question?
\tMr Pritam Singh: No, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is just we have had episodes where Question and Answer time goes on to a pretty substantive issue. And I think we, perhaps, should deal with it in another way.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: You are right, Mr Pritam Singh. Minister Chan.
\tMr Chan Chun Sing: Okay, so I hear the clarification. So, zero foreign workforce growth, if 1% resident growth. The question that all of us in this House have to ponder very seriously for the future of our country is this: what if we do not achieve 1% resident workforce growth? And 1% resident workforce growth is very significant. Given our TFR, it is not a given that we will be anywhere near this.
On the other hand, to what extent we can bring in fresh immigrants to supplement? That is also not a given. In fact, today, if I may be frank, even if we try, whether Singapore can be the choice location for other people, is an open question. I always jokingly say immigration is the story of unrequited love. Those whom we want may not want us, and those whom we do not want, may all want to come. It is a fine management.
The Member's question on the next decade, we are seriously looking at the numbers. It is not easy because there is the other dimension, which perhaps the Member did not say in his clarification. Let us take the current moment; the current moment with the virus outbreak. There would be a significant impact on our economy. Whether we can still maintain that trajectory that we are shooting for, is not a given. We cannot assume that economic growth will keep going at the rate that we desire. We aim for the best but we may not always get it.
This is very difficult. That is why even in previous population debate, to grow very fast sometimes has its challenges, but to grow not sufficiently fast, is also a challenge. If we do not grow sufficiently fast, the opportunities are not there for our next generation, it is a challenge. If we do not grow sufficiently fast and people bypass us and we lose our strategic relevance, it is also a challenge.
All these issues, we will be happy to discuss more in depth with Members because I think as leaders in our various capacities, we need to understand and have a shared understanding of these challenges so that we can collectively carry the ground for the difficult decisions that we all have to take together for the next decade.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Senior Minister of State Chee Hong Tat.
\tThe Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Chee Hong Tat): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to join this discussion.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Sorry, Senior Minister of State. This is Parliamentary Question (PQ) time.
\tMr Chee Hong Tat: I would like to seek a clarification, Sir, from Mr Pritam Singh. May I have your permission to proceed, Sir?
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Yes.
\tMr Chee Hong Tat: Thank you, Sir. Sir, I would like to ask Mr Singh, he mentioned that the last time the Workers' Party discussed this issue was in 2013. But can I ask him to recall and to confirm if this was also raised in the GE 2015 Workers' Party's manifesto? The same proposal about curbing and having zero-foreign workforce growth. Is that a proposal that is also in the GE 2015 Workers' Party's manifesto?
Second, if I hear Mr Singh correctly, he said he had a caveat. If I heard him correctly, I think he is saying that he does support that we do need a local-foreign workforce complement. We need a balance. So, I just wanted to seek those two points of clarification from Mr Singh.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh, you can answer but I would take the point that you made earlier that Questions for Oral Answers are meant for backbenchers to ask the front bench questions about Government policies. So, perhaps, you may want to keep your answer to the point.
\tMr Pritam Singh: Deputy Speaker, you have put me in a bit of a bind here. The first reply, I do not have that information offhand, I will have to check the facts. I believe Senior Minister of State is not one just to speak without having the facts at the back of his hand, so he must have the manifesto in front of him. If it is there, it is there.
The second question was about supporting the balance. This is something we have to look at very carefully. All the time we ask for data, it is not data for the sake of data. I think it is to understand the Government's perspective because it is not a case of throwing whatever the Government is saying out of the window or turning up our noses at it.
But, certainly, we have to look at it very carefully. If the Government makes a compelling case, then there is no reason for us to be objectionable about it. But it is, certainly, something we have to look at. And that is why my initial question was about when are we reviewing the overall population plan, which was discussed in 2013 that the timeline is at the end of the decade – when we will review where we are going and what the future is going to look like. So, we will be in a better position to answer your questions and provide another perspective to the Government's plans at that point.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: All right, we will move on from here.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Personal Data Disclosure in the Case of Ms Sua Li Li","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"8 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Prime Minister with regard to CPFB's clarification on the case of Ms Sua Li Li (a) why was it not possible for \"public interest\" to be protected through the continued use of the pseudonym \"Ms Soo\"; (b) what was the definition of \"public interest\" adopted in this case; (c) what was the process that led to the decision made for personal data disclosure without consent; (d) whether a correction order under POFMA was considered given the claim that the article 'contained misleading statements'; and (e) whether the Government will consider for all future personal data disclosures without consent to be mandatorily accompanied by justification from the agency on why disclosure is warranted and reasonable, as similarly prescribed by the Personal Data Protection Commission for non-exempted organisations.
\tThe Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and Transport (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Prime Minister): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I addressed a related query from Assoc Prof Walter Theseira yesterday on 3 February, on the Government's policy on public disclosure of specific personal data on public interest grounds.
To recap, Government agencies may disclose personal data to counter inaccuracies about the Government’s processes or policies contained in publicised complaints or petitions. It is the duty of Government agencies to do so in order to maintain the public's trust and to serve citizens effectively. If citizens are misled about the Government's processes or policies, they may make decisions that are detrimental to themselves. It is therefore fully in the public interest to dispel such doubts and clarify the facts.
In Ms Sua's case, a public clarification was issued by the CPFB, HDB, MOE, MOH and MSF to provide key facts that had been omitted from, and to correct misleading statements in the article first published by The Online Citizen (TOC) on 17 December 2019. The clarification included Ms Sua's full name, her interactions with various agencies, and the support that she and her daughter were receiving from multiple public agencies. Such data was included in order to convey verifiable facts and provide the public with the full picture. This is necessary to ensure the public is not misinformed and public’s trust in the Government is maintained. It also allowed Ms Sua to challenge the Government's account of the case, if need be. The type of personal data that was disclosed was discussed at length by the various agencies before a final decision was made.
Continued use of the pseudonym, \"Ms Soo\", could have done more harm than good if the public had associated other individuals with the case, resulting in more confusion.
In any case, the continued use of a pseudonym would not have been meaningful to protect Ms Sua's identity as she had already divulged her identity by forwarding her email to the President containing her full name and NRIC to several Government agencies, media outlets and TOC. In addition, TOC had initially published a letter from the Associate Consultant at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital to the Social Service Office at Yishun. This contained Ms Sua's full name, date of birth, age and gender. Ms Sua's name was subsequently removed by TOC.
On the matter of how the Government makes such factual clarifications, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) is only one of several means available to us to set the record straight. The Government's response depends on a sensitive reading of the situation, calibrated according to what is necessary and appropriate in the circumstances. In Ms Sua's case, the agencies assessed that issuing a public clarification was the appropriate response. Regardless of the action taken, online publishers should not make use of pseudonyms in order to hide behind the veil of anonymity, so that they can publish unverified facts or misleading statements. This is not in the best interest of sound public debate.
Ms Ong also asked whether the Government will consider, for all future personal data disclosures without consent, to be mandatorily accompanied by justification on why disclosure is warranted and reasonable. Ms Ong claimed in her Parliamentary Question that this was required by the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) for private sector organisations. I would like to clarify that Ms Ong has misunderstood and that the PDPC does not impose such a requirement on private sector organisations. In any case, both public and private sector organisations have to be ready to state the reasons and considerations behind the personal data disclosure, when required to do so.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Ms Anthea Ong.
\tMs Anthea Ong (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Senior Minister of State for the response. The Government's press release states that the law permits such disclosure including the identity of the individual and the public interest. Can the Senior Minister of State also just share how is the public interest defined in this case? And also, could the Minister share which law this disclosure is permissible under? And would the Minister consider making the Government's Instruction Manuals publicly accessible as practised in other countries and recommended also by the Public Sector Data Review Committee?
\tDr Janil Puthucheary: The second half of Ms Ong's question, Mr Deputy Speaker, has already been addressed in a number of Parliamentary Questions that I have personally answered and we have brought a discussion to this House. I do not think there is anything extra in her question nor in any answer that I can give to that, between the Government's Instruction Manuals and the fact that these laws do exist under the PSGA. I am sorry, what was the first point that you wanted to ask?
\tMs Anthea Ong: Because the press release stated that the law —
\tDr Janil Puthucheary: Oh, public interest, you asked me about public interest. Well, I would put it to Ms Ong that there is no public interest served by protecting a falsehood about Government processes and policies when it comes to social welfare and medical care. If she can persuade me that that is so, I would be very surprised; and I do not think she can persuade many people that there is some benefit to be gained about perpetuating disinformation and falsehoods about medical care, welfare benefits, social services, processes. The public interest served here is for the public to be well informed about what is actually happening in our Government's processes and policies.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Yes, Ms Anthea Ong.
\tMs Anthea Ong: I understand that one of the disclosure made about Ms Sua was that she was suicidal. I am wondering why is that a piece of information that was necessary to be disclosed in this case.
\tDr Janil Puthucheary: Ms Ong may be asking about a particular fact. If I understand the timeline correctly, that disclosure was made initially by Ms Sua and TOC. So, I think the question is misdirected to me. So, would Ms Ong like to rephrase her question?
\tMs Anthea Ong: I am actually asking, I understand, and I do stand corrected if I am wrong, but I understand that one of the pieces of information that was publicly disclosed by the Government was that Ms Sua is suicidal or was suicidal.
\tDr Janil Puthucheary: I think on this matter, as several that I have highlighted, I think Ms Ong needs to establish what the facts are and what the timeline of those facts are. The articulation of those issues, the explanation and the clarification that were provided by the Government agencies, after quite a significant period of consultation, establish the facts, the timeline and the chronology quite robustly. I do not think we should add to any confusion in this debate. The facts that Ms Ong is referring to were already in the public domain at the time that the clarification was issued.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Consular Support for Singaporeans Arrested or Charged with Offences in Foreign Countries","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"9 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs what considerations are used to determine if and to what extent consular support is provided to Singaporeans abroad who are arrested or charged with offences when the Ministry is informed of the incident by the individual concerned, by his or her next-of-kin or by other Government agencies.
\tThe Minister for Foreign Affairs (Dr Vivian Balakrishnan): The safety of Singaporeans who are travelling overseas is always the paramount concern of the MFA.
We constantly remind Singaporeans who are visiting, working or living overseas that they have to abide by the local laws. If a Singaporean is arrested or detained, we ensure that our citizens are accorded due process under those local laws. Hence, the extent and the nature of our consular assistance is determined by the unique circumstances of each case and, of course, by the bilateral and international obligations of the host country. Above all else, the entire process has to be in accordance with the local laws and regulations.
Once MFA is notified that a Singaporean has been arrested or detained overseas, we will quickly get in touch with the next-of-kin. We will also contact the local authorities to ascertain the basic facts of the case. We will request for consular access to the Singaporean and we will facilitate visits by the next-of-kin. But, again, and I need to emphasise this, all this is subject to the approval of the local authorities.
MFA will also continue to seek updates from the local authorities on the progress of the case and we will remain in contact with his next-of-kin and family members in order to provide consular assistance.
\tMr Leon Perera (Non-Constituency Member): I thank the Minister for his reply. Just to confirm, so, if there is a request made to MFA from the next-of-kin or from a person who is incarcerated, and if it is permitted, if it does not contravene local laws, can we assume that MFA would generally extend some kind of consular assistance to every such request?
\tDr Vivian Balakrishnan: A simple answer, yes.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Trend of Singaporeans being Declared Bankrupt and Average Time to Exit Bankruptcy","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"10 Mr Desmond Choo asked the Minister for Law (a) over the last 10 years, what has been the trend of Singaporeans being declared bankrupt; (b) what is the average time taken to exit bankruptcy; and (c) what are the measures taken to ease difficulties in job search and employment because of bankruptcy.
\tThe Senior Minister of State for Law (Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai) (for the Minister for Law): Mr Deputy Speaker, the number of Singaporeans declared bankrupt each year has remained stable and averaged around 1,400 individuals between 2010 and 2018. In the same period, the average time taken for Singaporeans to exit bankruptcy is 9.7 years.
MinLaw has introduced various enhancements to the bankruptcy regime to help individuals avoid bankruptcy and also reduce the time taken for bankrupts to exit bankruptcy.
The Debt Repayment Scheme, for instance, or DRS, introduced in 2009, allows individuals with steady employment and whose unsecured debt do not exceed $100,000 to avoid bankruptcy by developing a repayment plan over a period of time with their creditors. With the upcoming implementation of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act, the cap will be raised from $100,000 to $150,000. This will allow more debtors to qualify for DRS and avoid bankruptcy with the consequent risk of losing their jobs.
The Differentiated Discharge Framework, or DDF, which was introduced in 2016, provides a more rehabilitative regime, with clear goals and timelines for the insolvent individual to meet to be discharged at various points.
Under this framework, first-time bankrupts will generally be able to achieve discharge within a shorter time-frame of between five to seven years, if they cooperate by keeping to the conditions of bankruptcy and they also make the required contributions each time.
For cases which pre-date the DDF, the Insolvency Office has since 2014 stepped up efforts to actively review deserving bankruptcy cases for a timely discharge. Individual bankrupts who have made satisfactory contributions to their estate and who have been cooperative with the Insolvency Office during the administration of their bankruptcy are discharged expeditiously, so that they can have a fresh start in their financial affairs.
The Insolvency Office routinely advises Singaporean bankrupts who require assistance on employment on the available avenues for help. Such avenues include Workforce Singapore (WSG) and NTUC's Employment and Employability Institute (e2i). And through the Adapt and Grow initiative, WSG and e2i offer employment facilitation services, such as career coaching, employability workshops, job fairs and job matching. They also provide a suite of employment support programmes to help jobseekers including bankrupts, take up new jobs and careers.
All employers in Singapore are expected to practise fair and merit-based employment practices, as laid out in the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices. Where there are specific requirements to ask for an applicant's bankruptcy status at point of application, employers should state the reasons, which must be job-related. This may be necessary for some jobs, for example, those in the financial industry, where employees are required to be free from any financial embarrassment.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Yes, Mr Choo.
\tMr Desmond Choo (Tampines): I thank the Senior Minister of State for his clarification. I have two points. One, increasingly, Singaporeans would need to travel to seek employment opportunities outside of Singapore. How prepared are we to allow Singaporeans who are bankrupts to make regular travels so that they can establish a career and so that they can eventually pay off their debts?
The second point is, as we head towards economic uncertainty, how flexible is the system to prevent more Singaporeans who get into bankruptcy or to get out of bankruptcy faster, so that they can leach on to better opportunities?
\tMr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Mr Deputy Speaker, under the bankruptcy regime, there are restrictions which are placed on a bankrupt's ability to travel and that is for good reason. It minimises and mitigates the risks of any dissipation of assets or any leakage in terms of the bankrupt's estate.
Nonetheless, where a bankrupt is trying to look for a job, seek employment and perhaps that might require, say, for instance, travel overseas to attend an interview or it is part and parcel of his job to run an office overseas if that is part of his job requirement, then the Office Assignee's discretion will extend to allowing that travel to take place.
The Member's second question is about the flexibility of the framework. As I explained in my opening remarks and the answer I gave earlier, we are looking at different options, both before bankruptcy as well as the differentiated framework after bankruptcy. That allows the Official Assignee to look at circumstances relevant to the particular bankrupt, as the case, may be for the purposes of this charge. Obviously, the conduct and the affairs of the estate for two bankrupts will not be the same. So, those factors will be looked at in terms of the differentiated discharge framework.
As I mentioned earlier also, under the arrangement for DRS, the threshold will be raised from $100,000 to $150,000 and that will facilitate more persons coming into the scheme to avoid bankruptcy even before creditors make the claim against them.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Analysis that Supported Development of SecureMyBike Project in Admiralty that was Eventually Discontinued","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"11 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Minister for Transport (a) what are the studies, projections, or cost-benefit analyses that supported development of the $4.7 million SecureMyBike project at Admiralty MRT that has been discontinued due to lack of demand; and (b) how does the Ministry plan to ensure future walk, cycle and ride (WCR) infrastructure improvements
\tThe Minister for Transport (Mr Khaw Boon Wan): Sir, the SecureMyBike project is not part of the Admiralty MRT station. It is part of the Kampung Admiralty development, a greenfield HDB project which I initiated in 2012 when I was in MND. The project site was a vacant plot of 9,800 m2 – almost 10,000 m2 – next to Admiralty MRT Station where HDB had planned to build 2-room Studio Apartments for seniors. We decided to intensify the land use to meet the diverse needs of the potential residential and commercial tenants.
I appointed a committee and while the primary objective was to build Studio Apartments for the seniors, I advised the committee to identify the daily needs of the seniors, beyond mere accommodation, so that the seniors could access such needs easily and with little hassle. I envisaged Kampung Admiralty to be a mixed precinct that our seniors would find highly liveable and where neighbours look out for one another, with good old kampung spirit. And that is why we named the project \"Kampung Admiralty\", to help focus the planning.
The committee surveyed the needs of the residents in the precinct and sought the views of the many commuters who regularly used Admiralty MRT station. Over several months, they conducted extensive public consultations and organised many focus group discussions with the potential users of this project. Out of a long wish list, the committee finally decided on the range of services to be provided. These included a hawker centre, an outpatient medical cum day surgery centre, a childcare centre, an elderly day care centre, some commercial spaces for shops and restaurants. All these were built, in addition to the Studio Apartments for the elderly as per the original intent of this project. We also made generous provisions for greenery and public spaces to support community gardening, so that the elderly residents living there could live an active lifestyle.
We also wanted to make this precinct user-friendly for the many residents who cycle to Admiralty MRT station. There were many surface bicycle parking lots at Admiralty MRT station, but they were not enough during peak hours. The shortage was serious back then, with indiscriminately parked bicycles cluttering the parking area and posing safety concerns. The committee did several counts of the parked bicycles there. They projected substantial, long-term demand for over 500 cycling lots in the vicinity of Admiralty MRT station and proposed to meet the demand as part of the Kampung Admiralty project. We then had to choose between surface parking or underground parking. Surface parking was cheaper to build, but underground parking would free up valuable surface space for other uses; and this is an important consideration in land-scarce Singapore.
As Japan faces similar land constraints, the committee studied their experience with bicycle parking and became aware of the extensive underground bicycle parking facilities in their cities. LTA made study visits to Japan to find out more. I myself visited similar facilities in Tokyo when I happened to be there on one official visit. Each facility stored up to 200 bicycles and charged users up to S$35 a month – so, about a dollar per day – for usage of bicycle parking services. My impression was that the Japanese were very satisfied with their paid underground facilities.
After much deliberation, the committee decided to experiment with underground bicycle parking in Kampung Admiralty, to see if this model could be financially viable in Singapore. HDB called an open tender for the construction of the entire Kampung Admiralty in 2014 and received six competitive bids. HDB eventually awarded the contract to Lum Chang Building Contractors, which subcontracted the construction, maintenance and operation of the bicycle parking system to a Spanish company, which met the relevant requirements. Implementation was uneventful.
The Kampung Admiralty project was completed in 2017. The final plot ratio is 3.6, in line with our intent to intensify land use. We set aside 198 m2 – so, that is about 2,000 square feet – for underground bicycle lots, adjacent to the much larger basement car park of about 12,400 m2. So, the bicycle parking lot is less than 2% of the total underground parking space.
While Kampung Admiralty was being built, the shared dockless bicycle phenomenon popped up in Singapore! Remember the very colourful Ofo, oBike shared bicycles? We were surprised by the rapid public acceptance and growth of shared bicycles, which led to many problems. By then, I had moved to MOT and had to deal with it, including imposing regulatory controls on the operators. But just as we managed down the shared bicycle numbers, e-scooters came along. The new devices had many advantages and took off quickly, creating new problems which we are now actively dealing with. In fact, two Bills are coming up in an hour's time to deal with this problem.
Both shared bicycles and PMDs, especially e-scooters, have dramatically shifted the usage and parking patterns of privately owned bicycles. This fundamentally altered the economics of paid underground bicycle parking. As the fees collected could not cover the operating cost, LTA decided to end the pilot or the trial.
