Date Published: 07 Mar 2012 Er :

Thank you, Sir. First of all, I would like to thank the Minister for giving residents in Nee Soon GRC a new hawker centre. I have two clarifications: first, I would like to ask if the Ministry would consider giving the residents living near the hawker centre some form of priority in running the hawker stalls. Next clarification is on “no smoking at parks”. Just now the Senior Minister of State mentioned that it will be carried out at some selected parks. I would like to ask: what are the criteria, and why is it that smoking is not banned in all the parks?

Response by Minister :

I think the Member is aware that we intend to accept the recommendations and the management of the new centre should be by social enterprises, probably a co-operative, and I hope there will be more than one co-operative or other social enterprises that will step up to the plate. So these local decisions as to who to accept as a hawker, the food mix and pricing, I believe should be done at the local level. So I do not want, on the Ministry level, to be overly prescriptive.

Her point on smoking, Ms expressed our position that in the long run, we want no smoking in public areas unless otherwise designated. In other words, today we have a list of areas where you are not allowed to smoke. In the future, I think we will have a positive list of areas where you are allowed to smoke and everywhere else, you are not allowed to do it. But we have to manage this transition , taking into account local conditions and local support for it. So that is why, for instance, hawker centres and parks, we want the local community to decide collectively and take ownership on whether they want to have a “Blue Ribbon” park or a “Blue Ribbon” hawker centre, and then it is a community decision. It is not something top-down that has been forced upon them. I believe we need to move towards such a system because you cannot have an NEA officer everywhere trying to enforce rules which the community is not prepared to support. So I have expressed our long-term position and that the transition will have to be guided by community support. On the pace and extent of the non-smoking zones, the community has to decide.

Mr :

Sir, the Senior Minister of State earlier on responded to my cut on “midges” which has been a problem faced by Bedok Reservoir residents. Sir, I would like to complain to you that there is nothing new in her response to me. I read all the content from the newspapers. What I wanted to know is, what is the long-term solution to the problem? And I understand that they have engaged an external expert to do some research into the problem. May I know what is the progress so far? And please do not tell me that they are using pesticides again. They used it last year, but the problem remains the same. So what I want to know is: what can the residents at Bedok Reservoir area expect this year? Will we be facing the same problem again? Fire-fight the “midges” and going to fog every day?

Sir, the next clarification is pertaining to water. The Minister said that PUB did not overcharge Singaporeans for water. He referred to the collection of Conservation Tax plus the waterborne fee and appliance fee. Perhaps, I think he should let us know what is the cost per cubic metre of water PUB produces and what is the effective tariff that PUB charges Singaporeans or the household users. What do I mean by effective tariff - you have a tariff on the first 40 cubic metres of water and different tariffs after that. That is tariff on the water, and that is excluding water conservation tax, appliance fee and waterborne fee. So if you take all that in, what is the effective tariff per cubic metre that you charge Singaporeans vis-a-vis the cost per cubic metre of water that PUB produces?

Response by Minister Vivian Balakrishnan:

Let me deal with the water issue. That is far more important, with due respect. You are aware of the tariffs that are charged. If you are not, it is all available in the Annual Report.

It is important to go back to the overall system because we need to ensure that Singapore will have a secure and reliable supply of water even when contracts expire, even when we face droughts, and even if there are any accidents or other disasters in parts of our island. That should immediately tell you, it is not a simple matter of how much it costs to buy water from Malaysia, or to even get water from a desalination plant. You have to pay for the cost of an entire system. And this is all very transparent and it is laid before Parliament. It costs PUB $1.3 billion to run a water system that we have today. And it is also equally transparent that for a household that consumes less than 40 cubic metres a month, the tariff is $1.17 per cubic metre, plus a Water Conservation Tax. So they will end up paying about $1.52 per cubic metre. That is for potable water. For water that has to be treated, the Waterborne Fee is $0.28 per cubic metre. Then there is a Sanitary Appliance Fee of about $2.80 per latrine or water closet.

