Opening Remarks by Minister for Transport and Second Minister for Finance Mr Chee Hong Tat at the National Kindness Award – Transport Gold 2024

Executive Director, Singapore Kindness Movement, Ms Michelle Tay

Council Members

Colleagues from the public transport family,

Sisters and Brothers from our transport unions, 

Our public transport workers,

Friends from the media,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

1.     Good morning. I am delighted to join you on this special occasion as we come together to celebrate the acts of kindness by our transport workers. 

2.     This year’s event holds particular significance, as we mark the 25th anniversary of the Transport Gold Awards. What started as a small and humble initiative by the Singapore Kindness Movement and our Public Transport Operators has, over the years, now become a very meaningful annual tradition to celebrate and recognise many of the unsung heroes in the transport family. Over the past two and a half decades, more than 10,800 transport staff have been presented with the Transport Gold Awards. 

3.     The number of nominations received from members of public has also grown year after year. This year marks a significant milestone as we’ve recorded the highest number of nominations ever. We have received over 1,300 nominations – which is not only a clear reflection not only of the positive difference that our transport workers have made, but also the public’s appreciation and respect for them.

4.     I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to all our transport workers. A world-class public transport network goes beyond physical infrastructure and hardware. It is most importantly about the people.  Many thanks to the dedicated effort of our transport workers, you are the key to providing journeys that are not only safe and reliable, but also to make it a delightful experience for our commuters. 

5.     As Ms Tay mentioned earlier during her speech about the East West Line disruption – of course no one wanted it to happen. But when a crisis happens, I think the key is how we respond to it. How do we, as members of the One Transport Family respond to it? How do we, as a society, including our commuters and the public, respond to it? One positive thing that we saw was how during the crisis, different parts of the transport family came together and worked together to safely restore train services as soon as possible – from the people who were involved in the repair and testing works; those at the stations and interchanges managing the crowd and helping commuters with their journeys; to those who provided taxi services and bridging bus services.  

6.     I was very touched to learn that our sisters and brothers from Go-Ahead stepped forward to help. I think that is a very encouraging and very positive sign of how, as a One Transport Family, when we encounter a crisis, our first instinct is to come together and work together to overcome the challenges. 

7.     I am also equally touched and grateful to our commuters and the public for their kind understanding and support for our workers. They penned words of appreciation to our workers and provided them with food and drinks to encourage and thank them. 

8.     We all hope that an incident like the East West Line disruption will not happen again. I will work very hard, together with support from our public transport operators and our tripartite partners, to make sure that we do not let that happen again. But I think we can take some comfort from what happened in terms of how we responded to it as a society.

9.     Let me share a few examples from this year’s award nominees and winners. There are too many to go through one by one, so I can only share a few examples, but they represent what many of you have put in, including some of our sisters and brothers who may not be able to join us today, but who have also contributed to this kindness movement.

10.    First, Senior Bus Captain Ms Jin Shu Juan, from SBS Transit Ltd, one of the winners of this year’s Outstanding Award. While driving along Old Airport Road, Shu Juan and her trainee spotted a car on fire. She acted very swiftly - Shu Juan instructed her trainee to park the bus at a safe distance, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and rushed to help. 

11.    Even as she battled the blaze, she had the presence of mind to contact her operations control centre to seek additional help, and to borrow another fire extinguisher from a nearby bus when hers ran out. Her courage, quick thinking and fire safety training kept the situation under control and ensured the safety of those around her until the SCDF arrived. Thank you very much, Ms Jin Shu Juan.

12.    Another winner of this year’s Outstanding Award is Mr Muhammad Lutfillah Bin Rahmat, a Station Manager from SMRT Trains Ltd who demonstrated extraordinary care for commuter safety and well-being, on more than one occasion.  Lutfillah’s name is a good match with his values, as Lutfi means kind in Arabic.  In one instance, Lutfillah and his colleagues responded to a call for help when a commuter was found unresponsive during a train journey between Tanah Merah and Expo stations. Upon bringing the commuter to the platform at Expo station, Lutfillah immediately administered CPR and AED to the commuter, helping to stabilise the commuter until paramedics arrived on scene to render first aid.

13.    In another situation, Lutfillah came across a young boy with autism who was lost on the Tanah Merah station platform. He noticing that the boy was in distress, so he brought the boy to a quiet space and offered him a warm drink, contacted his next-of-kin, and kept the boy company until his aunt arrived. Thank you very much, Mr Muhammad Lutfillah Bin Rahmat.

14.    Finally, I would like to highlight one other Outstanding Award recipient, Ms Parameswari Silakumaran, a Customer Service Officer from SimplyGo Pte Ltd. A commuter had approached her at the Ticketing Service Centre at Hougang Bus Interchange, and the commuter was in distress. The commuter had forgotten her bank card and did not have cash for transport fares. Parameswari generously topped up the commuter’s SimplyGo account using her own money . Her small act of kindness had a big impact on the commuter, who later came back, returned the money to her, with a heart filled with gratitude. I am sure Ms Parameswari, when she topped up the money, she did not expect the commuter to come back and pay her back. She did it without the expectation, but only with the desire to want to help someone who was in distress. The commuter, who also exhibited an act of kindness, afterwards came back, paid her back the money but more importantly, to thank her. And as Ms Tay mentioned earlier, kindness towards one another is actually the foundation of building a caring society, because you can only have a kinder, gracious, and more inclusive society, if all of us, exhibit kind behaviours. If we are not kind towards one another, we cannot have a caring society. It starts from all of us – as individuals, as members of the society. So thank you very much to Miss Parameswari Silakumaran.

15.    The stories of Shu Juan, Lutfillah, Parameswari, and all the other winners of the Outstanding Award and Commendation Award remind us of the profound impact that all of us – as individuals, as members of the transport family – can have on the society, and on our commuters. With millions of trips completed on our buses and trains every day, our experience on public transport reflects the society that we live in. I want to thank our award winners, and the many other transport workers who go the extra mile every day, for setting a positive example of kindness towards others, and making our public transport journeys a more caring and enjoyable experience for our commuters. 

16.    I want to be clear that while we celebrate positive examples, it does not mean that we have arrived at the final state of what we hope to achieve. This is a work of progress. That is why, for 25 years, every year, we celebrate, we acknowledge, we recognize positive examples, so that this can grow and spread to a larger group – our workers, our commuters, to the whole society. That is why it is important that every year we come together to celebrate the Kindness Movement, because this is an ongoing journey. We must not think that we have arrived and there is no more room for improvement, because there will always be areas that we can do better. On public transport, we still see examples where I think there can be some improvement – behavior of commuters towards others and inconsiderate behavior that we hope that can be improved. We want to continue to work on this together with all our stakeholders, and I call upon our operators and our workers to continue to work with us on this journey. Most importantly, we can only do this with the support of our commuters and the public. It takes a whole society effort to make our society kinder and our public transport journeys more comfortable and more enjoyable. All of us have a part to play. All of us can make a positive contribution to achieving this outcome.

17.    Let me conclude by making a shout out to all our transport workers. Thank you, sister and brothers, for exemplifying the spirit of care and compassion. Thank you very much for your dedication, hard work, service and your contributions to Singapore and to Singaporeans. Let us continue to inspire one another to build a kinder and more inclusive Singapore.

18.    Thank you very much.