But overall, Kampung Admiralty has been a highly successful project, although the outcome for underground parking for bicycles has turned out to be disappointing. The underground space of 198 m2 for bicycle parking remains, and can be re-purposed. We are keeping the options open, as the current situation is still changing. As the number of PMDs comes down, the usage of shared bikes and privately owned bicycles may well rise again. I would not be surprised that similar underground bicycle parking systems may be needed in Singapore, perhaps even at Kampung Admiralty, in the future.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Assoc Prof Walter Theseira. There are only three more minutes.
\tAssoc Prof Walter Theseira (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Minister for that reply and I apologise for the mis-attribution in location. I think what it highlights is the difficulty of forecasting demand during market research. So, I think it will be very useful if the Ministry could put in place guidelines for market research studies, even a logic model that has to take place before these projects proceed. And the idea is after the project commences, we can check back against these original projections and see where did we go wrong, where did we go right. That will be very useful because I think it is only now that we are hearing this very excellent story of what actually happened.
\tMr Khaw Boon Wan: Indeed, we must have that discipline of making sure that you set down clearly what are the planning assumptions so that you can check back after the project is completed. We do that all the time. That is why there is always a project review or a post mortem so that we learn from it. But I think for this particular episode, it is an on-going saga. My last sentence was deliberately crafted. We cannot tell yet how the saga will end; perhaps, in a couple of years' time. I personally think that demand for privately owned bicycles phenomenon may grow, especially as we expand the cycling path infrastructure, a topic which we will discuss extensively at next month's Committee of Supply (COS) for MOT. Stay tuned.
\tMr Deputy Speaker: Order. End of Question Time. Introduction of Government Bill. Minister for National Development.
[Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), Written Answers to Question Nos 12, 14 and 16 on the Order Paper are reproduced in the Appendix. Question Nos 13 and 15 have been postponed to the sitting of Parliament on 18 February 2020.]
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[(proc text) presented by the Minister of State for National Development (Mr Zaqy Mohamad) on behalf of the Minister for National Development; read a First time; to be read a Second time after the conclusion of proceedings on the Estimates of Expenditure for FY2020/21, and to be printed. (proc text)]
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[(proc text) Question again proposed. (proc text)]
Mr Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah): Sir, the Singapore Convention on Mediation Bill implements the UN Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation, also known as the Singapore Convention on Mediation. This Bill is important for Singapore’s ratification of the Convention.
On 7 August 2019, 70 countries attended the signing ceremony of the Singapore Convention with a total of 46 signing it. Subsequently, another five states signed it, bringing the total current signatures to 51. Among the signatories include United States, China, India, and South Korea. While there are currently 51 signatures to the Singapore Convention, the Singapore Convention will only commence operations six months after the third ratification – what is needed is for states to align international processes with its international obligation and then ratify the Convention. My questions are: is the Ministry aware of other states’ progress in this process? And how has Singapore been engaging other countries in encouraging them to ratify?
The Convention plays a key role in Singapore’s future in the international sphere. Not only is this Convention the first UN treaty named after Singapore, but it is also in line with Singapore’s role as an international dispute resolution hub. As an international dispute resolution hub, Singapore has many dispute resolution tools available. Allow me at this stage, Sir, to declare that I am a practising lawyer.
Singapore has a strong presence in arbitration and also offers a special judicial process through the Singapore International Commercial Court. Singapore is also a party to the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements and the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards. These conventions provide for foreign recognition and enforcement of Singapore court orders and arbitration awards made in Singapore.
Through this, Singapore is better positioned to be a dispute resolution hub as parties are able to resolve their disputes either through the court, through arbitration or even voluntarily through mediation.
What this Bill does is that it provides that an international settlement agreement formed through mediation of a dispute may be recorded in Singapore as a court order for the purposes of enforcement or defence, set-off or otherwise rely on it in a court proceeding. Clause 4 allows for such an application by a party to the settlement agreement and clause 5 provides that the High Court may grant such leave to record the order as an order of court. In order for parties to utilise this regime, clause 6 sets out that the two following documents and evidence are necessary – one, the international settlement agreement signed by the parties and two, evidence that the international settlement agreement resulted from mediation.
The second criteria is important as it helps distinguish between a contractual agreement and a mediation settlement. Although both are formed only when parties consent voluntarily to something, a mediation settlement requires there to have been a dispute and may even be directly enforced as a court order and not merely a contractual agreement. If this distinction were to be blurred, the special statutory regime that elevates private agreements to court orders may be abused.
What is required is the mediator’s signature on the international settlement agreement, a document signed by the mediator indicating that mediation was carried out and an attestation by the institution that administered the mediation or any other evidence acceptable to the court per clause 6(1)(b). Unlike the Mediation Act 2017, which allows for the mediation to be carried out either by a designated mediation service provider or conducted by a certified mediator in section 12(3)(a), clause 6(b)(iii) of the Bill requires that the mediation be administered by an institution and not merely a certified mediator. Therefore, my question for the Minister: would the Minister kindly elaborate on how institutions for mediation in Singapore are building up their capacity and capabilities in preparation for the commencement of the Singapore Convention?
Besides the formal requirements for the application listed in clause 6, clause 7 sets out substantive grounds for refusing an application to record an international settlement agreement as an order of the High Court.
Clause 7(2)(c)(i) provides that evidence that the obligations in the international settlement agreement have been performed can be a ground for refusing an application to record it as a court order. Because an application to record an order may be to prove that the matter has already been resolved and not just for enforcement of the agreement, it is good that ultimately it is up to the court’s discretion whether to refuse the application notwithstanding there is such evidence.
Clause 7(2)(d) retains flexibility for parties to agree to opt-out of this statutory enforcement regime. In the event that they do not wish to allow their international settlement agreement to be recorded before the court, there still is flexibility to do so.
Clause 8 is interesting in that it addresses a situation where an already mediated international settlement agreement is recorded as an order of court but the other party to the settlement agreement does not appear before the court. Court proceedings are mandatory in the sense that they force the other party to participate and appear in court otherwise a judgment may be entered against them, for example, a judgment in default of appearance situations.
On the other hand, voluntariness of both parties to a certain extent is necessary in order to resolve the dispute via mediation. What clause 8 does not require a court to refuse to record a settlement agreement simply because the other party is absent. This prevents a person from running away from what he had agreed to in the mediation settlement. On the other hand, to ensure that a mere procedural lapse will not prevent justice from being done, clause 8 allows for an order recorded in the absence of a party to be set aside on the application of the absent party based on substantive arguments, that is, grounds on which the court may refuse to grant an application to record an order.
This Bill also includes the entire text of the Singapore Convention in the schedule. Following the commencement of the Convention, the jurisprudence and scholarship relating to mediation will probably continue to grow. Would the Minister elaborate on what the Ministry is doing to encourage and equip Singapore lawyers to be active and effective members in the mediation industry as well as to develop strong thought leadership in this area – whether in the academics, whether as a practitioner or whether as a mediator – him or herself? Would the Minister kindly clarify that, please?
Even as it is anticipated that the use of mediation as an alternative dispute resolution mechanism will pick up around the world following commencement and ratification of the Singapore Convention, it is commendable that law students are also looking to further their interests and passions in this area already. For example, the \"National SMUSIMI Collaborative Dispute Resolution Award\" recognises law students from the local Universities – SMU, NUS and SUSS – who have excelled in international collaborative dispute resolution competitions or who have contributed significantly to the mediation and negotiation in Singapore. Last year, Singapore held its first ever international moot for university students that focuses on mediation advocacy and mediation proper.
Therefore, I ask the Minister: would the Minister share with us what efforts are being done to sustain interest in development in this area of mediation?
In conclusion, Sir, this Bill furthers our interests as an international dispute resolution hub, and it provides for alternative dispute resolution means and mechanisms and, therefore, I stand in support of the Bill.
Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Sir, I stand in support of the Bill. Mediation has been growing in prominence in Singapore’s dispute resolution landscape. One starting point for institutionalised mediation in Singapore could be then Attorney-General Chan Sek Keong’s speech at the Opening of the Legal Year 1996 on the need to look into mediation as a form of alternative dispute resolution and suggestion to establish a commercial mediation centre.
Since then, Singapore has made great leaps in institutionalised mediation.
In 2020, we now have a proliferation of mediation institutes, including the Singapore Mediation Centre, the Singapore International Mediation Centre, and the Singapore International Mediation Institute, among others. The Presumption of ADR applies for all civil cases under the State Courts Practice Directions, which requires cases to be referred to the most appropriate mode of ADR, including mediation, as a first resort. Finally, in November 2017, Singapore’s Mediation Act came into force. Amongst the significant developments introduced by this Act was allowing mediated settlement agreements to be recorded and enforced as court judgments.
It is thus a point of much pride that the progress Singapore has made on mediation domestically is now magnified on the international stage through the Singapore Convention on Mediation.
This Bill gives effect to the convention. Similar to the Singapore Mediation Act, it addresses the non-enforceability of mediated settlement agreements, which has been traditionally an obstacle to the adoption of mediation.
The 1958 New York convention, which streamlined the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards led to the boom in arbitration. It is hoped that the Singapore Convention on Mediation will now put international mediation on an even footing as international arbitration.
Sir, I have three clarifications on the Bill.
My first clarification centres on mediation standards. The proposed section 7(2)(e) provides that an international settlement agreement may be enforced if “there was a serious breach by the mediator who conducted the mediation that resulted in the international settlement agreement of the standards applicable to the mediator, or the mediation”.
There is currently no single set of mediation standards in Singapore or internationally. Mediation standards in Singapore are fragmented.
The Singapore Mediation Centre has a Code of Conduct for its mediators in sessions held by SMC. The Singapore International Mediation Institute has a Code of Professional Conduct applicable to any mediation that is mediated by a Singapore International Mediation Institute Mediator while the Society of Mediation Professionals (Singapore) is a group of mediators looking to develop a collective, localised and contextualised code of ethics.
Can Senior Minister of State share if there are plans to leave the industry to self-regulate in determining the applicable mediator standards or if MinLaw intends to take the lead in consolidating a single set of mediation standards?
My second clarification is in relation to section 7(2)(e), which states that only a \"serious breach\" by the mediator justifies the Court refusing to grant relief. The Convention and the Bill do not define what constitutes a \"serious breach\". A further hurdle, again, to determining what is a \"serious breach\" is the fragmented state of mediation standards. Can the Senior Minister of State share whether there are plans for the Ministry to provide guidance on what should constitute \"serious breach\" or will the definition be left entirely up to the Courts and mediation institutions?
My third clarification is on civil justice reforms. The Convention and the Bill enable the enforcement of mediated international settlement agreements. Domestically, the enforcement process for civil judgments is under review.
The Civil Justice Review Committee (CJRC)’s report noted that the \"tools currently available for enforcing both monetary and non-monetary judgments are limited and unsophisticated\". It further noted that the enforcement process is too court-centric and that there are limited modes of enforcing non-monetary judgments.
The CJRC recommended that the enforcement process for civil judgments be privatised, and that the Ministry study the problems and proposals further. It also suggested that the Ministry implement civil enforcement reforms separately from the rest of the civil justice reforms.
Can the Ministry share whether this review of civil enforcement procedures will affect the processes under this current Bill?
Sir, notwithstanding these clarifications, I stand in support of the Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Senior Minister of State Mr Edwin Tong.
Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank Members for their broad support of the Bill as well as for the overall affirmation of the key role in which mediation can play and will be playing, in the context of Singapore's bid to have first-class international dispute resolution services and to maintain our status as a key hub for such services.
Let me get straight to addressing the queries raised by Members, starting with some broad overarching points as to the Convention and also as to the architecture of the Bill.
Mr de Souza asked about the progress of ratification of the Convention by other states, and when the Convention will come into effect. He also asked how Singapore has been engaging other countries in encouraging them to join us in seeking to first sign up to, and subsequently, ratify the Convention. As I outlined earlier, we require three states to ratify the Convention before the Convention becomes effective six months after the third state has deposited its instrument of ratification with the UN. Singapore hopes to be amongst the first countries to do so.
The overwhelming show of support for the Convention on the day it opened for signature is itself encouraging, and this suggests many other countries share our view that mediation is increasingly prevalent and overall helpful to the conduct of international business transactions. This gives us good basis to believe that the other States will also quickly ratify the Convention.
We understand several other countries are taking active steps towards their own ratification process. Like us, they will have to go through their own internal process and approvals such as, for instance, enacting domestic legislation to implement the obligations contained in the Convention, before they subsequently ratify the Convention.
On our end, what we have done is we have offered to host workshops for those other countries interested in finding out about the Convention, what it takes to have that implemented in their own domestic laws and also to be able to assist where required in their ratification processes as well.
The next Singapore Convention Conference is scheduled to be held in Singapore in September 2020, in conjunction with a Singapore Convention Week of events, so a series of other related events, conferences, sessions, including the competition that Mr de Souza spoke about earlier will take place in September 2020. This will also include workshops for interested government officials, legal and business communities, the academics and of course students from around the world and this will provide participants with an insight into the Convention and of course sharing information and thought leadership on the latest developments in not just mediation but also the broader realm of dispute resolution.
We are overall hopeful that the Convention will come into force soon.
Mr Patrick Tay asked if we foresee an increase in disputes resolved as a result of the Bill. Well, that is certainly the intention behind the Bill and the Convention. With the introduction of a framework to simplify the process for enforcement and invocation of international settlement agreements, we do expect to see an increase in the number of disputes resolved in accordance with this Bill, and slowly with the proliferation of mediation, increasingly as a viable option for resolving disputes, and also under the Domestic Mediation Act.
Several Members have already touched on these benefits, which include time and cost efficiency, greater party autonomy and control over the resolution of the disputes, how they frame disputes, how they frame the settlement of the disputes and the terms and conditions which go behind such agreements. Mediation also protects confidentiality between the parties and ultimately, also preserve a relationship which may have taken years if not decades to build and that is the overarching benefit in engaging mediation as a method of resolving disputes. And I would agree with Members that these factors add to the reasons why we believe that mediation is growing as an option as one of the key dispute resolution options.
Mr Douglas Foo made an important point when he spoke about the importance of educating the business community of the benefits of mediation and of how these reforms can impact them positively. I agree, and the efforts to raise awareness of the Convention and of mediation in particular, must be an on-going and long-term one, and we are committed to doing so.
Let me just share with Members some of the steps we have been taking. MinLaw and our Singapore mediation institutes which many Members have mentioned – the SIMC, SIMI which is the mediation institute – have taken steps, active steps in the community to raise awareness of the Convention. MinLaw has been actively promoting the Convention and its benefits to the legal and business communities and to schools through conferences, seminars, workshops and other outreach efforts.
SIMC has bee conducting briefing sessions in conjunction with organisations such as the Law Society and Singapore Corporate Counsel Association to reach out to the legal profession and to the industry players and they will continue to do so. Thus far, SIMI – the institute – has conducted \"Mediation In Practice\" seminars for professionals in the healthcare and built environment sectors – two sectors which we believe will benefit from the usage of mediation – and will continue to conduct seminars for other sectors as well.
Mr de Souza also specifically asked about MinLaw’s efforts to build capability, interest and thought leadership with regard to mediation generally, amongst mediation institutions, amongst Singapore lawyers, and law students. Let me come to this but before I do so, I think that Mr de Souza noted that clause 6(1)(b)(iii) requires that the mediation be administered by an institution and not merely by a certified mediator. I would just like to add that the requirements in 6(1)(b) are disjunctive. There are several limbs to the clause and they are all disadjunctive. Hence, the Bill caters to both administered and unadministered mediations. Clause 6(1)(b)(ii), for instance, provides that an attestation by the institution that administered the mediation is only one of the ways in which a settlement agreement can be evidenced to have resulted from a mediation. Alternatively, the mediator’s signature on the agreement or some other document, not necessarily on the mediated agreement or any other evidence acceptable to the court, will also suffice. In other words, clause 6(1)(b) provides for a broad spectrum of different options by which the Court might then gain insight as to whether there is evidence supporting the contention that this agreement has arisen from mediation.
Singapore’s mediation institutions have built a strong pool of qualified mediators and practitioners and this started even before the Convention was inked last year. The SIMC and the SMC, which are two of the designated mediation service providers under the Mediation Act 2017, have established panels of mediators with broad expertise in very diverse fields. SIMC’s panel has about 70 international mediators from more than 20 jurisdictions across a spectrum of civil and common law backgrounds. They have expertise in different fields as well, different subject matters, which are important because whilst a dispute might centre around the law, the subject matter of the dispute might well come from different spectrums of society and different aspects of business transactions.
Knowledge, know-how and thought leadership are important drivers for mediation as a practice. And to this end, our institutions regularly conduct courses to equip Singapore lawyers and other professionals as well with mediation knowledge and skills. Recently, in November last year, the SIMC conducted a two-day specialist training workshop for 24 senior practitioners from Singapore – they include senior counsel, managing partners and partners of law firms in Singapore, general counsel of MNCs located in Singapore also other large companies and SIMC subsequently appointed them as specialist mediators in January this year. SIMC will be looking to conduct more runs of such specialist training workshops for lawyers, for in-house counsel and other business professionals. The thinking behind that being that it is not just within the province and domain of lawyers to conduct and run mediations but rather if we bring the skill in-house into the business environment then it is more likely that mediation will be taken up as an option; and also, would be able to locate such expertise within the business itself to catch hold of the dispute as early as possible.
On thought leadership, the Singapore International Dispute Resolution Academy or SIDRA was established as a platform for thought leadership in dispute resolution theory, practice and policy, and this includes of course the area of mediation as well. SIDRA strengthens Singapore’s thought leadership in this area through its research projects, such as its Singapore Convention on Mediation research project, which produced the first commentary on the Convention, and the International Dispute Resolution Survey research project, which captured respondents’ considerations in the use of international commercial dispute resolution, including arbitration, mediation and litigation.
On law students, which Mr de Souza mentioned, we have not forgotten them. I think Mr de Souza mentioned that SIMI organised the inaugural International Mediation Singapore moot. That involved 140 students from 30 different universities from around the world. It was the first international moot organised in Singapore that focuses on mediation advocacy. This year, in conjunction with what I mentioned earlier on the “Singapore Convention Week” in September this year, we will also have the second instalment of this programme.
To further develop students’ interest in mediation, NUS, SMU and SUSS law students are provided with electives and modules on mediation. SIMI supported the founding of, and continues to advise, the NUS Collaborative Dispute Resolution Club, the CDR, a dedicated club for law students to organise activities related to CDR such as selections for international competitions, events, seminars and also hosting actual competitions for students. This month, they will be organising a Mediation Advocacy Competition for contestants to pit their advocacy skills to further their client’s interests in collaborative mediation settings – real-life settings but students have a chance to apply what they have been taught and put into practice in an as realistic a setting as possible. SIMI and SIMC also provide internships for students interested in deepening their own understanding of mediation and how it applies in practice.
Mr Patrick Tay asked about the views and concerns of the legal fraternity and the business community, in response to the Bill. In some ways, the response from the legal community to what I have outlined over the last couple of minutes from attending the Convention, to the training, to coming forward to serve as specialist mediators, they all tell us that the legal community and the business one sees value in mediation. Stakeholders, including the legal fraternity, dispute resolution institutions, businesses that we consulted, welcomed the Bill. MinLaw also conducted several engagement sessions with professional bodies, business associations and students, and received very positive feedback for which we are very heartened.
On the international front, the adoption of the Convention by the UN General Assembly, Singapore's signing of the Convention and the other countries indicating that they would wish to ratify the Convention as soon as they can, they all bode well and they give us good reason to be quietly optimistic that the Convention will be ratified by more countries, and also its application to businesses across different jurisdictions to promote international trade.
Prof Fatimah Lateef asked if an agreement arising from mediation will now be enforceable under the Bill. The answer is yes. When the Bill is passed and enters into force, agreements which are of a commercial and international in nature, and which fulfil the requirements of the Bill, will be enforceable under the Bill's framework.
Mr Louis Ng noted quite rightly that as part of the civil justice reforms, the enforcement process of civil judgments in Singapore is currently under review. He asked how this review will affect the processes under this Bill. Under the Bill, an application for recognition of the international settlement agreement has to be applied for through the court process. I have outlined that earlier when I made the speech yesterday. One of the objectives of the civil justice reforms is to enhance the efficiency of the court procedures and this would also help the process under this Bill because the processes will be streamlined, enhanced and made more efficient.