Again, if you want, I can go through the figures with you to show that, on used water, we are not collecting what it costs to treat the water to a standard where it can be discharged into the sea. This is excluding the cost of treating it as NEWater and making it safe for use. So the figures are all there, and I would like you to go through this, in detail with me if you like, and we will show you that, in order to provide the water system which I have described, we still require tax subvention from Parliament. So, if you are proposing that we lower water tariffs, I would suggest that we do not, because let us talk about real life.

In real life, the median 3-room HDB flat pays about $30 per month. Now we also have the U-Save scheme, part of the GST offset scheme, which gives between $110 (in 2007) and $240 (in 2012) a year. So what we have is a system in which a scarce, precious commodity is right-priced so people do not waste. At the same time, we have vouchers for the lower-income, so that people can always afford the water and electricity that they need. It is far better to do it this way than to do what many other countries have done, where they subsidise water or they give it at a fixed price, at a level which causes people to not regard it as something precious. If a leak springs up in your pipe, you just let it leak. I have lived in a country like that. More importantly, there is also no signal to the private sector to invest in infrastructure, to provide technology and infrastructure for the future. So the challenge for us is to make sure our system is resilient, that we right-price water, and that water remains affordable to everyone. On all these three counts, I submit that the answer is yes. If you are not convinced, I would be happy to go through in detail the finances of PUB. Clearly, there are some things which, for national security reasons, I cannot make public pronouncements on. But if you like, I will take you in confidence and show you that we have provided a safe, resilient, reliable water supply system. If you go through the information with me, I am pretty sure I can convince you of that.

Response by SMS Grace Fu:

Sir, we have been studying this problem of “midges” extensively with my colleagues in PUB and NEA. I myself, for example, have gone to Google to try and search for some of the scientific information that is out there. If you look at the studies that are out there, you will see that, actually, many teams are studying the problem of “midges”. In fact, there are many teams, not just in the tropics, that are studying it. As far as Denmark, teams are studying the problems of why we have a sudden increase in the population of such insects. Some have attributed this to climate change, rainfall, the amount of nutrients in the water. The truth is, I do not think anybody has been able to lay their hands on the exact cause of the explosion of “midges”.

That is the reason why Mr Low will hear the same reasons in the House, and outside from the papers, because we are trying our best and explaining what we are doing. What we are doing right now with the use of larvacide is what we know at this point in time to be the most effective method. Of course, if the Aljunied Town Council is able to fumigate and destroy the adult population, then we will not have the larvae and the eggs being bred in the water. But is that a realistic goal? I think all of us who are involved in the management of municipal issues would know that we have not been able to wipe out the population of flies, mosquitoes and, now, probably “midges”. So we are not taking a position that, this part is PUB’s solution and, this part is Town Council’s solution. We are taking a collaborative approach, working with the Town Council to address the whole problem of the life cycle of “midges” from, if you like, cradle to grave. And, hopefully, we can find a way to break the cycle more effectively. And if Mr Low, with his experience in Aljunied Town Council, is able to give us suggestions as to what more we can do, we would be most happy to consider it.

Mr :

Sir, I have something to add as well - back to high-rise littering. Senior Minister of State talked about the difficulty in enforcing as well as prosecuting the high-rise litterers, which I agree is difficult. That is why I spoke about having really stronger measures to take care of this problem and also to do it with skill. We know there is some equipment there but are we going to step up on this so that more and different parts of Singapore and the towns will all have this equipment to monitor it?

Response by SMS Grace Fu:

Mr Chairman, the answer is, yes, we will be stepping up the team that is doing the surveillance. We are increasing the number of equipment that is available for this purpose.

