4G ministers team up for community visit, ramp up engagement efforts
New format part of a team approach to meeting residents on the ground
As Education Minister Ong Ye Kung and National Development Minister Lawrence Wong tucked into curry puffs and dough fritters for breakfast and chatted with patrons at a coffee shop, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo briefly joined a morning zumba class nearby.
The three Cabinet ministers were making a community visit to Jurong Central yesterday, in a departure from past practice where these visits would typically involve just one minister at a time.
Schedules permitting, expect to see more such visits, Mr Ong told the media yesterday.
"Today we've come out with a new format, so going forward, let me see if we can involve more ministers and also intensify the visits. That way, I think we can speak more to residents," he said.
Mr Ong, who is in charge of coordinating these ministerial visits, added that having multiple ministers on the ground at the same time gives more residents a chance to speak to the ministers directly about relevant issues they face.
He said that during yesterday's visit, residents with school-going children had spoken to him about school work, tuition and polytechnic applications, while those looking for work or faced issues with the Housing Board had approached Mrs Teo and Mr Wong, respectively.
Exchanging notes after the visit will also allow the ministers to get a more holistic understanding of these issues, he added.
Mrs Teo said that the new format, mooted by the fourth-generation leaders, was part of a team approach.
Asked about some residents' gripes about limited interaction time, she said they would continue to refine the visits.
"This is just the first constituency that we are trying it out in and probably... in terms of the pacing, we will have to make certain adjustments.
"So we will collect the feedback and the observations of the grassroots leaders, as well as the residents who had a chance to interact with us, and see how we can improve it for the next round," she said.
As part of yesterday's programme, Mrs Teo and Jurong GRC MP Ang Wei Neng also led a closed-door dialogue for more than an hour with more than 200 attendees, including students, residents, grassroots volunteers and community leaders.
"I think we had a very lively discussion and there was a lot of interest centred around the future of work," said Mrs Teo.
"We have a chance to hear from the residents themselves, what are the issues that are prominent in their minds and it helps us think about our policies, where to prioritise and also what kinds of interventions are needed in order to help people to make progress," she added.
Referencing Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat's call in May for a series of discussions with various groups of Singaporeans, Mr Ong said these could take the form of more formal sessions such as dialogues, or informal ones "involving more ministers walking the ground, speaking to residents randomly in a coffee shop".
"That is also a meaningful way of having a discussion," he said.
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