Prof Fatimah Lateef had asked whether an international settlement agreement resulting from mediation can be enforced under the Convention regardless of its place of origin, and whether a party seeking to enforce such an agreement can do so in the state where the other party has a majority of its assets. This is a classic enforcement issue that almost all lawyers face when they look at how to, or where to enforce an award or order. The answer to Prof Fatimah Lateef's question is yes and indeed, that is the value behind the Convention. A party can choose which jurisdiction it wishes to bring an application under the Convention, provided that the jurisdiction is a party to the Convention. Obviously so because it can be enforced only against the party in a Convention jurisdiction. This provides businesses and investors with the certainty upfront that their cross-border transactions, which subsequently result in a dispute, which can then be mediated, can be easily and in my view, more effectively enforced, if one is able to discern how and where to go depending on the assets located of the counter party.
A party is also not limited to seeking enforcement under the Convention in just one jurisdiction. As I explained in my speech yesterday, obtaining an order of court under this Bill for the purposes of the enforcement does not extinguish the underlying mediated agreement. Either party to the mediated settlement agreement is at liberty to continue using the settlement agreement for enforcement or invocation in another jurisdiction which is a party to the Convention. So, you can go and seek enforcement of the mediated agreement in different jurisdictions, but provided that these different jurisdictions are Convention jurisdictions.
This is also subject, as in all cases, to the jurisdiction's own domestic procedures for enforcement and invocation. In other words, other countries will have their own process as we have set out in this Bill and compliance with that process must be adhered to, which is not uncommon.
Article 1(3)(a) of the Convention excludes settlements that have been approved by the court or concluded in the course of proceedings before a court. In other words, sometimes, in the course of court proceedings, you have a settlement agreement that arises in the context of that, this Bill does not apply to those agreements. This, however, does not mean that when a settlement agreement has been recorded as a court order under the Bill, for the purposes of enforcement or invocation in Singapore, that parties to the agreement would thereafter be precluded from presenting the same agreement in another jurisdiction for enforcement.
So, I just want to make this clear, that in coming to court in Singapore, adhering to the process under this Bill, for the purposes of enforcing or invoking the settlement agreement, does not preclude you from taking this agreement to another jurisdiction and then complying with the domestic procedures and laws, and also then enforcing it in that jurisdiction.
Mr Patrick Tay asked for the reasons behind the Bill being limited to commercial matters and why the Bill does not extend to agreements concluded for family, inheritance or employment disputes.
The Convention, which the Bill seeks to implement, itself excludes disputes in relation to \"family, inheritance or employment law\". The rationale of that is because it is consistent with UNCITRAL's mandate to focus on commercial disputes and commercial matters.
In fact, in its deliberations on the draft Convention text, commercial disputes were the main focus of the Working Group. The Working Group decided that settlement agreements dealing with family and labour law matters, and other areas where party autonomy might be limited due to overriding mandatory rules or public policy, should be excluded from the scope of the Convention.
Further, in matters such as family and employment law, domestic laws and public policy considerations often differ from one country to another. This could become an issue if a foreign court is faced with an application for the enforcement or invocation of agreements that might otherwise be contrary to its own laws and public policy of that particular jurisdiction.
That said, Mr Tay might wish to know that family disputes and related international mediated agreements are currently being considered by the Hague Conference on Private International Law, on whether there is scope for an international instrument to be developed for such matters. So, that might well happen, but perhaps within a differentiated set of rules, given the public policy considerations I have mentioned earlier.
Mr Patrick Tay also asked if the Bill will cover intellectual property rights.
The Bill covers all settlement agreements from mediations to resolve a commercial dispute. The Working Group agreed not to define the term \"commercial\" but left it to interpretation and further agreed that it should be capable of given a wide interpretation. Often, one finds that a dispute can raise multi-faceted issues, it is not often easy to pigeon-hole into one category or another. Hence, so long as the settlement agreement pertaining to or touching on IP rights relates to matters arising from a commercial dispute, then it can fall within the scope of the Bill.
Prof Fatimah Lateef asked if the courts of signatory countries will handle the applications for the Convention. The answer is yes. The Convention provides for a competent authority designated by a party to handle and hear applications brought under the Convention in that country. This is not limited to the courts of a country, and other bodies deemed suitable and competent by that country could also be designated. In Singapore, applications under the Bill are to be made to the High Court or to the Court of Appeal, as appropriate.
Prof Fatimah Lateef asked how parties can prove that the settlement agreement was a result of mediation. I believe Mr de Souza also raised this point earlier. It is not uncommon for parties to discuss and come to a resolution through various channels. So, in other words, where there is a dispute, one does not just sit down and say, \"Okay, listen, this is a mediation. Let's start\". Often, there is a series of informal discussions, maybe exchange in writing sometimes or over meetings. This can happen for a period of time before arriving at an agreement through the mediation.
Where the dispute is eventually resolved through these steps and recorded in the form of an agreement at a mediation session, the Bill will be applicable, subject to the other conditions of the Bill being met.
The onus is on the party seeking to make an application under the Bill to prove that requirements under clause 6(1)(b), which I have mentioned a little while ago, that the settlement agreement resulted from mediation, and that these conditions have been complied with. For instance, such evidence can be in the form of a document signed by the mediator conducting the mediation indicating that such a mediation was carried out.
On this note, Prof Fatimah Lateef raised the concern about the mediator having to sign the settlement agreement.
In line with Article 4(1) of the Convention, the requirements set out in clause 6(1)(b) are not exhaustive. The first option for demonstrating that the agreement resulted from mediation is, of course, the mediator’s signature on the mediated agreement itself. This might be the simplest and neatest method of satisfying the requirement. Although in some jurisdictions, including in Singapore, it is not the practice to do so. It is not the practice to include the mediator as a party to the agreement. In other words, on occasion, if the parties subsequently disagree on the terms, it should not be open to the parties to call the mediator as a witness to come and give a testimony as to what actually transpired. So, for that reason, mediators generally do not sign off on the mediated agreement itself.
But as Prof Fatimah Lateef correctly points out, there are other options that this Bill has made available, other mechanisms by which this can be done. One option is that separate document that I mentioned earlier, signed by the mediator who conducted it. If none of these available options can be used to prove, then parties can rely on clause 6(1)(b)(iv), which states that \"any other evidence\" acceptable to the authority before which the application is made can be used.
So, it might well be a combination of emails, something in writing, something verbal, which goes towards proving that the mediation took place and that this agreement arose as a result of those discussions and negotiations.
On the requirement for a certified English translation of a settlement agreement drafted in a foreign language to be provided to the Court, Prof Fatimah Lateef asked whether the Bill will provide for a list of approved translators globally. Consistent with the usual practice of proceedings in our courts, parties are free to engage their own qualified translators for the translation for the purposes of clause 6(4) of the Bill. Neither the Convention nor the Bill stipulates a list of approved global translators nor is there a requirement to provide such a list.
Let me turn to some questions now on the standards of mediations, standards of mediators and also ensuring consistency.
Mr Louis Ng asked if the intention is for the industry to self-regulate or if MinLaw intends to consolidate a single set of standards. Mr Patrick Tay and Mr Ng also asked about the definition of serious breaches and what might warrant the Court’s refusal of an application under the Bill. Prof Fatimah Lateef noted that local frameworks and culture may drive the conduct of mediation differently in each country, which is a fair point, and queried whether and how the Bill will ensure consistency and standards for mediators before whom agreements are concluded.
First, as noted by Prof Fatimah Lateef herself, given the varying nature of mediation and the forms it can take across different countries, languages, cultures, it would itself be a challenge to now prescribe common standards applicable across different countries which signed up to the Convention as being the applicable standards for mediation in all cases. In fact, the UN Working Group, when looking at the issue, considered an illustrative list of examples of potentially applicable mediator standards.
But these are standards that we would not be surprised to see in any application to enforce an arbitral award or a court order, or indeed, a mediated settlement agreement. So, these are issues such as the independence of the mediator, the impartiality, confidentiality and whether or not there has been natural justice and fair treatment of the parties. These are all standards that you find in one form or another replicated in the Bill. At the same time, the Working Group also noted that standards and applicable standards might change, might shift. There might be more or less emphasis on one point or another subsequently.
Accordingly, neither the Convention nor the Bill sets out standards that are prescribed upfront and become immutable over time, applying to the mediator or to the mediation itself. In addition, I would also note that the mediation landscape in Singapore is still developing. We are about six months out from the Convention. We do not currently have plans to impose a regulatory regime on mediators for the time being.
At the same time, Mr Louis Ng is right in noting that mediation institutions like the SMC and SIMC already require mediators on their panels to adhere to a code of conduct. We also have the SIMI, the accreditation body for mediation in Singapore, which sets standards for mediator training and also accreditation. If the mediators are from certain professions, such as the legal profession or the accounting profession, they will also be subject to their professions' own set of standards on ethical rules and other professional guidelines.
To the extent that there are in fact such \"applicable\" standards based on the mediator’s licensing regime, due to the parties’ agreement with the mediator, or pursuant to the rules of an administering institution, these standards, and consequently, whether there has been a \"serious breach\" or not, are to be determined by the competent authority hearing an application under the Bill, in other words, the Courts.
As I am sure Mr Christopher de Souza and Mr Patrick Tay would know, the Courts would apply those standards, looking at it in the context of what it means by drawing parallels with arbitrator misconduct for instance, or the rules of how a fair arbitration might have taken place. Those principles, whilst not directly relevant to a mediation in the same way, would no doubt guide the conduct of the Courts as to what comprises \"serious breach\". This is to ensure that mediator and mediation standards continue to be upheld and are not undermined in the process of concluding a settlement agreement.
Sir, I believe I have covered all the queries raised by Members. Let me conclude by saying that we are hopeful that as the Convention comes into force, more and more parties will see the benefit of mediation and through it, as Mr de Souza points out, the Courts will receive more and more applications and through that, develop a body of jurisprudence as to how to administer, apply and, in some cases, refuse to apply or refuse to enforce such agreements.
Singapore continues to position itself as a thought leader, as a hub, as I mentioned at the outset, for all forms of dispute resolution. And with the Convention and this Bill, we will expect to see that the third of the more popular areas of dispute resolution will now have an avenue for cross-border enforcement, that, in our view, will promote international trade.
With the milestone that we have achieved with the Convention, Mr Deputy Speaker, we believe that this Bill will bring rich and varied opportunities to our businesses, mediation institutions and professionals and also our legal profession. Sir, with that, I beg to move.
[(proc text) Question put, and agreed to. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House. (proc text)]
[(proc text) The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. – [Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai]. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed. (proc text)]
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"BP","content":"The Senior Minister of State for Transport (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Transport): Mr Deputy Speaker, on behalf of the Minister for Transport, I beg to move, \"That the Bill be now read a Second time\".
Sir, this Bill is linked to the next Bill on the Order Paper, the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill 2020 or the \"Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill\". With your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to propose that the substantive debate on both Bills take place together. This will allow a holistic debate and enable Members to raise questions or express their views on both Bills during the debate. We will still have the formal Second Reading of the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill to ensure that procedural requirements are dealt with.
Mr Deputy Speaker: I approve.
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Deputy Speaker, the term \"active mobility devices\" refers to personal mobility devices (PMDs), power-assisted bicycles (PABs), bicycles and personal mobility aids (PMAs). Such active mobility devices and new business models for the sharing of these devices have changed the way Singaporeans commute. In 2017, the House passed the Active Mobility Act 2017, which allowed bicycles and PMDs to be used on public paths, including footpaths and cycling paths, and for PABs to be used on cycling paths.
The take-up rate of active mobility devices grew dramatically over the last three years. These devices provide a cheaper, cleaner and more convenient commuting option. But as the device population grew, there were concerns about whether our infrastructure and regulatory framework were adequate.
In November 2019, we reviewed our regulations and took the difficult but necessary step to ban e-scooters from footpaths. Since then, footpath accidents involving PMDs have reduced by 52% and sentiments towards public path safety have improved. The Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill 2020 gives effect to our earlier announced intention to extend the ban on footpaths to all motorised PMDs. With the amendments in this Bill, only non-motorised active mobility devices, such as bicycles and kick-scooters and personal mobility aids, will be allowed on footpaths. The exception for motorised personal mobility aids is for the benefit of those who have difficulty walking.
We recognise this connectivity loss for motorised PMD users and we are ramping up our cycling path infrastructure building plans, so that Singaporeans can continue to benefit from active mobility devices. We will announce more about these infrastructure plans during the Committee of Supply debate.
Collectively, these two Bills will help us to build a regulatory framework for a safer and sustainable active mobility landscape here in Singapore. The two Bills will give us powers to effectively regulate individual active mobility device users, retailers, businesses and device-sharing operators, all of whom have a role to play to ensure public path safety.
The rules and regulations governing user behaviour were developed in consultation with the Active Mobility Advisory Panel (AMAP). This body has representatives from seniors, youths, device users and grassroots leaders. AMAP also regularly consults other stakeholders. The Panel has made further recommendations to strengthen regulations on active mobility device users. We have studied them and announced that we will accept them. We will tighten the regulatory regime for device users in three ways.
First, we need to ensure that riders are mature enough and have a sufficient understanding of the rules to behave responsibly. This is especially important for riders of motorised active mobility devices, which have the potential to travel fast and cause great harm to others.
To improve awareness of the rules, regulations and expected safe-riding behaviours, we will require riders of certain active mobility devices – which we call “test-needed-to-drive vehicles” in the Bill – to pass a theory test before they are allowed to ride. We will start with e-scooter and PAB riders. Those who successfully complete the required tests will be issued a competency test certificate. It will be an offence to ride an e-scooter or a PAB on public paths without this competency test certificate. As PABs are also allowed to be used on the roads, PAB riders will similarly be required by Traffic Police to pass a theory test before they can ride on roads.
Active mobility devices are generally very easy to operate and so we are starting first with a theory test. This a calibrated approach to improve awareness of rules and regulations while managing the regulatory burden on device users. If necessary, LTA will have the flexibility to introduce other types of tests, such as practical riding tests, in the future. Under the new section 23G, even if riders have passed the earlier tests, LTA can also require them to take the new tests.
We will also introduce a minimum riding age for motorised PMDs, starting with e-scooter riders. As a general rule, persons under 16 years old will not be allowed to ride an e-scooter on cycling paths. While the Act prescribes both a possible fine and jail term if a rider commits this offence of underage riding, these are maximum penalties. Our Courts retain discretion in imposing punishment, having regard to the circumstances of the case and laws, such as the Penal Code and the Children and Young Persons Act.
The only exception to this underage riding provision is if the underage rider is riding under proper supervision by an appropriate supervisor, as recommended by AMAP. As a start, we will require the supervisor to be at least 21 years old. For example, if an adult wishes to supervise an underage rider to ride an e-scooter on a cycling path, the adult needs to take reasonable and practicable measures to ensure that the underage rider does not ride in a way dangerous to people or property and abides by the path riding rules as per Parts 3 and 3A of the Active Mobility Act. Failure to do so constitutes an offence. We will publish some guidelines to educate supervisors on how to properly supervise the underage rider.
Second, we will tackle distracted riding by tightening user behaviour requirements. Under the new section 22A, it will be an offence to ride or drive any active mobility device or vehicle on a public path while holding a mobile communication device and operating any of the communication device's functions. This is already the case today for motorists under the Road Traffic Act (RTA) and we will further extend the RTA to cover all vehicles used on roads, including bicycles. A person who is holding and using a mobile communication device may be distracted and may not have both hands on handlebars or steering wheels, both of which affect their ability to effectively control the device or vehicle when it is moving.
We will update and clarify provisions to take into account new technological developments in mobile communication devices, such as wearables. As a general rule, we will continue to allow such devices to be used, so long as the user is wearing the wearable device in accordance with the manufacturer's design while riding.
Third, we will put in place additional measures to ensure that users only use compliant active mobility devices on public paths. The current registration regime only requires e-scooter owners to declare that their devices are compliant. Through the new sections 35A, 35B and 35C of the Bill, we will introduce a mandatory inspection regime, starting with e-scooters. Riders will only be able to ride on public paths, e-scooters that have been inspected and certified to be compliant with the prescribed device criteria, such as those relating to weight, width, speed and UL2272 certification. LTA will be rostering e-scooters that are already registered and declared as UL2272-certified for inspections. LTA will also periodically call up certified and registered e-scooters for re-inspections every two years to ensure that they remain compliant and are not illegally modified.
We will also require active mobility device owners to take extra care to ensure that their devices are not illegally modified. If an owner had his or her device inspected and certified to be compliant, but the device was subsequently found to be non-compliant while in their ownership, the owner will be presumed, until the contrary is proved, to have either modified the device, or caused the device to be modified.
Most device users are largely law-abiding and ride responsibly. However, LTA's enforcement officers detected about 4,900 offences in 2019. This is not acceptable. To send a stronger deterrent message to this group, we will increase the maximum penalties for certain offences. We will generally double the penalties of key user behaviour offences. For example, the penalty for a first-time offender caught speeding on public paths will be doubled from $1,000 and/or three months' imprisonment to $2,000 and/or six months' imprisonment.
Apart from users, retailers must also behave responsibly when advertising and selling active mobility devices. In 2019, there were 28 instances where retailers were caught for various offences, including displaying and advertising non-compliant active mobility devices. We will tighten this regulatory regime for retailers in three ways.
First, to complement the mandatory inspection regime for e-scooter owners, we will also require retailers to send e-scooters for inspection to certify that they comply with the prescribed device criteria before they are allowed to register, display, advertise or sell these e-scooters. Such an arrangement will benefit consumers for an assurance that the e-scooter they purchase is compliant. We will retain the flexibility to extend this to other active mobility devices in future if necessary.
Second, we will strengthen LTA's ability to enforce against illegal modifications. Today, the controls over illegal modifications only cover modifications done to an active mobility device belonging to another person and done in the course of business. This means that an individual can circumvent these controls by claiming that he or she is modifying their own device, or is modifying the device as a friend for free. We will expand Part 4 of the AMA to cover all modification activities on active mobility devices that are allowed for use on public paths, whether or not undertaken in the course of business. This is because all illegally modified devices can pose public path safety and fire safety risks.
Third, errant retailers who sell non-compliant active mobility devices have a disproportionately large impact on public path safety. To send a strong deterrent message, we will significantly increase penalties for retailer offences. For example, the penalty for selling a non-compliant device for use on public paths will be increased by more than four times, from $5,000 and/or three months' imprisonment to $20,000 and/or 24 months' imprisonment, for a first-time offender who is an individual. We will also introduce higher fines for corporate entities that cannot be subject to imprisonment. Hence, for the offence of selling a non-compliant device for use on public paths, we will further double the fine to $40,000 for a first-time offender that is a corporate entity.
Businesses using active mobility devices on paths have a responsibility towards riders and members of the public in the course of their business. To provide victims greater recourse to compensation, we will require certain businesses to ensure that their riders are covered by third-party liability insurance for death or bodily injury to any person that the rider may incur when riding on public paths. We will start by imposing this requirement on our device-sharing operators who are licensed under the Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill and businesses who employ or contract with riders who ride active mobility devices on public paths for work, such as food delivery companies.
Our approach is based on AMAP's recommendation to adopt a staged approach, starting first with imposing insurance requirements on certain businesses before extending it to individuals. We are working with AMAP and the insurance industry to study how best to extend such insurance requirements to individual active mobility device riders.
Sir, if I may now move on to the Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill. Businesses which provide active mobility devices to be ridden on public paths as part of their business have a special responsibility.
The device-sharing licensing regime, which was established in February 2018 under the Parking Places Act (PPA), focused on tackling indiscriminate device parking, particularly by shared bicycles. It regulated device-sharing services that operate in public places. Today, we see a variety of operators using different devices, including motorised ones, causing problems with parking and safety. For example, there have been operators who provide e-scooters for hire on private land and these devices are subsequently observed on public paths. Different business models are likely to be developed in the future. Thus, it is necessary to update our regulatory regime.
The Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill will expand the current licensing regime in the PPA in three main ways.