But of course, maybe I would just like to clarify that this will not be our first response to any complaints of high-rise littering. We still believe that going down the route of engaging the community and getting the community to cooperate probably promotes better neighbourliness than if we were to send in an enforcement officer at the very first complaint. So, we would still like to go through this process of Town Councils, together with the Grassroots Organisations, approaching the supposed culprit to execute public education exercises as the first way to manage local littering problems rather than to send in an enforcement team to address every single complaint at the first instance.

Mr Liang Eng Hwa:

Sir, while I agree with the Senior Minister of State that education and all these are important, we all know that usually the majority of the residents are not anti-social or have that sort of behaviour. So I think the problem is always that it is a small minority that is the culprit and perhaps we should target at this minority as the root of the problem.

Mr :

I appreciate the Minister sharing with me his views that national events should also be made more environmentally-friendly. I would like to ask the Minister whether we can expect any change in the way these are being organised for the coming national events. I would like to raise the suggestion that perhaps we could use the Ministry’s, in this case, NEA’s flagship event, the Clean and Green Week, to spearhead this drive. I do hope that this year’s Clean and Green Week will be organised in a different manner which reinforces the view that national events should try their very best to be environmentally- friendly.

Response by Minister Vivian Balakrishnan:

I thank Mr Seah for that additional question. As I said, I agree with him. If we look at last year’s National Day Parade as an example, the organisers made sure that there were sufficient litter bins and recycling bins and that the waste and the recyclables that were collected, we are actually keeping track of it at the NEA level. At the Clean & Green Singapore events held last year, we ensured that the exhibits were made of recycled materials. We also ensured that they were portable exhibits so that they could be reused. We had recycling bins provided; we used energy-saving light bulbs and made sure that the events were held near MRT stations so that people could take public transport. So we have made a start but I agree with Mr Seah that we can do more.

Mr Yee Jenn Jong(Non-Constituency Member):

Thank you, Mr Chairman, for allowing me to join in the debate. I have a question on the operating model of the hawker centres. Earlier, the Minister said that he intends to accept all of the Panel’s proposals, so I would like to ask regarding the model of letting the social enterprises run the operations. Will the Ministry be keeping a very close watch on the rents and the way the operations will be run? I consider the provision of hawker centres to be essential social goods, to make food prices affordable to everybody. I am concerned that sometimes when we let market forces take over the provision of social goods, we can end up with rising cost, just like we saw industrial spaces going to REITS and then prices have been creeping up. So, is there some assurance that there will be very close monitoring on the way this is run, especially when more and more hawker centres are being run by social enterprises?

Response by Minister Vivian Balakrishnan:

First, I better clarify that I did not say that I would accept all the recommendations of the Panel. I was referring to the drainage Panel. The Hawker Centre Panel has not submitted their final recommendations yet, so I do not want to jump the gun. But let me tell you basically how I see this.

First, I have to persuade all of you to accept that hawker centres are social infrastructures. Therefore, as the ultimate landlord, we are not trying to maximise rentals from it.

I am keen to accept the recommendation for social enterprise because, if you remember, when I first announced that we would reverse this policy, I said that I wanted the manager to be a not-for-profit model. Basically, you still need to be viable and to make ends meet. But you are not out there as a real estate player and you are not engaging in arbitrage. And what starts off as a hawking business becomes a real estate business. All this is very easy to express but I am not going to underestimate the difficulty of making it work in practice.