First, we will extend the scope of the regulatory regime beyond controlling indiscriminate parking to also focus on public safety. This will ensure that operators also play a role in improving the safety of public paths where their devices may be ridden.
Second, we will expand our licensing coverage to all active mobility device-sharing services, for devices that can be used on public paths. It will not matter whether the devices are intended to be parked at public places or not; nor whether the hirers are the general public or only a segment of the public.
Third, we will have the powers to introduce a class licence regime to allow us to apply a differentiated and light-touch regime on operators whose business model or operations may pose less safety or parking concerns.
Overall, this regime will result in a more comprehensive solution to cover different types of operators, but also allow us to take a calibrated approach to regulate them, depending on their individual characteristics.
Firstly, the Bill allows for different classes of licences to be granted. All operators who offer dockless devices for hire will be regulated under the regular licensing regime. We will take a calibrated approach in applying the safety requirements, depending on whether the operators are offering for hire motorised or non-motorised devices. The current process whereby operators have to demonstrate their ability to meet our regulatory requirements under a sandbox licence before being able to graduate to a full licence, will continue to apply. As bicycles are non-motorised and pose less of a safety concern, as a start, we will subject dockless bicycle-sharing operators to requirements that deal with parking matters only. Thus, for now, dockless bicycle-sharing operators regulated under the existing licensing regime will not experience any changes or additional requirements.
There is a need to regulate device-sharing operators who offer for hire motorised devices differently from those who only offer for hire non-motorised devices because of the increased risk of harm to the rider and to the public. Presently, there is a Ministerial safety directive in force under the PPA, as a result of which LTA does not issue any licences to PMD-sharing companies and does not accept new applications for PMD-sharing licences.
Moving forward, LTA will continue to assess the public path safety situation and the readiness of the industry when assessing licence applications by those who offer motorised device-sharing services. Appropriate safety requirements will be imposed if licences are granted for this group, which may include ensuring that the motorised devices are equipped to accurately identify the device location and travelling speed, and ensuring that the devices only operate in limited geographical spaces specified by LTA. LTA will also be able to require operators to ban users who have committed serious offences from using their shared devices.
Secondly, docked device-sharing operators will be regulated under the class licensing regime rather than the regular licensing regime at the start. Class licensees do not need LTA's explicit periodic approval to operate, and only need to register with LTA soon after commencing operations. Class licensees will also be subjected to a smaller set of regulatory requirements, such as installing speedometers on their active mobility devices. This light-touch approach is because these docked operators, such as those who operate from a physical shopfront or who have built racks where their devices are affixed to, cause less parking disamenities due to their use of docking infrastructure. They generally have to incur higher initial infrastructure costs, which naturally restrict the scale of their operations and, correspondingly, their safety impact. Notwithstanding this, LTA will have the flexibility to shift such operators into the regular licensing regime subsequently, if there is a need to do so.
Even for docked device-sharing operators, we will take a calibrated approach. As a start, we intend to apply the class licensing regime only to docked device-sharing operators using motorised active mobility devices, and not to those using non-motorised devices which have fewer safety concerns. Therefore, as a start, docked bicycle-sharing operators will not be required to have a regular licence or a class licence. Nonetheless, LTA will have the powers to impose the licensing regime on them as necessary.
We are aware that this class licensing regime will apply to some existing and currently unlicensed operators and will engage these operators further to discuss the implementation details and to provide sufficient transition time. We aim to minimise compliance costs and make the registration process easy.
Apart from tightening regulations on active mobility device users, retailers, businesses and device-sharing operators, the Bill makes several miscellaneous amendments. These include extending the offence of giving false information to cover all applications that persons make to LTA under the Active Mobility Act, beyond just applications to register a PMD.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the active mobility landscape will continue to evolve and our regulatory framework must similarly adapt. We must continue to adjust our regulatory approach to keep pace with technological and market developments. It is a long-term effort.
These two Bills together make sure that we have an approach that covers the device riders, retailers, businesses and device-sharing operators, with the principle of establishing public path safety as the primary intention and provides us the tools and measures to intervene further should they become necessary.
This set of Bills will ensure safer paths for Singaporeans while promoting active mobility. Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to move.
[(proc text) Question proposed. (proc text)]
Mr Deputy Speaker: Order. I propose to take a break now. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair again at 4.25 pm. Order. Order.
Sitting accordingly suspended
at 4.07 pm until 4.25 pm.
Sitting resumed at 4.25 pm.
[Deputy Speaker (Mr Charles Chong) in the Chair]
[(proc text) Debate resumed. (proc text)]
Mr Ang Hin Kee (Ang Mo Kio): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have three suggestions to the proposed amendments to the Active Mobility Act and the new measures to be implemented by LTA.
First, with regard to the assessment tests, I would like to propose that LTA build upon the existing training the \"Delivery Rider Kit\". This was curated by the NTUC in consultation with the food delivery platforms. It will support PMD delivery riders transiting to other modes such as power-assisted bicycles (PABs). The topics that we have included comprises safe riding, using PABs effectively, digital skills and so on. Since November last year until now, 63 riders have undergone training for various modules. Others are starting the training soon.
More recently, Minister Khaw also attended one of these training sessions. We feel that there should be some alignment between the new assessment test and the NTUC’s Rider Kit. Food delivery riders who have attended the training has also given us very good feedback and they are happy with the contents of the training. I hope that they would not need to attend additional classes or to be re-assessed if they have completed those training. The practical assessment and the knowledge learnt during these existing courses are substantial and useful.
On top of that, GrabFood offered its food delivery riders who have completed the safe riding module a safety helmet which has a smart lights feature. The lights help increase their visibility while they are on the road and also serves as turn signals for other motorists to note when these riders are making turns. How great it is if all other food delivery operators also do the same and equip their riders with similar helmets. I hope the Ministry can lend its weight to effect that outcome when they are in dialogues with the other food delivery platforms.
Secondly, safety goes beyond user know-how and the right gear. One other area that we are concerned with and we should pay attention to is whether the riders are exhausted from working long hours or rushing from place to place because of the incentive structure. Many may be working long stretches or trying to hit targets to meet the incentive payouts. The use of, for example, telematics or data analytics could offer options to promote safer rides.
This industry currently is a piece-rate kind of industry structure. The more you do, the more you earn. When you hit a certain target, you get higher incentive. Such a scheme may not exactly be safe for the riders because regardless of their health or their status of their exhaustion, they may try to push for higher targets. We hope to hear, perhaps, another way of addressing this issue rather than let the existing business model continue on, which may affect the riders in a negative manner.
Finally, food delivery operators are now required to offer public liability insurance. That is a move in the right direction. It is, however, not mandatory for them to provide accident or prolonged medical leave insurance for their rider partners. Some do so, majority are not on board yet. I would like to urge for the operators to do so, to help riders deal with the potential loss of income when they get injured or they fall sick. Will we be, therefore, requiring the operator to do so before allowing them to operate such a platform here in Singapore?
To this end, would LTA be looking at licensing the food delivery operators, similar to what was done for the third party ride-hailing apps? Both business models are fairly similar – one, provide point-to-point service for commuters, the other, provide point-to-point service for food delivery.
Moving forward, there is a deeper concern. Are there plans to work with MOM to look at potential employment-related insights? It will be useful to deep-dive into whether there may be issues of skills mis-match among the riders. Are they in this job because of circumstances such as this being a low entry barrier job so anybody can actually enter in without an interview or much other consideration? Or could it be that there is instant cash payout and the incentive scheme in the job attractive? Or could it be that our skills conversion programme may not be effective in helping people land a job, and consequently, they end up delivering food as a mode of making a living?
There could be some fundamental issues here as to whether are there too many workers in this industry or is it a sustainable career for those who have opted for this industry? Do they have adequate CPF savings? Do they have adequate medical protection? And what are the skills sets needed to help those who wish to transit into a new sector, into a new job? Have we been able to do so effectively? I think these are areas in which, perhaps, LTA may not have the full range of skills set or the tools but it would be useful to work with MOM to ensure that workers are assessed appropriately to help them and guide them in their appropriate career option.
Regardless, Mr Deputy Speaker, the amendments are a step in the right direction as far as regulations are concerned. Some businesses are responsible and have taken positive acts. While we are happy to see those businesses continue to protect and look into the riders' interest but, in the longer term, we may need to consider whether we need to license the operators so that the responsible actions of a few will be the standard for all that are in the industry. With that, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I support the Bill.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, first of all, I would like to commend Minister for the e-scooter footpath ban which came into effect on 5 November last year. Since then, I have received fewer complaints from residents about reckless riders, and my residents have generally expressed support for the ban. I am pleased to note that other motorised mobility devices like electric hoverboards and unicycles will also be banned from footpaths progressively by March.
I am sure this was a difficult decision to make, in light of those who depend on PMDs for their livelihood and also when we are trying to move towards a car-lite nation. However, as I have said not once, not twice but many times, in this House, something had to be done, given the casualties, injuries, near-misses caused by reckless e-scooter users, besides the fire caused during the battery charging.
Human lives must be prioritised above everything else. It is only after taking care of that, that we can explore new solutions.
I would like to speak firstly on the limitations of the regulations, then on the issues that more PABs and bicycles could bring.
I note that a number of regulations have also been introduced to improve safety with regards to riding of PMDs on public paths. E-scooter and e-bike users must be at least 16 years old and take a theory test to ride on public paths. I think this is great and I, too, have been calling for minimum age and for users to partake in a qualifying assessment before they can hit the paths. May I ask if all existing users of the registered devices have to take this test? How many registered users are there currently and how long will this take to be rolled out? Will those who passed the test be issued certification or licence that they have to carry with them when riding?
I am also concerned about the limitations of the regulations. Multiple people in a household may share a device.
Some of them may use the device without taking the test and this will likely go undiscovered until they get into an accident. This problem is likely to be more prevalent among minors. Children under 16 years old can illegally use the devices belonging to their older family members. How can we ensure that there is effective enforcement? Further, how would these regulations apply to PMD and e-bike rentals? I suppose customers are required to produce their certificate before they can hire a PMD? But what about tourists and other foreign visitors who would not have taken the test?
And on the subject of age, would there be any age limit for seniors to ensure that they are medically fit to ride PMDs? Weak eyesight or other medical problems may cause them to misjudge distances, and navigate obstacles safely on the path, which could cause them to endanger themselves and others.
Motorists above 65 years are required to undergo a medical check-up every three years by a registered doctor if they want to continue driving. Would something similar be extended to PMD riders as well? And if so, we might have to make it easier for those with light mobility problems to get PMAs.
I am heartened to note that my persistent push for third party liability insurance for e-scooter riders has finally paid off. Businesses are now required to cover their riders who use e-scooters for work with third-party liability insurance, and this requirement is also extended to those who use other mobility devices for work. In the latter case, does the responsibility of insurance lie with the employee, or the employer? What if the employee is a freelancer? And as with many PMD riders who work with delivery companies, they are not full-time staff.
Are employers still required to insure them? With third-party insurance in place, what protocols should be observed in case of an accident? Is the PMD rider required to have a copy of the insurance certificate on him so he can give it to the victim to claim against him?
Even with these measures, any accident is one too many. Riders who ride recklessly and go beyond legal speed limits still cause a hazard to themselves and all other users. Does LTA have the resources to catch them and enforce penalties, be it whether they are riding recklessly on path connectors or roads or on footpath which they are not supposed to?
On the eve of New Year, I was on my way to a countdown event at Khatib, I saw a convoy of e-riders happily cruising down along Yishun Avenue 2, as if the whole road belonged to them. I can sympathise, I can appreciate the frustration of the enforcement officers and, in fact, many of my residents expressed sympathy to the enforcement officer who was terminated because he showed his kicking power recently. And also, many residents shared with me that they feel so unsafe when they are waiting for bus at the bus-stops.
I would like to ask: is LTA doing enough in using technology, for example, face recognition, in carrying out the enforcement so as to make our footpaths safe, to make our bus-stops safe?
Next, let me move on to the issue that more PABs and bicycles could bring. Senior Minister of State Lam revealed that 3,550 riders have applied for the e-scooter trade-in grant, with about three-quarters of those opting for PABs and a quarter going for bicycles. Is the Ministry sufficiently equipped to monitor the impact of more PABs and bicycles on the roads?
Riding on the roads can be dangerous and I wonder if there are plans to implement mandatory safety courses and tests for all riders. In the past months, cyclists have died after being hit by cars. There was also one fatal case involving a pedestrian killed by a cyclist. Frankly speaking, I am really worried about having more cyclists on the roads.
Are there incidents of drunk riding on the roads? In the UK, one can be fined up to £1,000 for riding under the influence of alcohol. Are there similar laws for cycling in Singapore? Drunk cycling is a hazard for cyclists, pedestrians and also to motorists.
Furthermore, because of all those fire cases that happened with charging of PMDs, I would like to ask what is being done to ensure that PABs meet fire and electrical safety requirements?
The amendments to the Bill will make our paths safe again. Of course, we also need the cooperation of every motorist and pedestrian to stay alert and stay on the right paths. In Chinese, please.
(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] \tMany residents have told me that ever since the ban of PMDs on footpaths, they no longer felt scared every day. I am heartened to note that measures that I have been repeatedly calling for are finally being implemented, including the minimum age requirement of 16 years for PMD users, training and third-party insurance.
\tMay I know whether the Government has enough resources to check if users are complying with these regulations? No matter what regulations we have, PMD speeding still poses a big danger. I hope the Government can do more about it.
\tThe Government has also revealed that there were more than 3,000 delivery riders who have switched from PMDs to PABs or bicycles. What impact will it have when there are more PABs and bicycles on the road? We must ensure that these riders have proper training, we legislate against drink-cycling and make sure that PABs comply with the fire regulations.
I thank the Government for introducing these bold measures and for returning peace of mind to our people. I support this Bill.
Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong (Non-Constituency Member): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, on 4 November 2019, in his reply to a few Parliamentary Questions including one from myself, Senior Minister of State Lam Pin Min announced in this House that e-scooters will be banned from the use of footpaths, a ban that greatly limited the practical use of e-scooters. He had also announced that e-scooters will be allowed on cycling paths and MOT will step up the construction of such cycling paths to provide clear separation between pedestrians and e-scooters, extending the network of cycling paths from 440 km to 750 km latest by 2025 and to 1,300 km by 2030. While the many unsafe or inconsiderate e-scooter incidents may reduce for now, let us not forget the painful lessons we have learnt in the past few years.
In my speeches on e-scooter issues in the Second Reading of the Active Mobility Bill in January 2017, the Second Reading of the Land Transport (Enforcement Measures) Bill in September 2018 and the Committee of Supply debates for MOT in 2016, 2018 and 2019, I have, among other issues, brought up the following points.
One, we have had a poor cycling or riding culture over the years – bicycles beating red lights, cycling against the traffic and, until the Active Mobility Act came into force, cycling on footpaths. These acts could be seen on an everyday basis. I am not sure even now it has improved in the past three years.
Two, our poor cycling culture coupled with the lack of enforcement by authorities over the years and the lack of political will of past governments to improve the riding culture, meant that in recent years, with the introduction of e-scooters, we need to create from scratch, a new culture of safe and considerate use of bicycles and PMDs.
Three, there must be sufficient public education and consistent effective enforcement, especially early on, after the introduction of the new Active Mobility regulations. There must be sufficient resources and a willingness from all authorities concerned responsible for enforcement. The Government must ensure that information is made available not just to people who voluntarily look for it by way of voluntary Safe Riding courses or on LTA website or Facebook page. The Government must think of how to push such information to both riders and non-riders, such as pedestrians, and to people who do not seek it, and such efforts can be, not just in English, but should also be in other languages such as Chinese, Malay and Tamil.
Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, if the Government still expects e-scooters to be used as a viable tool of first and final mile connectivity, the above points will continue to ring true. While the completion of the extended cycling network may possibly allow PMDs or e-scooters a new leash of life again, we should not be lulled into thinking that the new cycling lanes with a more extensive network alone will avoid all the problems we have seen with e-scooters in the past three years leading up to its footpath ban.
Most of these problems, I submit, had to do with a poor riding culture, inadequate public education and even inadequate enforcement. We should resolve these issues or problems before the extended cycling path network is ready for use. Otherwise, the Government will just be kicking the can down the road.
For a start, will the cycling paths be directly linked to every HDB block, condominium, private landed house, shophouse, office building and industrial building, and I would like to know whether this will be the case?
It cannot be a half-hearted attempt, for example, having cycling paths circling a number of HDB blocks but with no direct link from each block or having cycling paths circling around clusters of private residential estates, expecting e-scooter users to alight and push en route to cycling paths. If this seem too expensive, impractical or ambitious, then MOT may have to reconsider e-scooters and other PMDs as a serious option for first and final mile connectivity.
However, if our cycling path network were to become sufficiently extensive such that PMD riders do not need to alight and push, it may in turn do away with the need for cyclists to share the use of footpaths, which is still currently allowed. This prospect may be welcomed by many footpath users who are still not comfortable with the sharing of footpaths with bicycles. If there is no direct link, the existing footpath ban will mean that e-scooter users technically have to alight and push their e-scooters when on roads or footpaths. How confident are we that all riders will comply accordingly?
On the issue of enforcement, while I appreciate the efforts of many LTA enforcement officers, since the Active Mobility Act took effect, spot checks on certain days of the week or in selected areas may not be adequate. Senior Minister of State Lam Pin Min mentioned on 4 November 2019 that LTA had 174 enforcement officers. I was a little surprised that by that time, the number of officers had remained only at that level. People may take their chances and continue to use their devices illegally or in unlawful ways if they think that the chances of meeting enforcement officers are slim.
Even now, I still see e-scooters being ridden on the roads or on footpaths, almost every day. I still see illegal specs e-bikes or PABs on footpaths as well. And I still see many illegal specs e-bikes.
On the issue of public education, as I have mentioned earlier, we also need to embark on a public education that pushes the education to people of all ages, riders or otherwise, including for those who do not voluntarily seek the information. Having sufficient public education to inform and ensure all PMD users as well as pedestrians know what is allowed and not allowed will go a long way to ensure that the right riding culture is developed ultimately.
I would also like to ask the Government to also reconsider one of the questions I have asked in my Parliamentary Question on 4 November 2019 namely that the Government should consider mandatory safe riding certification courses with disqualification rights. I know that Senior Minister of State Lam answered my question then by saying that a mandatory theory test would be more appropriate than a safe riding course. While I do not agree that it should be confined to a mere theory test, certainly, some form of mandatory tests should be introduced together with disqualification rights.
In that connection, I am happy that a mandatory competency test will be introduced by this Bill. In the context of this Active Mobility Amendment Bill and the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill introducing new regulations for shared mobility services, I hope that shared e-scooter services will only be available to users who have passed a mandatory or competency test.
In November 2019, the Senior Minister of State did not comment on disqualification rights but I believe that, with disqualification rights, people will take greater care to use their e-scooters safely and considerately, so I would urge MOT to incorporate disqualification rights in the proposed regulations.
Mr Deputy Speaker, this amendment Bill bans underage riders from the use of PMDs, namely under 16 of age, but also allows underage riders to \"ride under escort\", that is to say, with the supervision of a supervisor. May I ask the Senior Minister of State to confirm that these provisions are not just confined to commercial classes i.e commercial context only? Whether it covers informal context, for example, with friends or families.
I would also like to ask the Senior Minister of State whether there will be clearer requirements to be spelt out in the subsidiary legislation for such supervisors and the conditions for such escorts? I am also concerned that if there are insufficient LTA enforcement officers in every location, how do we ensure all escorts and supervisors are compliant with the law?
In fact, why do we not only allow all riders to learn after they have reached the statutory legal age for the use of e-scooters, just like how we do with motorcycles, cars and other vehicles on the roads?
Finally, I would like to know, who should be legally liable if the underage rider causes injury or property damage to a third party due to his own negligence, while under supervision? Will it be the underage rider or the supervisor? Will insurance be made compulsory for all such riding by underage riders?
I would also like to touch on an issue regarding e-scooter battery quality issue. Would MOT consider specifically regulating after-market batteries, sold separately from the devices, including testing and supply, so that access to batteries which do not conform to requisite safety standards is denied completely, thereby avoiding fire risks from their use? In addition to inspections, MOT can work with the Singapore Customs to bar import of off-specs batteries including via individual online purchases.