In the context of Singapore, the most successful co-operative is FairPrice. I give all due respect to Mr Seah Kian Peng. It is a social enterprise, it has fulfilled a social mission of ensuring commodities and essential food are priced reasonably and provides competition. What I am hoping to do by changing this hawker centre policy is, number one, increase the supply of places. That should have some effect on prices, both in terms of rental as well as the prices charged by hawkers. But having said that, I do not believe that simply lowering rentals by itself will necessarily lead to lower prices charged by hawkers. At the end of the day, they are people making a living. They will also try to charge what the market will bear. So I just want the Member to understand - let us not be overly simplistic in the way we implement this, and also to be very careful that we do not get unintended consequences. For now, if we can get a cooperative to run it, and the cooperative knows that what we are after is cheap, good and clean food, and that the people who are working there are Singaporeans, locals - better still if they are people within the community, they are there to make a living for themselves and they are preparing cooked fresh food, good enough for their own families and friends to eat - I think that will be an achievement. That already makes us unique, because when we first created hawker centres, it was just a hygiene measure –clear mobile hawkers on the streets. But this has taken on a life of its own, it has become a unique icon of Singapore life. So I give the Member the assurance that we will certainly be watching it very, very closely, and to watch the evolution of these new generation hawker centres, that it does not deviate from the original objective. Does the Member have a specific suggestion in mind?

Mr Yee Jenn Jong:

No, I do not have a specific suggestion. I thank the Minister for the answers. It is easier to control when we have one or two hawker centres being run by a particular social enterprise. But I imagine a day when maybe we have half or even more of our hawker centres being run by social enterprises, and then they become a very sizeable market force. So, would we want to start thinking right now how do we set the KPIs to ensure that the outcomes will always be affordable food, whether it is done through fixing the rent that they can charge to the hawkers or through other means? I think we should think seriously about this rather than leave it to market forces.

Mr Nicholas Fang:

Thank you, Mr Chairman. Minister, first of all, my apologies for not having caught your entire speech. My reservist training started today –not that I am complaining, given the good news from MINDEF this morning. Not to worry. I have been granted leave from my reservist training!

I have two clarifications pertaining to the issue of air. It is heartening to note that we are now meeting the WHO guidelines. As far as I know, that is 10 microgrammes of PM2.5 per cubic metre. In 2010, Singapore was at 17. I think MEWR’s aspirational guideline is 12, by 2020. I would like to ask if we have already met the target of 10.

My second clarification pertains to the interest in Euro V. Euro V is better than Euro IV, which is better than Euro III, which is better than Euro II. But within Euro V, the issue is that diesel cars are, of course, restricted to less carbon emissions compared to petrol cars. At the same time, in terms of nitrous oxide and particulate matters, they are allowed a higher percentage compared to petrol cars. So if we instill PM2.5 requirements for all diesel vehicles, carbon emissions will go down. But if more cars switch to diesel, we might actually see more PM and nitrous oxides going up in comparison to petrol cars. That is actually worse for health. Response by Minister Vivian Balakrishnan:

Thank you. That made it worth your while coming back from reservist. We meet the WHO interim standards II. WHO has three different standards and we are supposed to meet them progressively. We have not yet reached the final standard. But having said that, we do want to make sure that we are at an internationally comparable standard because this is part of our competitive advantage. The Member has my assurance that we will continue to monitor this very closely. And, more importantly, because I believe in transparency, all the data will be available so the Member can see how we do over the course of time.

I am glad the Member brought up the point about Euro V. There are actually two different programmes. While they are related, they are quite distinct. I think the Member was referring to the Carbon Emissions Vehicle Scheme (CEVS), which is meant to replace the Green Vehicles rebate. We thought the CEVS is a better scheme than the current Green Vehicles rebate because it is technology agnostic, meaning, it encourages you to get more fuel-efficient cars. It sends a signal to you and also penalises you if you use a less fuel-efficient car. That is what the CEVS is about. I do not expect that the CEVS will result in an overnight transformation of all petrol cars into diesel vehicles. I do not think that will happen.

Separately, we are making this move towards Euro V. And the environmental performance of Euro V –both the vehicles as well as the near sulphur-free diesel fuel that they will use –will make a significant difference to our SO2, nitrous oxides and our PM2.5. That is what we expect, based on our current models. But we will be monitoring the data, and the data will be available. So, you have my assurance that we will watch very closely what is happening on all the pollutant fronts, as far as all of them are concerned.

Mr Low Thia Khiang:

Sir, we also googled “midges” to try to find out what happened. I understand that PUB and NEA have brought in a foreign expert to do some research and study. May I know what progress has been made and whether there is any target set, at least to come up with some result on the research where we can have some solution to the problem?

Response by SMS Grace Fu:

Sir, I can appreciate the attention that Mr Low is putting on this very important topic. Let me just update the House that we have actually commissioned a three-year study. And the objective of the study is: first of all, to establish which species contribute to the mass emergence event; also to compare the composition and abundance of the midges collected and study that of the 1960s and to look at how it has changed over time to 2011 and 2012. And to establish the inter-annual variation in the key midges groups, and also to investigate the correlation of the abundance of the adult and larval midges with meteorological condition, season and water quality. Why I am doing this, Mr Low, is really just to explain that this is a complex issue. As much as we would like to study the problem with dengue and the emergence of new serotypes, and how that would have changed, and be affected by climate change, this is a complex issue. As much as we like to have an immediate solution, I do not think we can offer any promise that it is going to be an immediate one, except to say that the team will actually provide us with quarterly updates and we wish them the very best in their discovery, because if we can leave them to do their work, then perhaps they will be in a better position to give us practical solutions.

But, meanwhile, let me assure Mr Low again that PUB and NEA will do more than just putting larvacide. We are also scrubbing –can you imagine PUB scrubbing the sides of reservoirs –to clear off eggs and larvae? We are also monitoring the amount of larvae that we are observing in our water samples, to try to get ahead of the next cycle of population explosion or whatever you may call it. So we are trying, as much as possible, to be ahead of the game. But as I said, it is not an easy problem to solve and we hope that all the parties, including the Town Council, will also be part of our solution.

>Ms :

Sir, I have two questions. First, I would like to join the chorus of thanks to the Minister and the Ministry for reintroducing the hawker centre. My Punggol residents will definitely be very happy and we cannot wait for it to come to Punggol. And it would be even better if it is run on a social enterprise model. On that note itself, I am not sure what the fear about social enterprises becoming a big market force is about, because after all, social enterprises in the case of hawker centres is not just about having good or reasonably priced food. But if it also creates jobs for Singaporeans and gives opportunities to small businesses to upgrade themselves, then why not? The more the merrier. So my question on the hawker centre part, really, is would we have any fear about 10 hawker centres all running on social enterprise models, and whether we could have one in Punggol sooner than at the end of the 10 years itself.

My second question is, involving all hands on the deck when it comes to sustainability and cleanliness issues. I agree with Mr Seah that, indeed, we need to ensure that national efforts, the leaders in this field, but also small efforts at home or at the community ground. Sir, my question is: what are some of the plans that the Ministry might have to roll out this year to involve more people, more hands from every community?

Response by SMS Grace Fu:

First of all, I think the model that is recommended by the Panel based on the social enterprise model is something that is very new to us. We are very keen to adopt and pilot it. If it is successful and can be replicated, I think we will definitely consider replicating it and implementing it across all the 10 centres. On the other hand, I think we just have to be mindful that if we can find alternative models that are as effective, we may also consider alternatives as well. So we are not, in any way, bound to any fixed model at this point in time. As I mentioned in my speech, the key point is really, as Mr has said, delicious, good and cheap food at convenient locations. I think that is really our most important social objective. As for Punggol, I would just like to clarify that what I have said in my speech is that Punggol would be the first of the seven in Phase One and we will complete it within five years, not at the end of the 10 years. How would we try to encourage more in the community? As I have said earlier on, whether it is through MOE working with the youths and working with NGOs, I think that we will try to get ground- up support for what we are doing as far as keeping Singapore clean, green and beautiful for everybody is concerned.

Er Lee Bee Wah:

Mr Chairman, Sir, I am sure our fast-working Minister has heard all of us and I am confident that he will take prompt action in addressing the issues, perhaps including building 86 hawker centres - 86 because Mr does not need one.