In closing, Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, if the Government still expect e-scooters to be a viable option for first and final mile connectivity when the cycling path network is expanded, I urge the Government to address the issues and concerns I have highlighted and get things right ahead of the expanding cycling path network. Notwithstanding my concerns, I support this Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Prof Lim Sun Sun.
Prof Lim Sun Sun (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. No thanks to Kevin Kwan's hit novel and the movie \"Crazy Rich Asians\", everyone seems to think that all Singaporeans own flashy cars. Well as the joke goes, we all do have access to a BMW – Bus, MRT, Walk. Our extensive and ever growing public transportation network is certainly making us more mobile and walking is a key dimension of active mobility.
I would therefore like to take this opportunity to speak about walking and walkability, as this Bill introduces timely measures to help pedestrians, cyclists and PMD users share our paths safely. Factoring walking into the equation is especially critical as plans have been announced to expand the 440 km of cycling paths here to 750 km by 2025 and about 1,300 km by 2030. Providing dedicated lanes for transport modes with speeds between those for walking and for cars is necessary. But another critical need is to effectively integrate these cycling paths into our urban landscapes so that pedestrians and cyclists can all benefit.
Since we will be actively expanding our cycling path networks, I would like to suggest an active incorporation of design considerations that take into account the needs of pedestrians. To this end, let me draw on research on designing walkable neighbourhoods in Singapore.
Research by Zhang, Azzali, Janssen and Stouffs at School of Design and Environment at NUS identified several issues pertaining to poor walkability of Singapore's housing estates along four different dimensions: connectivity, closeness and spatial distribution, comfort and safety. They found that in HDB estates, apartment blocks have principally been developed for the use of cars where precincts are often surrounded and divided by wide, car-based corridors that impede greater active mobility. So even though pedestrians are usually able to make their way from departure point to destination, walking is made cumbersome because of frequent traffic lights along the route or the need to use ramps and over bridges to cross a street. For example, crossing a road often involves the need to take a long detour and use over bridges or a ramp instead of covering the shortest possible route.
Other studies have also found that many HDB estates and new towns have a car-centric design with wide car-oriented corridors that cut into their urban fabric. They argued that space and time for crossing are not equally distributed between cars and pedestrians, and that traffic priority is always given to vehicles. Also, block units are surrounded by parking areas and leftover spaces. The consequence of this car-centric approach to our urban design is that active mobility is not ideally facilitated and may in fact be undermined due to disruptions and lack of continuity of walking. Adverse consequences such as jaywalking may therefore result.
Another issue previous research has identified is the lack of consistent and well-defined urban block planning, because HDB blocks are not homogeneous or consistent but differ in size, design and pattern. Hence, this makes spatial awareness and navigation more challenging. Each apartment block is surrounded by parking areas and internal car-based streets that reduce the compactness of each neighbourhood. Zhang and his co-authors found that the overriding feeling when walking through an HDB neighbourhood is the unnecessarily meandering trips required to reach a destination. This is due to the lack of continuity of walking and fragmentation of our urban fabric. Given all these characteristics of older HDB neighbourhoods, they are clearly not as pedestrian-friendly as they can or should be. Active mobility is sacrificed for vehicular traffic, thereby making our HDB estates less navigable. This has adverse implications not just for pedestrians but also for the wheelchair bound and young families using strollers and prams.
But we can draw critical lessons from such research as we design our new HDB estates, and build our expanded cycling network. Additionally, human factors must also be taken into account in boosting active mobility. Research by Assoc Prof Lynette Cheah and her team at the Sustainable Urban Mobility Research Laboratory in SUTD has probed into the values that most influence people's choices for active mobility. Using qualitative research methods, they identified convenience, health, comfort and time-cost savings as being the most critical factors. They also established that individuals' experience of travelling on different travel modes also acts as feedback that reshapes their values and perceptions toward current mobility options and expectations for future mobility.
What this means is that if walking can be convenient, promote physical exercise and offer time and cost savings, individuals will be more likely to incorporate more walking into their mobility patterns. Conversely, an adverse experience from navigating a meandering and fragmented urban landscape will deter them from walking as much as could be possible or desirable.
Improving walkability in HDB estates must therefore be a key tranche of our overall plans for active mobility and should not be an afterthought. I urge our planners to take walkability into account even as they plan the extended cycling pathways, to ensure that these pathways are optimally integrated into our urban landscape and that they do not intrude into or undermine the needs of pedestrians. These concerns notwithstanding, I support the Bill.
Ms Joan Pereira (Tanjong Pagar): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I would like to share my thoughts on two aspects of this Bill.
The first is regarding accident insurance. Under the new section 58A, businesses will be required to ensure that the drivers and riders they engage or employ are covered by third-party insurance, whether the vehicles utilised are regular or power-assisted bicycles, personal mobility devices, motorised wheelchairs or mobility scooters.
I fully support this important amendment. In the event of an accident, the insurance coverage will ensure that the victims will be able to claim medical expenses as well as compensation for any other damages.
Along the same vein, I would like the Ministry to consider if third-party insurance would be useful for all riders. This is to ensure that all victims, not just those involved in accidents caused by business-related riders, can seek recourse and compensation. It would be also helpful if the Ministry can work with insurance firms to ensure affordability.
Without insurance, victims can only try for private settlements through mediation or make civil claims. I have had a few cases where my residents who were victims approached me for help as they were unable to seek any recourse.
Next, I would like to comment on the amendment to address the issue of underage riding of personal mobility devices on public paths. While I support those who are underage riding under supervision, there are risks and challenges associated with the control of these machines.
I would like to suggest that the Ministry consider sharing with supervising adults via on an electronic platform, or through public roadshows or workshops the techniques and methods to teach juvenile riders, with an emphasis on personal and public safety when using these devices. Sir, in Mandarin.
(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Next, I would like to comment on the amendment to address the issue of underage riding of personal mobility devices on public paths.
While I support those who are underage riding under supervision, these are nonetheless motorised devices and there are definitely risks and challenges associated with the control of these devices.
I would like to suggest that the Ministry consider sharing with supervising adults, through an electronic platform or public workshops, the techniques and methods to teach juvenile riders, with an emphasis on personal and public safety when using these devices.
(In English): Sir, I would like to conclude with my support for the Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Ms Anthea Ong.
Ms Anthea Ong (Nominated Member): Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak on both the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill and the Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill.
It is safe to say that our journey with \"active mobility\" has not been a smooth one for our policy-makers nor our people since it was first mooted in the Land Transport Master Plan 2013.
It was merely three years ago when bike-sharing was all the rage. In September 2018, a total of 100,000 bicycles were in circulation across the island from different bike-sharing schemes that also saw public outcry of irresponsible rider behaviours. This House had to pass the Parking Places (Amendment) Bill in March 2018 to legislate licensing, restrict fleet size and mandate geo-fencing. Now, we rarely see these shared bikes around even though we still have three operators remaining.
Then, came the next micro mobility revolution with e-scooters. Even more accessible than bicycles given that no special skills are required, their popularity grew due to low barrier to entry, but so did the public scrutiny and outrage with accidents and fire incidents ravaging homes from charging. Registration of e-scooters was the first patch fix in February 2018. Then, came another in August 2019 to limit speed and mandate helmets, and another in September to mandate theory tests, disallow handphones and third-party liability insurance before culminating in the overnight ban of PMDs from footpaths on 4 November 2019. Regulations continue to mount to respond to policy gaps that were uncovered with time.
Sir, my humble observation is that the policy intent to let market forces dictate adoption was well meaning in both cases, yet, safety first must not be left to chance. The faith on the readiness of importers, delivery companies, riders and pedestrians to be gracious and responsible participants may now seem misplaced. The gaps and patch fixes in reaction to challenges over such a short space of time has made both these policy endeavours seem clumsy at best, in design and execution.
So, first, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister what have we learned from the many potholes and patch fixes along this journey? What about our current models of policy formulation and implementation? Do we need to update and adapt because bike-sharing and PMDs will not be the only disruptions coming our way? Asking these questions is not questioning the intention and dedication of our public service at all. It is bridging an open dialogue between those who serve and the ones who are served.
Former Head of Civil Service, Peter Ong, once said that the best policy is only as good as its execution. He also said that there should be no artificial divide between policy formulation and policy implementation, that there should be ownership of policy design to accountability of \"how the policy is translated into outcomes that eventually reach our citizens\". He emphasised paying attention to details as a key element to improve ability to convert policy formulation into successful execution, even calling the \"culture of mastery over details\" as one that the Singapore civil service is well known for.
The announcement of the overnight ban of PMDs on footpaths in response to a Parliamentary Question sent shock waves through the PMD rider community, especially thousands of Singaporeans who are not merely recreational riders but subsist with PMDs. It appeared that this segment of our citizens may have been blatantly marginalised during policy formulation and implementation.
Previous policy shifts were progressively implemented but this overnight ban was seen by many as \"blunt and rigid\" and not well supported with an inter-Ministry response. A corrective action was finally taken on 8 November through the S$7 million e-scooter Trade-in-Grant scheme only after delivery riders gathered across Singapore to speak to their Members of Parliament.
Immediately following the ban on 4 November, Seline, a resident in a rental flat, often skipped her meals with only water so that her four children can go to bed with their stomachs full, because her husband, Sengchiy, who was with three different food delivery companies went from working every day to three days' worth of work after being told off by enforcement officers to get off footpaths. Efforts were made by ground-up groups to link them up to ComCare but there was a week's wait to process the application. Sengchiy finally switched to an e-bike towards end-November but is having trouble adjusting to riding on the road as he is afraid for his own safety. So, he switched to only late night hours. Seline's family is not the only one affected that I know of.
Mr Deputy Speaker, what happened to Seline and her family could and should have been prevented. Given that they are the stakeholder most negatively impacted, the grievances of many riders who depend on the PMDs for their work and subsistence could have been mitigated if they were directly consulted before the ban and not just through the delivery companies. While the ban may have proceeded regardless, the consultation would at least afford these PMD riders a platform to be heard and to offer alternative policy recommendations for the Government's consideration. Moreover, such consultation would also be a good opportunity for the Government to understand and listen to suggestions of different measures which can be put in place to mitigate the negative impact suffered by these PMD riders, so that such measures can be announced alongside the ban.
As we aspire towards \"Singapore Together\", the Government must consistently allow stakeholders to participate and be empowered. I would like to seek clarification from the Minister on the justification for introducing a ban with no consultation with the PMD riders and without advance notice or grace period to allow affected citizens to adjust and adapt.
However, I do acknowledge that the intent with the public consultation exercise and the Active Mobility Advisory Panel was well-meaning and certainly a step in the right direction in participatory policy- making. But the devil is in the details. I note that there was only a representative from the PMD user community on the Advisory Panel but it is not immediately clear to me if he or others represent the interests of riders who use PMDs for livelihoods.
It is also not clear to me, Mr Deputy Speaker, if we had considered the behavioural impact on safety relating as a result of the reward algorithms of delivery companies. If I am rewarded to make as many delivery trips as I can within the shortest possible time, then I would naturally be in a rush and possibly also tired all the time. Safety – mine and others – is almost certainly going to be compromised. So, we cannot exclude these companies' responsibility in our policy formulation and implementation.
This may be the level of details we have to pay more attention to and get better at as we strive to keep regulation with innovation, and inclusion.
With that, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to caution that we must not narrow our active mobility conversation to just that of riders against the rest of the society. Unfortunately, riders seem to be vilified with these two Bills, including underage riders. Let me elaborate.
In the Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill, clause 23 allows for licensees to share information to refuse hire to particular individuals if they park improperly after three times. Clause 25 empowers LTA to refuse further to hire vehicles to particular individuals. Clause 26 further empowers the Minister to issue safety directives without giving the affected person an opportunity to be heard.
While the Trusted Data Sharing Framework was introduced in June 2019 to enable the digital economy, I question the usage of data sharing between licensees to create a list of banned individuals. Such systematic targeting could lead to unconscious discrimination of certain groups within our society and will degrade our social compact. Such a policy could leave these individuals unprotected also by rogue licensees. Can the Minister please clarify the rationale for such a provision in clause 23 and what protection is given to the individuals?
Then, there is section 23A of the Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill that makes it punishable for an underage rider with fine and/or imprisonment riding a motorised PMD on shared paths. While the Bill does not explicitly define what constitutes as \"prescribed minimum riding age\" as that will be subject to prescribed regulations where there may be different minimum riding age for different classes or descriptions of PMD, I would like to ask the Minister if he still intends to prescribe the minimum riding age as 16 years of age. This was announced by the Ministry on 4 December 2019 in the press release accepting all recommendations from the Active Mobility Advisory Panel.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I am deeply disturbed by this and I hope Minister Desmond Lee, if he were here, is too. It was only in October last year that the amended Children and Young Persons Act (CYPA) defines a \"young person\" as below 18 years of age, to better protect our children and to be consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Under section 37 of the CYPA, there are clear restrictions on punishment of children and young persons and it clearly states that they should not be ordered to be imprisoned for any offence. Could the Minister please explain why we are passing new laws that go against existing laws, possibly constituting legislative conflict?
Mr Deputy Speaker, in the spirit of the CYPA, the welfare and best interests of the child or young person involved is of paramount consideration to me. I strongly believe in protecting our children and young persons, including their legal rights. Hence, I would like to ask the Minister to consider commensurate measures, other than imprisonment, for a child or young person found guilty of underage riding of PMD on shared paths. Should there not be warnings issued and reformative training actions considered before we impose such inappropriate punitive measures on children?
Last but not least, sections 47 and 50 of the Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill will give Active Mobility Enforcement Officers (AMEOs) the power to order the rider to produce his competency test certificate for examination and then seize the certificate and deliver the vehicle for an inspection. We know that as many as 6,000 warnings were issued in December 2019 and in the same month, an Auxiliary Police Officer (APO) sent an e-scooter rider flying at Bedok Reservoir Road. With these amendments, what measures will the Ministry put in place to better train our enforcement officers in approaching the situation on the ground to avoid tension and skirmishes?
Mr Deputy Speaker, the primary aim of active and shared mobility is a better living and safer environment for all citizens that supports a larger vision of pedestrianisation and a car-lite Singapore. We have a worthy and yet ambitious goal of having 90% of our peak hour trips completed by walking, biking, public transit and shared mobility by 2040.
However, these bumps on the road towards active mobility have unfortunately served to narrow our perspectives, putting much of our attention on multiple users with conflicting needs – pedestrians, cyclists and mobility riders – sharing our narrow footpaths, which is, if I may remind everyone, all of 1.5-metre wide. It really should not come as a surprise at all that tensions and accidents would result.
Albert Einstein said, \"We cannot solve the problem with the same way of thinking that created it in the first place\". So, instead of going at it as a battle against inconsiderate use of a limited space, how can we expand that physical space beyond the current 1.5 metres so that there is more room for more equitable and safer use by all users including our car drivers? Instead of slapping more regulations each time we wish to change behaviours, how can we invest the same, if not, more effort, to build an informed, gracious and adaptive citizenry in an increasingly disruptive environment which must include the most vulnerable amongst us.
Mr Alex Yam (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to place on record the appreciation of many residents, especially the vulnerable, young and elderly, who have had to live with whizzing devices going around them, bearing down at them at much speed before we instituted the ban. Minister Khaw made the promise to return safe footpaths to Singaporeans and he delivered them. I therefore welcome the amendments to the Active Mobility Act and the incorporation of recommendations by the Active Mobility Advisory panel (AMAP) led by Assoc Prof Faishal.
I had on numerous occasions in this House asked the Ministry to consider the licensing of users, compulsory safety training as well as third party liability Insurance. I am glad that the AMAP has made similar recommendations which the Ministry has adopted. However, there is one area that the AMAP’s proposal and mine differs and that has to do with insurance.
This Amendment Bill seeks to make it compulsory for third party liability insurance (TPLI) for businesses. I have however called for TPLI to be made compulsory for all users. This is a point I wish to continue to push for. While it is undeniable that the vast majority of users constitute those working in food delivery industry, the remaining number of personal users of PMDs and e-scooters is not small either. It would therefore be important to ensure that before the next spike in number of users occurs when shared paths are completed that comprehensive and affordable TPLI be made available and made compulsory for all users.
With regard to testing, I seek the Ministry’s clarification on which companies or agencies will be appointed to do the certification and when can certification begin and end.
On a related point, with the Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill controlling and licensing shared mobility services, how does the Ministry intend to police the users of the shared devices such as in ensuring that they have completed competency testing and how will the law apply to tourists?
Lastly, I wish to seek an update from the Ministry on two additional matters. First, how many summons have been issued since the ban took effect on 1 January and how many PMDs have since been impounded? Secondly, what is the estimated number of non-compliant PMDs still not surrendered to the authorities?
Let me illustrate the point by reading to you an extract from a fire report. A fire was reported involving a PMD battery inside a living room. Battery was brought out to the corridor by the owner. Fire was extinguished by the SCDF. Walls on the corridor sustained soot damage, no evacuation was required, paramedic assessed, no conveyors. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured in this instance and the fire was not extensive. However, this is not an old report. This was dated Sunday, 2 February at 10.30 pm. And this is after our ban on non-UL2272 batteries that took effect on 1 January 2020. While I hope this is a rare occurrence since the ban was put in place, we must never things to chance. Mr Deputy Speaker, notwithstanding my queries and suggestions, I support both Bills.
Assoc Prof Walter Theseira (Nominated Member): Mr Deputy Speaker, the question of how to regulate new forms of transport is not new. The first reference in British legislation to motorised road transport is the Locomotive Act 1861 which dealt with early steam-powered motor vehicles. Drivers of motor vehicles in the United Kingdom were only required to be registered and licensed with the Motor Car Act in 1903. That may not sound alarming until you find out that driver’s licence testing only became a requirement with the Road Traffic Act 1934. The Motor Car Act 1903 in fact allowed licences to be issued to any driver aged 17 and above, unless that driver was specifically disqualified due to having committed an offence. Existing licences, moreover, were grandfathered by the Road Traffic Act 1934.
The point is that we should not be embarrassed that it has taken Singapore a few years to improve on our regulation of new motorised personal mobility devices and services. It took the United Kingdom 73 years to deal with motor cars, or maybe 31 years if you are just counting from the Motor Car Act onwards. And, of course, it took cities decades to upgrade their road infrastructure from being suited for horses, to being safe for cars and people.
Sir, our objective in this Bill is to help develop a more sustainable and efficient means of urban travel for Singaporeans. The fact is that neither the public transport system nor private motor cars are ideal for many short distance trips in Singapore. The public transport system struggles to fill the first and last mile cost effectively, and is very expensive to operate for low-demand routes. Private motor cars cause congestion, and have high environmental costs. So, active mobility devices are potentially a better, more sustainable means of travel. I want to commend the Government for consistently articulating a farsighted vision of shared and active mobility. But moving to realise this vision involves costs and benefits to stakeholders such as pedestrians and existing road users. As we have seen, these concerns are expressed very vocally, and this Bill represents an effort to respond to their concerns.
There has been a strong and consistent narrative to our efforts to regulate active mobility over the years. We all believe that a culture of gracious and responsible usage of active mobility devices is necessary for such transport innovations to flourish and co-exist with pedestrians and motorists. Now, culture has value. There are vast differences between countries in road accident rates, despite similarities in vehicle technology, safety regulations, and driver licensing requirements. Part of the difference is due to motorist and pedestrian behaviour, which we can call culture. But there are also fundamental limitations to the role of culture in the transport system.
Culture does not replace a functioning system of liability insurance. Culture does not create spaces for people to pass safely on a footpath that was not designed for two-way travel on active mobility devices. Culture does not ensure that vehicles are adequately engineered for safety.
If we are not careful, highlighting the role of culture too much becomes a shortcut to magical policy thinking: the belief that we can achieve our policy objectives without considering difficult trade-offs and convincing the public to accept them.
The fundamental trade-off in transport safety regulation is between speed, safety and personal autonomy. The laws of physics dictate this. Faster modes of transport mean safety will be compromised. Improvements to both speed and safety can only be achieved with restrictions on personal autonomy: who is allowed to travel, and how they do it – regulating equipment, design, legally enforceable rules of behaviour. Culture does allow us some room to boost both speed and safety at once. But not that much room.
We were perhaps initially overly cautious about imposing rules on motorised active mobility devices. We did not want to compromise the very qualities that attracted users: low costs, simplicity, flexibility. After all, bicycles are only very lightly regulated, and have been so for over a hundred years. But the case of bicycles perhaps led us to underestimate the capacity of active mobility devices to cause harm and for that harm to be uncompensated.
Safety concerns about new transport again are not novel. The earliest motorised vehicles in the United Kingdom were subject to the Locomotive Act 1865. That Act required a man waving a red flag to walk before any motor vehicle – to protect pedestrians and horses.
Safety regulations for motorists obviously have evolved since then. Likewise, this Bill and our policy efforts have progressively tightened regulations on active mobility device to consider design and construction, speed limits, user behaviour, and now, a ban on footpath use.
In case an active mobility device does cause harm, a common law right of tort has always existed to provide redress, just as it does for any harm a pedestrian might cause another on a footpath. But we have come to realise that relying on this right alone is insufficient because liability is limited by wealth, and legal costs can be considerable. It is more efficient to mandate insurance coverage as a way of ensuring uncompensated harm is minimised. That is the principle adopted for motor vehicles for decades.
This Bill partially addresses the problem of liability with the new section 58A of the Active Mobility Act. We will now require shared mobility enterprises, employers and work platforms such as delivery companies to ensure that third party liability insurance is provided for their active mobility device users. But I would suggest going further.
Basic insurance could be required at the time of purchase or registration of the active mobility device. The duration of insurance could be commensurate with certification requirements. The insurance system does not need to be designed as a direct to consumer market. We could have insurers contract with LTA to provide coverage and then collect fees for insurance at registration. I looked at the debate on the Active Mobility Bill 2017. These suggestions were also made then. Unfortunately, the importance of those suggestions has been borne out by events.
Sir, many of our policy missteps on active mobility devices seem very clear in retrospect. But that is the way of hindsight. I think most would agree that we should not judge our active mobility policy on whether better decisions could have been made with hindsight, but on whether those decisions were the best possible with what was known, at that time.
I find it hard to say any of us could have done much better in managing active mobility device risks and the fallout on delivery workers, businesses and ordinary users, from the active mobility device footpath ban. This is because there is simply little publicly available data and research in the local context that would have allowed the decision maker at the time to foresee the challenges and risks arising from their policy choices. Therefore, the weakness is really in the research and knowledge infrastructure that needs to exist for us to make better decisions.
Consider the basic question motivating much of our regulatory effort. Are active mobility devices actually more dangerous? Pedestrians are certainly exposed to new risks. But what is the magnitude of these risks, relative to other types of travel? Some data was been released in a response to a Parliamentary Question I filed in November 2019 on accidents involving PMDs treated at our hospitals. The data shows that PMD accidents are more likely to be severe. However, the total number of PMD accidents in 2018 was only one-sixth that of bicycle accidents. So, are PMDs more or less dangerous than bicycles, which are much less controversial?
One serious limitation of the data is that we know little about actual travel using these devices. Without travel, we cannot calculate the real risks. For example, we may find that motorised active mobility devices are actually less risky, per km travelled, than motorcycles or bicycles. Risks may also differ by the type of path travelled. Is shifting delivery riders from PMDs to Power Assisted Bikes going to increase or reduce overall risks? We simply do not know and that is because the data required to estimate these effects does not exist publicly.
How much of a positive difference have active mobility devices made to our transport system and to people’s daily lives? Our debate has been driven by anecdotes. LTA has been running the Household Interview Travel Survey or HITS every four years. The last run was in 2016/2017 – when active mobility device usage was just beginning to ramp up. Should there have been a special run of HITS just to cover the rapid growth in active mobility devices? Is there a critical gap in our knowledge about active mobility device travel behaviour because we have not changed the way we run HITS, or adjusted the survey format in light of new transport trends?
Unfortunately, it is very difficult for outside researchers to contribute to this debate, because the practice is that the HITS data is kept confidential, including the survey questions themselves.
To what extent do active mobility devices actually help improve Singaporeans' ability to earn a living? We knew that the footpath ban would affect 7,000 food delivery riders who relied on PMDs. But did we understand that many riders had no alternative jobs or means of transport and were almost completely reliant on using PMDs on footpaths to earn a living? The scale of our misunderstanding was laid bare when hundreds of delivery riders turned up at hon Members’ Meet-the-People-Sessions to petition against the policy.
I commend the Government for addressing their concerns with the $7 million trade-in grant to help them transition to other types of transport. Of course, our high quality and accessible job support services are even more important. But why did this knowledge gap exist? The last Own Account Workers survey, that is publicly available, was conducted in 2017 – that was when the rise in food delivery services through PMDs was just starting. There was no indication then that thousands of Singaporeans would come to heavily depend on food delivery services to make a living. Perhaps, we believed too readily the story that such gig economy jobs are just harmless, flexible side jobs for Singaporeans.
Now, let us consider shared mobility enterprises which the Bill also addresses. The initial heady promise of dockless shared bicycles – low-cost, efficient, first/last mile option – has given way to the realisation that these bicycle-sharing systems create huge costs for the taxpayer through indiscriminate parking and for stakeholders who are left with unrecoverable deposits or business debts.
There was little regulation for months after bike-sharing systems started to appear in Singapore, perhaps because we wanted to reap the benefits without any cost to the taxpayer. After all, LTA had called a tender in 2016 to operate a Government-subsidised bike-sharing system in the Jurong Lake District. So, why pay for bike-sharing when dockless operators were giving it to us for free?
The problem, of course, is that the costs of dockless bike-sharing were hidden. But the answers were actually in front of us all along. If we were prepared to introduce a Government-subsidised bike-sharing system, we would have known that bicycle-sharing systems have great difficulty recovering operating costs from user fees alone. Cities sponsor such systems for the same reason that public transport is subsidised – to improve access and connectivity. This is why many market observers were stunned by the rapid growth of privately funded dockless bicycle-sharing systems. At the time, many fanciful stories were spun about how these bicycle-sharing systems would become profitable based on deposits, selling customer data and so on. Regardless, it did not matter to the operators that they lost money in the short run. And because it did not matter, it meant that market forces, which might otherwise have disciplined their expansion, were useless. Market forces could not constrain the dockless bike-sharing business practice of simply dumping bicycles on the street in order to compete.
While the Parking Places (Amendment) Act 2018 and other regulations have since then helped to constrain the reckless oversupply of shared bikes, the industry has also collapsed because the economics simply did not work. The former operators have in some cases left huge, unrecoverable debts to stakeholders, and there are also the costs of cleaning up defunct bikes, which have been borne by LTA, the Town Councils and private landowners.
With the start of licensing for shared mobility enterprises, we now have the regulatory levers to ensure that risks from unsustainable business models on society and stakeholders are minimised. Let me suggest that where licensing fees are concerned, we could allocate some part of the charges to a fund administered by LTA whose purpose is to assist with settlement to stakeholders. Fees and penalties could also be diverted to this fund instead of the practice under the present Bill, where they are channelled solely to the Consolidated Fund. The purpose is just to ensure that the costs of the business model are internalised.
Now, we may well find that no shared mobility enterprises will enter the market with our new regulations. We should not see that as a failure. It is actually quite unclear right now that shared mobility enterprises are even capable of being financially sustainable from user fees alone. Instead, if we believe that a shared mobility enterprise can contribute to our public transport system, we must be prepared to prove that it makes a meaningful contribution and subsidise it on the same basis as the rest of our public transport.
Sir, much of what we need to realise this vision of motorised personal mobility happens outside this Bill. I am confident that the Government is up to the task of meeting their targets of completing the cycling infrastructure network. But we have to be prepared for cases where what looks ideal on paper may not work in practice. After all, we have decades of experience designing for road traffic, but very little with designing for PMDs. So we should be prepared for the long haul.
It will also not be practical to build out a cycling path network that provides standardised access everywhere. For example, in our private housing estates, there is generally insufficient pedestrian space available to create a cycling path. Some HDB carpark areas also present similar challenges, as do outlying areas of Singapore.
The suggestion then is that a new classification of minor roads be designated, which could be called streets or local roads. The traffic rules could be different there. There would be a mandatory lower maximum speed limit for vehicles. There would be allowance for PMDs and active mobility on these minor roads. Road traffic slowing features, similar to those in Silver Zones, could be introduced as standard in such areas.
Finally, we should ask whether we can improve the way that policies have been developed.
I want to commend the Active Mobility Advisory Panel for putting in unstinting effort over the years. I know several members of the panel. They are experts and stakeholders with the best of intentions. Yet, our experience suggests we need to consider whether such advisory panels are able to draw on a sufficiently broad group of stakeholders, whether they have the resources and expertise to commission research or requisition relevant Government data, to make decisions that we can all agree are the best that could have been made at the time.
Let me suggest something further controversial. When forming such panels, we often have a practice of seeking consensus in the recommendations that are made. This may be implicit. I do not mean to suggest that the panel did so, and I know that there are lively debates behind the scenes. But consensus-driven thinking, unfortunately, tends to support magical policy thinking. Who wants to spoil the general belief that all things can be worked out without too many unpleasant trade-offs? If we are to realise our vision of an active mobility sector that is well integrated with existing stakeholders, we need less magical thinking, and more acknowledgement of the difficult trade-offs. Mr Deputy Speaker, I support the Bill.
Mr Ong Teng Koon (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Mr Deputy Speaker, it is timely that we amend and expand the Active Mobility Act. We need to reflect what we have learnt and experienced in the three years since the original Bill was passed. The proliferation of personal mobility devices has changed the way that we travel, work and play. But at the same time, this has also created new problems, most vividly illustrated by the many high-profile accidents that caused personal injuries and even death.
When the PMD ban was first announced, 30 PMD riders came to my Meet-the-People Sessions to ask for help. They were angry and they felt that their livelihood had been taken away from them without any warning. The sentiment was more intense than a mere transport policy change. There was that perception that their source of income has been killed and this had been enacted out of the blue. There was no consideration for the consequences on them.
PMD riders continued to turn up at my Meet-the-People Sessions to ask for help and this made me increasingly concerned. It soon dawned on me that such delivery riders are gig workers. They are not employees wearing uniforms of the company. They had no protection from the company. And from my interactions, I realised that the PMD controversy was just one instance of how vulnerable such gig workers are.
Many of them that I spoke to are doing gig work as their primary or full-time job. This is their only source of income. They included retrenched PMETs looking to earn money while searching for a new opportunity. There were ex-prisoners who have been marginalised due to their criminal records. Many of them are sole breadwinners supporting a large family.
The number of gig workers is rising. According to MOM’s Labour Force survey of 2018, there are around 210,000 gig workers or what the Ministry calls own-account workers. Of these, eight in 10, or 160,000 of them, did this as their primary job.
These are vulnerable Singaporeans who need more support than they are currently getting. They are one of many disposable contractors who have no bargaining power whatsoever against the companies that they work for.
In the UK, gig economy workers are euphemistically referred to as in \"precarious employment\". If gig arrangements are here to stay, we need to give gig workers more support and more protection against their companies.
California enacted a \"Gig Worker Law\" in September 2019. They saw that Uber's market power had substantially decreased drivers' earning potential. Similarly, our local drivers experienced the same thing during the period when Uber pulled out of the Singapore market and before Gojek came in.
Sir, I have heard increasing concerns about the entire gig economy in Singapore. Gig companies have built their businesses around avoiding the costs of employment. Unlike traditional companies, they do not provide leave days, health insurance and other statutory benefits. There has been a constant complaint from traditional companies that compete against them. More importantly, this has created unhappiness on the ground from marginalised workers who feel unprotected.
Left unchecked, I am afraid that this issue is going to grow and fester and become another potential flashpoint. Sensible policies will trigger outsized, emotional reactions. People feel that we are kicking them when they are down. Even sensible policies like the PMD ban that seek to protect pedestrians have triggered strong reactions. The need to manage such reactions would reduce our policy options and it might even dissuade us from doing the right thing.
Mr Deputy Speaker, this PMD matter could merely be the first warning sign in the wider context of the gig economy. There are 41,000 Private Hire Car Driver's Vocational Licensed (PDVL) drivers, 7,000 PMD deliverymen and many more non-PMD deliverymen. This suggests around 150,000 non-PMD gig workers who face different challenges and pressures. Hence, future issues could affect even more Singaporean gig workers. Many other countries are doing what they can to protect their gig workers, and we need to do the same.
I believe that a solution would be to ensure that gig companies should bear their fair share of responsibility to protect their workers. Other countries have introduced new legislation, but I would argue that this can be achieved under our existing legislative framework in Singapore.
I was heartened to find the new section 58A of the Act mandating third-party insurance. Businesses now need to ensure that the riders and drivers have third party insurance before they are employed or engaged in outwork arrangements. This is definitely a step in the right direction but it is almost certainly not enough.
I propose we go a few steps further and classify gig workers as employees instead of contractors under the Employment Act. Those who work less than 35 hours a week should be part-time workers, and those who work more than 35 hours a week should be full-time workers. This will protect workers by ensuring that they are provided with statutory benefits, including annual leave, sick leave, overtime pay, rest days and are paid CPF contributions, giving them the ability to save for housing, for retirement, and for medical expenses. Why should gig workers be excluded from such benefits?
We know that it is possible that this move will encounter pushback from the gig companies. But our Government needs to balance creating economic growth versus safeguarding worker’s welfare. Innovation is important but it should not be at the cost of workers' welfare. In fact, true innovation should benefit all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
I feel strongly that such a move would help to mitigate gig workers' livelihood concerns and establish us as a caring and compassionate Government. Additionally, we can level the playing field for other companies who are already subjected to the Employment Act.
Implementation will need to be managed carefully. The requirements can be phased in over time. Another option is for gig workers to have the choice to opt in and out of the Employment Act depending on their specific situations.
I believe that this would be a pro-people, pro-worker and pro-business message to help create the policy space we need to continue to pursue the right policies. Mr Deputy Speaker, I support the Bill.
Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Sir, I stand in support of the two Bills. The past five years have proven a challenge in our nation’s march towards active mobility. I am happy to say these Bills reflect some lessons we have learned along the way.
In response to dangerous riding, we are banning PMDs from footpaths, introducing competency tests and mandating adult supervision of underage users. In response to careless parking, we are requiring bicycle, PMD and PMA providers to obtain a license and follow standards. These measures together form a regulatory framework that places a premium on safety and spreads the responsibility among users and providers.
That said, I would like to seek clarifications on both Bills and discuss the need to go further in our pursuit of active mobility. I will first discuss my three clarifications on the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill.
My first clarification is about information sharing between licensees. Section 23 allows two licensees to enter into an information sharing agreement. Specifically, it allows them to do so for two purposes: (a) to turn away bad parkers from hiring their vehicles; and (b) to comply with directives from LTA. The Bill’s explanatory statement states that such agreements are authorised \"despite\" other laws, such as the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA).
My concern is that section 23 does not contain clear measures to deter organisations from over-sharing private user data. For instance, is NRIC number an appropriate data point to share about a bad parker? How about passport numbers, photograph, phone numbers, email addresses, home addresses, or GPS locations?
The modern business collects huge amounts of private data on its customers and this data can be worth huge amounts of money. It is possible that some organisations will seek to acquire private users' information under the pretense of identifying bad parkers.
It would be helpful if the Minister could clarify: (a) what types of information are allowed to be shared under section 23; (b) how would the Ministry ascertain whether an information transfer complies with privacy standards; (c) what regulation and penalties will prevent organisations from using section 23 as a possible loophole for the PDPA; (d) finally, will section 23 apply to class licensees. Licensees and class licensees are mentioned in the same breath in most of the Act. For some reason, class licensees are not mentioned at all in this particular section.
My second clarification is on deposits. Section 13(2i) empowers LTA to collect a security deposit from licensees for the sole purpose of regulatory compliance. This means that customers who paid a deposit to shared mobility companies cannot hope to be repaid from the security deposits. Back in early 2019, Senior Minister of State Lam Pin Min reiterated this point and suggested that disgruntled customers should sue to get their money back. It does not seem realistic to ask hundreds or thousands of customers to go to court to get back what might be $50 or $100 sum.
Can the Ministry share whether its stance has changed? Why not allow the security deposits to be used to repay customers? What is the principle keeping us from doing so? After all, I imagine any bike-sharing operators today will have trouble persuading customers to fork up deposits. Once burned, twice shy. Legislation that provides customers with some assurance might then be a win-win for consumers and businesses.
My third clarification is on safety directives. Section 26 enables the Minister to issue a safety directive to prevent death, serious injury, or serious property damage arising from the provision of any shared mobility service. Section 26(2) specifies that these directives cannot be in force for longer than six months to start with and the Minister can only renew it once for no longer than six months. In essence, a directive is capped at 12 months.
Can the Ministry clarify what happens at the end of the 12 months if the Ministry remains concerned about the subject of the directive? Under this law, is the Minister empowered to issue a second directive? If that is the case, what end does it serve to cap the length and frequency of the renewal? Given that these directives are used only in cases of serious concern, it would be helpful to clarify what we can expect that they do get used.
I will now discuss my two clarifications for the Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill. My first clarification is on the private right of civil action.
The Active Mobility Act imposes obligations on various persons. For instance, the current section 21 imposes obligations on riders to travel below their path's maximum speed. The new section 23C imposes duties on adult supervisors for underage riding. Contravention of such sections are offences punishable by fines or imprisonment. However, it is not clear whether the Ministry intends for breaches of duties under the Active Mobility Act to give rise to a private right of action. In other words, it is not clear whether an individual injured in an accident involving a mobility device can sue another individual in tort for breach of their statutory duties under the Active Mobility Act. Can the Ministry clarify whether its intention is to confer private right of civil action for the statutory duties imposed under this Act?
My second clarification is on the punishment for underage riding. The new section 23A(2) provides imprisonment as a punishment option for underage riding of a motorised PMD on a shared path. The typical sentencing consideration for young offenders is rehabilitation. Imprisonment will taint a young person's record and seems like an unduly harsh punishment for underage riding of a PMD. Can the Minister clarify the reasons for allowing imprisonment of an underage rider? Can the Minister also clarify in what situations will we call for imprisonment for an underage rider?
On a similar note, the new section 23B describes conditions in which a person is deemed to have facilitated underage riding of motorised PMDs. One condition is that the person had been \"reckless\" as to whether their conduct would help an underage individual ride the PMD. What does \"reckless\" mean here? Would it be reckless to trust a child to safeguard an unlocked e-scooter? This is not an edge case. After all, the shared paths on which many young people spend their time are now the only place where PMDs can be ridden. As we mandate good behaviours by PMD owners, we must also help them understand how to comply with the law. To this end, it would be helpful if the Minister could describe scenarios or outline standards that exemplify \"reckless\" conduct.
Finally, I would like to talk more broadly about our Government’s strategy towards active mobility. The two Bills today deal, for the most part, with problems that have already come and gone. Most of it is directed at PMDs and bike-sharing services, both of which are barely visible in Singapore anymore.
Certainly, if these forms of mobility see a comeback, we will have built a robust regulatory framework for them. But our policy towards active mobility should be more proactive and less reactive. I am heartened by the recent announcement that we will be accelerating our plans to triple the length of our cycling network. But as we spend time building the bike lanes, I hope we can start thinking about the next projects.
First, how can we integrate the use of bicycles with our public transit network? Unlike in many other major cities, you cannot bring a regular bicycle onto the bus or MRT. Even in countries with sophisticated biking infrastructure, there are many who will spend part of their commute on public transportation. We must find ways to integrate our new biking infrastructure with our world-class public transportation network.
Second, how can we make bike parking more secured as we discussed in the earlier Question Time? Many HDB flats have limited space and cyclists need somewhere secure to park overnight. I am happy that LTA is focusing on building more bike-parking facilities. But how many of these spaces are unmonitored and unlocked? Most experienced cyclists will tell you to never park your bicycle outside overnight, even at supposedly secure spots like MRT stations.
What cyclists need are not over-engineered, far-flung parking spaces like SecureMyBike, the automated underground system that recently closed down. What they need are affordable and accessible low-tech bicycle lockers and bicycle parking stations, ideally mapped on the MyTransport.SG app for convenience. Many cities around the world already have much success with these options.
Third and lastly, how can we go beyond incremental additions to our cycling network? Even with LTA's new expansion plans, our cycling networks are currently a patchwork of local connectivity. But if we want cycling to become a true mode of transportation, we have to build ambitious infrastructure such as bicycle freeways, like the North-South Corridor. Will LTA be building more of these?
Sir, in conclusion, I am happy to express my support for a Bill that creates a robust regulatory framework for active mobility in Singapore. My hope is that this leads the way to more ambitious plans, as we not only build in recollection of past learnings but also in anticipation of future opportunities. Sir, notwithstanding my clarifications, I stand in support of the Bill.
Mr Darryl David (Ang Mo Kio): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, when Personal Mobility Devices (PMDs) were first introduced in Singapore, they were heralded as a solution to close the first and last mile connectivity gap by enabling commuters to travel from their homes to key transportation hubs. They were also seen as a viable solution to help Singapore transit to a car-lite society by providing commuters with an efficient means of travelling short-to-medium distances with relative ease. The adoption of PMDs was rapid – by the end of 2019, it was estimated that there were about 100,000 PMDs in Singapore. This, in addition to other types of mobility devices like electric-bikes, hoverboards and electric unicycles.
As shared by MOT in a Parliament sitting in November 2019, there were almost 300 PMD-related accidents in 2018 and the number of accidents for 2019 is estimated to be in the similar range, if not higher. There were also a number of fatalities as well. The amendments to the Active Mobility Bill are thus timely, not so much to stop the use of these devices, but to ensure that our footpaths are once again safe for the significant majority of the population.
One of the amendments to the Active Mobility Bill is to prohibit the use of mobile communications devices while operating PMDs. While comprehensive statistics on the relationship between using mobile devices when operating a PMD and the likelihood of accidents might not be fully available, we can take a leaf out from the rationale of banning the use of mobile phones while driving a car.
I thus strongly support banning the usage of mobile communications devices while operating a PMD as I believe this will minimise distractions for riders, and increase their level of attention on the road so that they are not a hazard to others and to themselves.
On the topic of the minimum age of riders and competency tests, the amendments in the bill have made some new provisions pertaining to minimum riding and supervising age. The concept of having a minimum age is important as maturity and responsibility of PMD usage is generally correlated to the riders' age. However, the devil is in the implementation details.
For example, while clause 23A 5(a) and 5(b) stipulate that regulations on different minimum ages could be made for different classes or description of PMDs, how would the different minimum age for the different types of PMDs be determined? Does this imply that some PMDs are deemed to be more \"dangerous\" than others and would therefore require a higher minimum age? Also, if there are different minimum ages for different PMDs, would the authorities not face a challenge in implementing this on the ground as there could be various permutations of ages and device type that the regulators and enforcement officers have to deal with?
While the competency theory test will certainly enhance the riders' awareness of road safety, the challenge again is in ensuring that all riders go through the test. The new competency test would be relatively easy to enforce for new riders and those who wish to purchase PMDs as it could be stipulated that they produce their competency certificate to PMD retailers before they are allowed to purchase a PMD. However, the same could not be said of existing owners of PMDs or those who co-share a PMD with their family members and friends.
How would the authorities ensure that all PMDs riders are certified to be competent before they ride? Would PMD riders be required to carry with them their competency certificate at all times when they ride just as motorists are required to have their driving licenses with them while they are driving?
I have some other areas of concerns, Mr Deputy Speaker. The amendments to the Active Mobility Bill stipulate that the ban of PMDs on footpaths will be expanded to cover all forms of devices, including hoverboards and electric unicycles, except for motorised wheelchairs which are still allowed on footpaths. I have come across several residents who face mobility challenges, but they are not yet at a stage where they might require a motorised wheelchair specifically.
Would the authorities consider allowing such residents to use PMDs on footpaths if they can get themselves medically certified that they need PMDs to assist in their mobility? In short, are we prepared to allow them to use different forms of motorised devices, other than motorised wheelchairs, to assist them in their daily commutes and movements?
Since the announcement of the ban of PMDs on footpaths in November 2019, our footpaths have indeed become much safer and many food delivery riders who used to ride PMDs have switched to other forms of mobility devices, such as e-bikes. That said, there remain some deviant and recalcitrant riders who continue to ride their PMDs on footpaths in a dangerous manner – I have personally witnessed a few such cases myself. How would the Government propose to curtail such deviant riding and can the Government share any information perhaps, on the number of riders that have been taken to task since the footpath ban came into effect in November 2019?
A related issue would be how the Government intends to equip our enforcement officers with the right training to handle errant riders without compromising their own personal safety? This was referenced earlier by Er Dr Lee Bee Wah and I am sure that many of us are familiar with the video of an enforcement officer kicking a speeding PMD rider off his device when the rider refused to stop.
We should not condone the use of force by enforcement officers in their course of performing their duty, but I feel that there should be proper protocols in place for dealing with errant speeding PMD riders. Imagine if the rider in the video was not stopped and subsequently crashed into someone and hurt them badly or worse, even kill them. Would the enforcement officer have then been blamed somehow or held responsible for allowing this to happen because he was not trained to stop the errant speeding rider?
While these amendments will help address some immediate problems, they will not guarantee that there are no more accidents as a result of errant PMD riding. I thus hope that our PMD riders, our PMD users will also play their part by riding in a socially-responsible manner as we progress towards our goal of a car-lite community that is safe for everyone – both PMD users and pedestrians. With that, I end my speech in support of the Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Senior Minister of State Dr Janil.
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank all the Members for their suggestions and their support for the Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill and the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill. There were many issues raised, reflecting the wide spectrum of views on this topic. I will make a few general points before I start to answer the Members' questions.
First is that, despite all of the Members who spoke, supporting the Bill, some of their views were entirely contradictory. There were Members asking for increased enforcement, increased regulations and an even tighter regime than we are proposing. And there were some Members suggesting that we are going too far.
Similarly, around the issue of children, access to different devices and so forth. That there are contradictory views from Members reflects the difficulty in this space. Nevertheless, all the Members supported the need for the regulatory regime that we are proposing, recognising that this approach will provide a framework for the riders, the device operators, the businesses and has a coherent approach to making our paths as safe as possible for pedestrians as well as these riders.
The second general point is around walking, and I make reference to Prof Lim Sun Sun's speech as well as some of the others, such as Assoc Prof Walter Theseira. While we may be interested in the numbers of PMD riders, and Members have asked questions about how many there are and how many accidents and how many are compliant and so forth, we must remember that there are far, far more Singaporeans who are using that space to walk. And actually, that is the single, biggest way in which people are closing the first mile and last mile gap through walking.
Walking enables them to access all the amenities of the town as well as our public transport infrastructure.
So, while we may or may not get every part of this regulatory approach exactly right today – and we have some flexibility to adjust. The key thing that we want to do is ensure safety of this space for all users and the base of people walking in this space which is far, far, larger. But the ability of one PMD rider who is errant, behaving poorly in this space, affects a very large number of people walking along that same path.
The third general point I want to make – there were several comments relating to a cultural change or internalising a behavioural change. I agree and I support those sentiments. And indeed, if we do have a culture of looking out for each other, regardless of whatever is our modality of transportation, of ensuring that we have some public spiritedness about our shared spaces, indeed, it will be a lot safer for everybody and a lot more pleasant. This is very, very difficult to do and it takes a lot of time and we may not always reach the end of the journey very easily.
Assoc Prof Walter Theseira talked about driving. We have had a very strict regulatory regime for cars here in Singapore for many years. I think we would all agree that we have not reached the end of the road in establishing the kind of driving culture that we desire.
The fourth point, generally, is the issue of cycling infrastructure. There were several questions about the infrastructure plans that we have, the design, the approach that we are going to take. These will be addressed in our Committee of Supply debate and we will have a fairly detailed discussion about it. I do not propose to go into the details today.
If I could now move on to the specific points and questions raised by the Members.
Mr Ang Hin Kee and Mr Ong Teng Koon brought up some issues to do with the companies' responsibilities. We do agree that companies which engage riders of active mobility devices in the course of work have a social responsibility to ensure path safety both for their riders as well as the general public. And that they must put in place the right incentive structures to encourage safe riding, as has been pointed out by a number of people. These include sufficient time to complete their deliveries and a structure that dissuades speeding or the breaking of rules. Companies should also ensure their riders use devices that comply with our active mobility regulations.
We will require all companies who employ or contract with active mobility device riders to ensure that their riders are covered by third party liability insurance for bodily injury and death. This will protect victims in the event of accidents. We strongly encourage companies to help their riders obtain personal accident insurance coverage. Some, as has been pointed out, already do so and we hope our tripartite partners will work with us to encourage others to follow suit.
The issue of the \"gig economy\" and self-employed persons is significant and it is something that will cut across a number of industries and a number of domains. It is also complex and it lies, unfortunately, well outside the scope of these Bills. I do sympathise with Mr Ong Teng Koon's suggestions and the way in which he has highlighted the difficulties and challenges of this space. And indeed, it does affect a number of workers which we interface with from the transport sector. But there are many other \"gig economy\" and self-employed persons as well. We do need to look at this. And I will convey his suggestions to MOM who oversees the Employment Act. But the way in which we address this will need to be based upon our tripartite partnership. We will leverage upon this going forward and we, in the transport family, will play our part.
Ms Anthea Ong, Assoc Prof Walter Theseira and Mr Louis Ng have asked about information sharing and specifically, the issues around section 23 of the Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill. This enables information sharing between the licensed device-sharing operators to effectively impose a collective ban on individuals who persistently park active mobility devices improperly. There are measures in place to protect individual data and privacy, and the information sharing must be limited to the extent necessary to implement this ban. For all other usage of data that, it is not for the purposes of this ban, the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) will continue to apply in full force to all the operators and they are required to comply with existing data protection and privacy standards. LTA will assess the robustness of their systems and processes in place as part of the licence evaluation process.
There were some questions from Mr Louis Ng and Ms Anthea Ong about the issuance of safety directives by the Minister for Transport. This provision is already in place today. It is intended for exceptional circumstances to allow us to tackle urgent issues of safety expeditiously. But once it is clear what the solution is, we cannot just carry on renewing the safety directives repeatedly. We will address the problem through legislative amendments. So, that is precisely what we are doing today. For example, today, there is a safety directive in place to disallow the usage of e-scooters for licensed device-sharing operators. To be clear, these safety directives are for operators not individual hires.
Mr Louis Ng asked about the recourse for consumers who have paid deposits to shared mobility device companies. Currently, none of the licensed device-sharing operators collect user deposits. This may change. The Shared Mobility Enterprises Bill therefore proposes to give LTA the power to prohibit licensees from collecting user deposits, if the need arises. We shall watch and see how this space develops.
Mr Alex Yam asked about how we would police these shared user device businesses for compliance. There are a number of ways.
The first is that the regular ground enforcement of course will pick up issues of non-compliance when the customers of these businesses if they transgress. Operators, as part of their licensing process, will be required to demonstrate that they have processes in place to ensure that the users that they hired out their vehicles to, for example, have the appropriate test certificate, and this will include tourists. The operational details of how these tests will be administered both to people who have devices and new device owners and tourists, will need to be worked out. We will make some announcements in due course. But, importantly, we will have to work with the operators and businesses to make sure that this is something effective. But we intend for this to cover all riders.
If I could move to the personal mobility aids that Mr Darryl David, in particular, brought up. The ban of motorised PMDs on footpaths, let me state once again, does not apply to personal mobility aids. Such PMAs do not only include motorised wheelchairs. There are also other types of devices such as mobility scooters and so forth. So, to the Member's specific question, if there are individuals with walking difficulties, there are other devices which perhaps, for want of a better word, are not as \"medicalised\" as a motorised wheelchair that may be more suitable for someone who perhaps is not such a serious condition. And it will be more appropriate for them to use such a device, rather than to have a very, very different process where the individuals then requires a waiver for something like an e-scooter. And that is the way that we will try to help these individuals.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked several questions about power-assisted bicycles (PABs). The aim is to ensure that there are different options available and that device users can choose the best mode of transport based on their needs. So, the motorised PMD users can continue to ride on cycling paths or can switch to bicycles if they want to ride on footpaths. For this process to work, there has to be some ability for individual users to address their own level of comfort, their need for speed, as it were, and how they will make the choice between a power-assisted bicycle, a bicycle or a PMD. But whatever it is, we have to have a robust framework to ensure safety.
On the roads, the PABs will be regulated and already currently are regulated by LTA and Traffic Police (TP). We do not allow underage riding on PABs. There is no opportunity for the similar type of adult supervision of an underage rider. PABs riders already have to be 16 years of age or above. But going forward, PAB riders will need to pass a theory test covering on-road regulations and the Highway Code and be licensed by TP. And when riding on roads, all PAB riders must comply with road traffic regulations, such as travelling in the direction of traffic, wearing helmets and riding safely.
We also regulate the PAB devices. In the same way, we have a framework for the devices, the riders as well as businesses. All PABs must be registered and only the LTA-approved models are allowed to be used in Singapore. The restrictions on these devices prevent sudden accelerations and increases the predictability of a PAB rider to other road motorists. They also have to comply with the device safety standard European Commission EN15194 for electrical and fire safety. We will continue to monitor the use of PABs and take further steps, if necessary.
I would point out one issue brought up by Mr Alex Yam. The sale of non-UL2272 PMDs was actually stopped in July 2019. And the use of non-UL2272 devices will be stopped in July 2020. So, there will be a one-year period for that turnover.
If I may now move to the issue of insurance. This was brought up by Er Dr Lee Bee Wah, Mr Alex Yam, Ms Joan Pereira and Mr Louis Ng. Ideally, yes, all users should have some form of insurance, covering the rider himself and any victim. There is a practical problem, however – there are few active mobility-related insurance products available today. AMAP had consulted widely on this issue and they have recommended that Government take a staged approach, starting first with imposing insurance on businesses before extending it to individuals. We do want to progress in this direction, provide a critical mass of demand and allow the insurance industry to develop more affordable and comprehensive products. We will continue to work with AMAP and the insurance industry. But in the meantime, we strongly encourage all active mobility device riders to purchase such insurance to protect themselves from claims. Assoc Prof Walter Theseira has several suggestions which we will study in some detail and I think they are very reasonable ones indeed.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked about the balance between the business and employer. Potentially, it could be either, but the business would need to ensure that the employee or the rider, if the business is hiring the device out, has evidence of this third party liability insurance if they are not themselves providing it.
Mr Louis Ng asked about the causes of action. We have no intention to introduce new causes of action beyond what is available today. Today, victims of accidents on public paths can seek compensation from the rider for injury and losses suffered through civil proceedings, settlements and other private arrangements.
Mr Yam has asked about non-compliant PMDs. Currently, there are 54,000 non-UL2272 certified registered e-scooters. Fire safety issues remain a concern. I reiterate that from 1 July 2020, these non-UL2272 certified devices will not be allowed to be used on all paths. I encourage all owners of a non-UL2272 certified and a non-registered PMD to dispose of that PMD before the end of March 2020. Currently, that disposal does not cost the rider or the owner anything. That is almost certainly going to change and incur some fee after the end of March. After 1 April 2020, there will also be a mandatory inspection regime for e-scooters to verify compliance.
Mr Darryl David, Mr Alex Yam and Er Dr Lee Bee Wah asked about the testing regime. Firstly, it will apply to all users. How we will operationalise this theory test and enforcement, we are currently working out these operational details and we will release more information once we have worked this through with the operators.
We will continue to ramp up enforcement efforts to ensure compliance to our rules. LTA has caught more than 130 e-scooter riders since 1 January 2020 for violating the footpath ban. We will continue this approach to deter errant riding and ensure safety.
There have been suggestions for our enforcement officers. Indeed, we will continue to train them and equip them to handle different scenarios through more robust rules of engagement and better training. This includes strategies to tackle cases such as evasive riders. I am sure the Members appreciate that I am not going through the specifics of our enforcement strategy and tactics because we do wish them to be as effective as possible. But it does include the further use of technology, as suggested, including for example mobile CCTVs.
Er Dr Lee has suggested that we have an upper age limit for seniors. There are no current plans for that. For people who have difficulty walking, we have made provisions for personal mobility aids to be used. We would encourage those seniors who have difficulty with their mobility and need assistance and who may have the sort of healthcare problems that Er Dr Lee had brought up, to use a personal mobility aid which are safer and more stable, and not a PMD.
But if I may move to underage riding, the minimum riding age would be introduced for e-scooters as a subset of motorised PMDs first. Mr Darryl David asked about the powers under section 23A allowing the prescription of different minimum ages for different classes of PMDs. This is really to give us some flexibility because we cannot anticipate the new types of devices that may arise in the future. It allows us at the time to put in the appropriate regulations where necessary. At this point in time, it is 16 years and only apply to e-scooters. This is something that has been called for repeatedly, by many Singaporeans and AMAP as well, and we have fixed it at 16.
Many families enjoy outings using these devices together and we want to allow for this. Hence, the idea of a supervising adult for the underage rider.
But the supervising adult must behave responsibly. We do not want to be overly prescriptive about what the supervising adult must do. Sensible measures include staying close to the young rider, maintaining a proper line of sight to the rider, knowing and educating the rider of the appropriate rules and regulations, and taking appropriate measures to stop the rider if they are committing an offence or may get into an accident. We are developing guidelines to educate these supervising adults on how to properly supervise the underage rider.
Ms Anthea Ong and Mr Louis Ng asked about the penalties for the underage rider. If I can reiterate what I said in my opening speech – these penalties only provide the limit of the possible sentence. The Courts retain the discretion to consider the circumstances of the case, including the age of the individual and the laws on sentencing of young offenders found in the Children and Young Persons Act, in deciding the actual punishment to mete out.
Regarding the question from Mr Louis Ng about section 23B of the Active Mobility Bill which introduces an offence of inviting, allowing or facilitating underage riding of devices, the principle is to ensure that device owners or device-sharing operators take responsibility for the use of their devices, including ensuring that the devices are not used by an underage individual. This could include putting in place measures to check the age of customers hiring the devices or individuals who are borrowing the device or locking the device so that it is only available for one's own use. Where individuals are concerned, they should make sure that the device is not readily accessed by underage individuals.
Mr Dennis Tan had asked about an issue associated with underage riding and the liability of the rider versus the supervisor. If an underage rider commits an offence, it will not fall on the supervisor to be liable for that offence, for example, speeding or reckless riding. But the supervisor can be held responsible for improper supervision if he or she did not take reasonable and practical measures to ensure that the underage rider would not commit such offences.
As Members have noted, there have been many calls to improve public path safety as well as fire safety arising from use of these devices. We have taken these concerns very seriously and which is why my colleague Senior Minister of State Lam Pin Min delivered the Statement on PMDs in August to address these concerns and established that we would have to tighten our regime if the situation did not improve. And the situation did not improve over a number of months. Accidents continue to rise in number and severity. Hence, we had to fundamentally review how we envisioned active mobility devices co-existing safely with other road and path users. So, we made the difficult decision to ban the e-scooters from the footpaths. We had to move decisively in order to prevent more deaths and more accidents.
We were mindful of the impact the move would have on e-scooter users, especially for those who had come to rely on it for their livelihoods. That was why we had provided a two-month advisory period – it is not an overnight ban – a two-month advisory period and worked closely with food delivery companies, the Labour Movement and other partners to support food delivery riders in the transition.
This strong tripartite collaboration enabled us to launch a Transition Assistance Package – a comprehensive approach to help these food delivery riders. We were able to do four days after announcing the ban. We are heartened that the three food delivery companies stepped up to co-fund with Government the e-scooter Trade-in Grant to help the riders transition to other devices. And we empathise with the affected riders. We received feedback that many of them have found the package of measures reassuring and useful. We have approved to-date more than 3,700 applications for the e-scooter Trade-in Grant and about one-third of the riders have already successfully switched to an alternative device, with the rest expected to do so in the next couple of months.
I would like to express appreciation for NTUC’s proactive efforts to develop the Delivery Rider Kit for food delivery riders, a five-day training programme to upskill the riders, helping them develop a greater confidence in switching to power-assisted bicycles on the road and complementing the Government’s efforts in promoting safe riding behaviour. Mr Ang Hin Kee had some suggestions to build on NTUC’s existing training modules when LTA implements the mandatory theory test requirements. These are good suggestions and we will leverage our good relationship with the NTUC to see how we can best operationalise this.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to unequivocally state that active mobility remains an important component of our long-term vision for the land transport landscape. To achieve this, we need the right infrastructure and the right regulatory approach.
The ideal for infrastructure is segregation – keeping different groups of users – footpaths for pedestrians and slow-moving devices like bicycles and PMAs; roads for motor vehicles; and cycling paths for devices of intermediate speeds, such as motorised PMDs and PABs – all separate. Today, we have an extensive network of footpaths and roads. We had previously announced that we will extend the cycling path network from 440 km to 750 km by 2025 and 1,300 km by 2030. We will elaborate on these plans at the Committee of Supply debate next month.
Going forward, we will continue to strike a delicate balance in ensuring Singaporeans can reap the benefits of active mobility, ensuring public safety and enabling business innovation. Where possible, we will try our best to anticipate the changes and put in place the necessary frameworks ahead of time. But it is not possible to predict all the ways that users, retailers and device operators will change their behaviour or find ways to circumvent our regulations. Rather than saying no to all innovations because of this, we want to continue to facilitate in a measured manner where there are clear benefits. And where we cannot anticipate, we will consult deeply, study the matter and move decisively to address the issues and challenges as they occur.
We will continue to consult widely and engage regularly, to ensure that our policies remain relevant to Singapore, Singaporeans and their aspirations – not just on active mobility, but in general.
I would finally like to express my appreciation for the many stakeholders who have made these Bills possible – AMAP members, the tripartite partners, the industry stakeholders, members of the public who provided views and suggestions as part of the AMAP consultation process, and of course Members of the House for their support of the Bill. Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to move.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Er Dr Lee Bee Wah.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah: Yes, Sir, I have two supplementary questions. I think Senior Minister of State did not address the topic on drunk riding. That is one question. The second question: for those cyclists that are using the road, when they cycle against the traffic, is it an offence? If yes, what are the measures to be taken? I think more education need to be carried out. I think many of them are not aware that actually it is an offence. And I see that quite often in, for example, Serangoon Garden where there are a lot of one-way road and then I see cyclists in the opposite direction. It can be quite dangerous.
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Indeed, the issues that Er Dr Lee Bee Wah brought up are today covered under the Road Traffic Act. One should not ride against traffic and one must remain in control of one's vehicle and ride, drive or progress in a safe and orderly manner. It is easier said than done and we need a combination of enforcement and education, as she has pointed out.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Ms Anthea Ong.
Ms Anthea Ong: Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Senior Minister of State, can I just check with you on what you shared. I appreciate your clarification that the Courts would obviously make the decision and make reference to CYPA. But it still does not discount the fact that the children will first be charged. And I just want to bring to attention that many of the children in low-income families, including in rental flat communities, they use PMDs as a primary form of their transport. For us to have to actually put them through that without considering at least some form of warning? I am not saying they should not be penalised if they are actually errant. I am saying that getting them charged and then getting them directly to the Courts really seem aggressive, particularly for underage riders. So, will Senior Minister of State share if you will consider at least some warnings or some reformative training before we get to exercise, charging them in the Courts.
Dr Janil Puthucheary: I take it that Ms Ong has no objection for there to be a minimum age of riding.
Ms Anthea Ong: For riders to be at least 16?
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Yes. I am trying to understand whether she is objecting to the fact that there should be a minimum age of riding or does she agree that there should be a minimum age.
Ms Anthea Ong: No, I am not disputing there should be a minimum age. I am saying that it is still very aggressive. Because 16 is seen, in CYPA, as still a child.
Dr Janil Puthucheary: I understand. So, I just want to clarify that she does support that there is a minimum age for the riders and, hence, someone who is below that age has committed an offence or transgression at the very least. So, I think how the officers deal with that, we need to give them the operational leeway to deal with the circumstances that are in front of them. I think if you have someone who deliberately, maliciously and recklessly drove at a high speed a modified PMD, you would have to consider that quite differently from, perhaps, somebody who is on a family outing but who has then strayed away from their parent.
Indeed, the two scenarios are different. I think the officer picking up the transgression needs to be able to understand that they have to deal with these two scenarios differently, as do the agencies and subsequently the Courts. I think to guarantee that every case is dealt with exactly the same way would be an inappropriate commitment at this point in time.
Ms Anthea Ong: Can I then ask what are we planning to do in terms of getting these new laws and regulations to our vulnerable communities and all the children to make sure that they understand this is going to be in place?
Dr Janil Puthucheary: I think we have to be quite clear about the perspective here. Ms Ong has brought up the vulnerable, low-income many, many times. The most important way for all our communities, including the vulnerable and low-income to get around, is by walking and using public transport, and they close the last mile gap, not through a PMD, but through many other different means.
We have to have our priority in ensuring the safety of that space. I think we will progress as best we can so that those who do rely on this for their livelihood can be supported in some way. And we will make sure that all Singaporeans are well educated about the provisions of this Bill and the enforcement of its provisions.
[(proc text) Question put, and agreed to. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House. (proc text)]
[(proc text) The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. – [Dr Janil Puthucheary]. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed. (proc text)]
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"BP","content":"The Senior Minister of State for Transport (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Transport): Mr Deputy Speaker, on behalf of the Minister for Transport, I beg to move, \"That the Bill be now read a Second time.\"
Mr Deputy Speaker, the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bill 2020 will set up a new Act to regulate shared mobility services. The Bill replaces the relevant licensing regime of such services from the Parking Places Act and expands the licensing regime for more comprehensive coverage. This Bill is linked to the previous Bill in our Order Paper, the Active Mobility (Amendment) Bill 2020. In the debate we have just had on the Active Mobility Bill, I have already explained the amendments proposed in both Bills. Members have already raised their questions and expressed their views on both Bills during the earlier debate, although they are still welcome to do so now if there are any additional questions or views. Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to move.
[(proc text) Question put, and agreed to. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House. (proc text)]
[(proc text) The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. – [Dr Janil Puthucheary]. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed. (proc text)]
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Adjournment","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OS","content":"[(proc text) Resolved, \"That Parliament do now adjourn to 18 February 2020.\" – [Mr Desmond Lee]. (proc text)]
Adjourned accordingly at 6.35 pm.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Imposing Legal Obligations on Food Delivery Companies to Ensure their Drivers Comply with Active Mobility and Road Traffic Regulations","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"12 Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Minister for Transport whether the Government will consider imposing legal obligations on food delivery companies to ensure that their delivery riders on e-bikes or e-scooters comply with active mobility or road traffic regulations including compliance with device requirements or proper usage.
Mr Khaw Boon Wan: The Active Mobility (Amendment) and the Shared Mobility Enterprises (Control and Licensing) Bills which this House debated and passed on 4 February 2020 will include regulations that will apply to businesses such as food delivery companies, which engage active mobility users in the course of work. The companies should be responsible for ensuring that their riders ride safely. We will introduce a legal obligation on these companies to ensure that all active mobility users they engage in the course of work have third-party liability insurance. This includes users of bicycles, personal mobility devices, power assisted bicycles, and personal mobility aids.
Apart from businesses, retailers and users of active mobility devices also play a part in ensuring that the devices used on public paths are compliant and used safely.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Priority for BTO Flats in Mature Estates for First-time Applicants whose Parents or In-laws Live in the Estate","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"14 Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for National Development whether the Ministry can review the existing policy so as to accord priority to first-time applicants for BTO flats in mature estates where their parents or parents-in-law are living in.
Mr Lawrence Wong: Families who wish to buy a new HDB flat to live with or near their parents already enjoy priority in their flat application under the Married Child Priority Scheme and the Multi-Generation Priority Scheme. This includes those who wish to buy flats in the mature estates.
Families may also wish to consider buying a resale flat to live with or near their parents. They can enjoy a Proximity Housing Grant of up to $30,000. In total, first-timer families can enjoy up to $160,000 in grants for their resale flat purchase. All resale grants are available for flat purchases in both the mature and non-mature estates.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Demolition of Kallang Squash Centre and Impact on Availability of Venue for Hosting International Squash Tournaments and Training for Elite Players","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"16 Mr Ong Teng Koon asked the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth with the demolition of the Kallang Squash Centre (a) whether Singapore will have a venue capable of hosting international squash tournaments and elite level training for squash players; (b) what are the plans to provide an alternative venue; (c) whether there are plans to include squash facilities for the Kallang Alive project; (d) whether squash has the potential to be an important contributor to Singapore's sporting success at international tournaments; and (e) whether there is a decline in the number of public squash facilities since the 1990s and, if so, whether there are plans to reverse this decline.
Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien: Sport Singapore (SportSG) currently manages 24 squash courts across five locations – Burghley, Kallang, MOE (Evans), St Wilfrid and Yio Chu Kang – which have been open to the public since the 1980s. The average utilisation rate for these courts during peak periods has remained stable at around 70% over the past three years. But it has been uneven, with the 10 courts at the Burghley and Evans Road sites seeing peak demand at less than 60% of its capacity.
SportSG has been engaging the Singapore Squash Rackets Association (SSRA) on the replacement facilities for the Kallang Squash Centre since 2018. In the meantime, SportSG has identified Burghley and Yio Chu Kang as potential locations for the interim National Training Centre for our elite athletes, and will continue to work with the SSRA on the interim and longer-term infrastructure plans for the sport.
The squash fraternity has done well and Singaporeans can be proud of their sporting achievements. In the recently concluded Southeast Asian Games held in the Philippines, Singapore's squash team won two silver and three bronze medals. Squash's continued success will require the fraternity and its supporters to work together for its longer-term development. SportSG will be happy to partner the SSRA on its goals for the sport, and work with the squash fraternity and the community to support these goals.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Breakdown of Number of Families Consisting of Singaporean Citizens Married to Non-resident Spouses with Citizen and Non-resident Children","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"1 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Prime Minister in each of the last five years, what is the number of families consisting of a Singaporean citizen married to a non-resident spouse, with (i) at least one citizen child and at least one non-resident child and (ii) at least one non-resident child respectively.
Mr Teo Chee Hean (for the Prime Minister): The latest available estimate is from the General Household Survey, which was conducted in 2015. Based on the survey, there were an estimated 18,700 couples1 comprising a Singapore Citizen (SC) married to a Non-Resident (NR) in 2015. Of these, around 1,200 couples had at least one NR child. By comparison, around 7,000 couples had at least one SC child2. We currently do not have an estimate on the number of couples who have at least one SC child and at least one NR child living with them. From the Census of Population 2020 to be conducted this year, we will assess if we can obtain this data.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":["1 : The number of couples nationally is estimated from the sampled households that were surveyed.","2 : \"Child\" refers to children aged below 18 who are living in the same household as their parents."],"footNoteQuestions":["1"],"questionNo":"1"},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Government Expenditure on Singapore Bicentennial Activities and Outcomes Achieved","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"2 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Prime Minister (a) what is the total Government expenditure on the Singapore Bicentennial, broken down by major activities or heads of expenditure such as the Bicentennial Experience; (b) what are the estimates of attendance and participation for each major activity; and (c) what have been the social, cultural and economic outcomes.
Mr Desmond Lee (for the Prime Minister): The Singapore Bicentennial commemoration was a success. There were more than 250 events held in 2019, mostly organised by the community. The total visitorship was more than 9 million, with many attending more than one event. We also worked with 340 community partners and more than 3,500 volunteers, reflecting the broad support for the commemoration.
Expenditure on The Bicentennial Experience at Fort Canning was about $35.5 million, of which $23 million was for the original run, and $11 million for the three-month extension due to overwhelming public demand. Just under $1.5 million was for conferences and books that explored Singapore's longer history. The commemoration also leveraged several existing annual events (e.g. iLight Singapore Bicentennial Edition, Singapore Night Festival) which were enhanced to feature the bicentennial themes.
We received positive feedback from those who attended the various Singapore Bicentennial events. Many visitors appreciated the importance of reflecting on our past, in order to glean lessons for our future. Response to The Bicentennial Experience was particularly good. It was the first time that a large-scale exposition on Singapore's history had attracted such strong interest from over 760,000 visitors. In particular, younger Singaporeans including almost 20,000 NSFs and 105,000 students and pre-schoolers, came on learning journeys with their school teachers. More than 96% rated The Bicentennial Experience 'Good' and 'Very Good', reflecting the breakthrough in storytelling that benefits the visitors and offers lessons for other institutions to reference. About 93% said that it had increased their knowledge of Singapore’s history, and offered lessons for our future.
The positive outcomes from this, and other community events, cannot all be quantified. For example, our community partners also felt that the Singapore Bicentennial commemoration provided a meaningful platform to showcase their community's history and origins, as well as to examine different aspects of Singapore's past. Many of their events engaged new audiences. Much of the new content created has also made different aspects of our longer history more accessible to the public, and will enrich our archives for future generations of Singaporeans.
We would like to thank our community partners and volunteers for their support throughout the bicentennial year.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Changes in Protocol for SPF, SCDF and IMH Following Decriminalisation of Attempted Suicide in Singapore","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"3 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) what are the changes in protocol for SPF, SCDF, IMH and other agencies respectively given the decriminalisation of suicide from 1 January 2020; (b) whether the Ministry will consider including suicide first-aiders as part of the SGSecure Responder effort in the SGSecure application, similar to how first-aiders are tapped on to respond to individuals with physical health emergencies; and (c) whether the Ministry will consider piloting an emergency response model that adopts a specialised mental health ambulance or emergency response team.
Mr K Shanmugam: As attempted suicide is no longer a crime, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) will no longer record it as an offence. However, the Government will continue to track data on attempted suicide that are made known to us.
The Member suggested tapping on first-aiders to help in cases of attempted suicide. SGSecure Responder is an initiative to alert community responders to fire and cardiac arrest cases. It is much more challenging for community responders to intervene in attempted suicide cases due to their complexity. Members of the public should continue to call the Police or the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF).
The Member also suggested specialised emergency response for suicide cases. That may not be feasible. We have SPF and SCDF officers who are trained to intervene in suicide attempts, and they will be mobilised when such cases are reported. The SPF's Crisis Negotiation Unit will also help where necessary. The SCDF's Disaster Assistance and Rescue Teams (DART) are specially trained for complex rescue operations, including cases of attempted suicide at height and in confined spaces. There are also helplines, such as the Institute of Mental Health's (IMH) 24-hour Mental Health Helpline, that distressed persons can call.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Publishing Absolute and Percentage Change in Total Carbon Emissions for Facilities that Paid Carbon Tax to Provide Clarity on Emission Impact of Carbon Tax","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"4 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (a) for 2019, what has been the absolute and percentage change in total carbon emissions for facilities that paid the carbon tax compared to 2017 and 2018; (b) when does the Ministry plan to publish this data if it is not yet available; and (c) whether the Ministry will consider publishing this data on a yearly basis to provide clarity on the emission impact of the carbon tax.
Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: The Carbon Pricing Act (CPA) came into force on 1 January 2019, giving effect to the carbon tax. The carbon tax provides an economy-wide price signal to encourage emissions reduction and the transition to a low-carbon economy. The carbon tax covers around 80% of our national emissions and applies to facilities in the manufacturing, power generation, waste and water management sectors which emit 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent or more annually. These companies have been monitoring their emissions for the year 2019, and must submit verified 2019 emissions reports to the National Environment Agency by 30 June 2020. The Government is unable to disclose company- or facility-specific data due to data confidentiality requirements as provided for in the CPA.
The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) publishes data on Singapore's total greenhouse gases annually in the Key Environmental Statistics, which is available on the MEWR website. We also publish more detailed information on our greenhouse gas inventory in accordance with guidelines under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Our latest National Communications and Biennial Update Report was submitted to the UNFCCC in December 2018 and this report can be found on the website of the National Climate Change Secretariat. We will be submitting the next report by December 2020, and it will similarly be made available publicly.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Plans to Study Effectiveness of Pilot Household Services Scheme","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"5 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Manpower (a) whether the Ministry will be studying the effectiveness of the pilot Household Services Scheme that allows foreign workers to provide domestic services to households; (b) if so, what factors will be used to determine the effectiveness of the Scheme; and (c) how long does the Ministry intend to run the pilot before deciding to formalise the Scheme.
Mrs Josephine Teo: The Household Services Scheme (HSS) was piloted in 2017 to allow eligible companies to hire more foreign workers to provide part-time domestic services, such as home cleaning. Since then, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has been monitoring the demand for part-time domestic services and studying the effectiveness of the HSS in meeting households' needs for part-time domestic services.
As demand for part-time domestic services picked up, MOM expanded the number of HSS companies from 15 in 2017 to 50 in 2019. We are still monitoring the Scheme to assess how it is meeting the needs of households and providers of domestic services, and the risks of HSS workers being diverted by companies to non-domestic work. The pilot has been extended to run until August 2020, and MOM will evaluate the results of the pilot thereafter.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Number of Cases of Employment-related Disputes Not Covered Under Employment Act and Outcomes of These Cases","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"6 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Minister for Manpower (a) when did the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) start to hear employment-related disputes not covered under the Employment Act; (b) what led TADM to start hearing these disputes; (c) what is the total number of such cases received to date; and (d) what are the outcomes of these cases.
Mrs Josephine Teo: Since Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) was established in April 2017, it has been able to mediate employment-related disputes not covered under the Employment Act (EA). For disputes covered under other employment laws1 such as the payment of allowances, bonuses and commissions provided for in the employment contract, mediation is compulsory. For other disputes such as workplace grievances and poor employment practices, mediation is voluntary.
In total, TADM has conducted mediation for about 12,000 employment-related disputes not covered under the EA, with about 70% resolved amicably.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":["1 : Employment Claims Act, Retirement and Re-employment Act and Child Development Co-Savings Act."],"footNoteQuestions":["6"],"questionNo":"6"},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Review Requirement for Singaporean Staff of Companies Tendering for Government Contract to be Members of Trade Unions","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"7 Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for Manpower whether the Ministry will review and require all companies who are tendering for contracts called by the Government, statutory boards or town councils that their Singaporean workers must be members of the relevant trade unions.
Mrs Josephine Teo: The Ministry of Manpower supports workers seeking membership in a union registered with the Registry of Trade Unions. They can benefit from union support and representation, in areas such as training and upskilling, collective bargaining and dispute resolution.
However, it would be inappropriate to insist as a condition of Government contracts, that the contractors' workers be union members. Such a condition could lead to perverse outcomes. For example, a contractor may feel compelled to terminate a worker on account of his preference not to be a union member, in order to be eligible to bid for government contracts. To avoid unemployment, a worker may then feel compelled to join the union. This goes against the fundamental right of a worker to decide on union membership.
The Government recognises unionised companies in other ways. For instance, companies can tap on an extra 10 per cent in funding support through the Enterprise Development Grant, if they work with unions to train workers as the companies' jobs transform. We also support unionised companies' efforts to be more progressive employers, through engagement programmes organised by the tripartite partners.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null}],"writtenAnswersVOList":[],"writtenAnsNAVOList":[],"annexureList":[{"annexureID":1163,"sittingDate":null,"annexureTitle":"Annex 1","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200204/annex-slide.pdf","fileName":"slide.pdf","sectionType":"OA","file":null}],"vernacularList":[{"vernacularID":3581,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Er Dr Lee Bee Wah","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200204/vernacular-Lee Bee Wah (Active Mobility) 4 Feb 2020-Chinese.pdf","fileName":"Lee Bee Wah (Active Mobility) 4 Feb 2020-Chinese.pdf"},{"vernacularID":3582,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Ms Joan Pereira","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200204/vernacular-Joan Pereira (Active Mobility) 4 Feb 2020-Chinese.pdf","fileName":"Joan Pereira (Active Mobility) 4 Feb 2020-Chinese.pdf"}],"onlinePDFFileName":""}