Dennis Tan: I get feedback on cost of living issues every day
SINGAPORE: In a doorstop interview with the media, Workers' Party (WP) candidate at Hougang SMC, Dennis Tan Lip Fong, said that he receives feedback regarding cost-of-living issues from residents every day.
Mr Tan, 54, who was elected Hougang MP in 2020, said he walks the ground daily, except when he's travelling. He visits not only Housing and Development Board (HDB) blocks but also condominiums and private estates.
'To be honest, I get feedback on cost-of-living every day until today. This feedback is very important. They allow me to have a feel for the pulse on how our residents… and help me to know how I should convey their issues in Parliament,' he told members of the media.
Aside from cost of living, residents also talk to him about many other issues, such as healthcare costs and subsidies.
'We have a lot of seniors in our midst, and they are concerned. For example, they'd like to use more of their Medisave, instead of being limited by the current cap. Of course, there is also a lot of feedback about municipal services, which I also carry back to Parliament.'
Mr Tan, who is a lawyer by profession, is up against a new candidate from the People's Action Party (PAP), Marshall Lim. Mr Lim is also a lawyer and has served as Deputy Public Prosecutor in the Attorney-General's Chambers, and as Assistant Chief Public Defender in the Public Defender's Office.
Mr Tan also talked about the improvements that he has helped bring about in Hougang, including lift upgrading, bus services, lifts at overhead bridges, and the extended covered walkway network, which residents have expressed appreciation for.
'Yesterday, a young resident spoke to me during my house visits and said that he would continue to vote for the Workers' Party to keep the government on their toes so that they can work harder for Singaporeans.
'Another resident spoke to me two days ago saying that Hougang must always remain the beacon of democracy in Singapore,' said Mr Tan, adding, 'I hope to be re-elected so I can continue to work with the town council consultants and contractors to continue to improve how and to make it a better place for all our residents.'
Former WP secretary-general Low Thia Khiang wrested Hougang SMC from the PAP in 1991, and the ward has stayed under the WP since then. Mr Low represented Hougang until 2011, when he, together with current party chief Pritam Singh, WP chair Sylvia Lim, vice chair Faisal Manap, and Chen Show Mao, contested and won at Aljunied, making history as the first opposition party candidates to win a Group Representation Constituency.
From 2012 to 2020, the WP's Png Eng Huat took over Hougang from Mr Low. While the two older WP leaders have since said they will no longer contest in elections, they have continued to lend their star power this year, helping the party's candidates campaign in different constituencies.
Mr Tan, who had served as a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament between 2015 and 2020, contested and won in the last GE against the PAP's Lee Hong Chuang, winning 61.21% of the votes, an increase of 3.52 percentage points from the election in 2015. /TISG
Read also: Senior Counsel Harpreet Singh calls WP MP Dennis Tan an 'honorary Punjabi'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
9 hours ago
- Straits Times
Forum: What about a safety net for local students wanting a place in university?
I was heartened to learn that our Government is extending support to the 151 Singaporean students at Harvard (S'porean undergrads at Harvard can continue studies in universities here, June 6). I am sure the Government will similarly extend support to Singaporean students at other elite US universities if the situation deteriorates there. I sympathise with the Singaporeans studying at Harvard, but I wonder if the message is that our local universities do in fact have the capacity to take in more local students. Or is it that our local universities will reduce the number of places available to local students, to accommodate the returning US students? Many local students do not have the financial resources to seek an overseas education, and universities at home are their only option. But due to limited capacity, not every eligible applicant is accepted. So, I was surprised to learn that local universities are able to accommodate the affected Singapore students at Harvard. Wouldn't this be at the expense of eligible local applicants? Finally, these Ivy League students no doubt have the ability and resources to study in the US. They took the decision to study abroad willingly. In the face of adversity, is our Government expected to offer a safety net back home? What about a safety net for local students? Roy Tan Choon Kang More on this Topic Forum: What readers are saying Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
CNA
15 hours ago
- CNA
Singaporeans living in Los Angeles take extra precautions amid immigration protests
Some Singaporeans living in Los Angeles say they are taking extra precautions, like avoiding downtown LA, as US immigration protests enter the fourth day. They tell CNA that the Singapore embassy has also not issued any warnings or advisory notes, as the bulk of the Singaporean community who are still there feel relatively safe.
Straits Times
3 days ago
- Straits Times
Hear Me Out: Has the swing against elitism gone too far?
An art installation at the Padang. Vocal naysayers recently accused the Government's SG Culture Pass initiative of being the very thing it counteracted: elitism. PHOTO: ST FILE Hear Me Out: Has the swing against elitism gone too far? SINGAPORE – At a time when most people understand that the personal is political, individual views have become a battleground of virtue – equality, good; hierarchy, bad. Elitism? The worst possible kind of social evil. Yet, take a step back from this instinctive repulsion and there might be benefits to muddying the waters. Elitism, the belief that an elite group, however defined, should be entitled to the reins of power has been the norm throughout much of history. Whether it is the clergy, kings with their divine right, the Confucian scholar or today's fintech bros, there have been groups in each time period that societies tend to value and reward. It was only with increasing democratisation, and a growing disenfranchisement at the chasm between the top and the rest, that elitism has become a byword for undeserved privilege and gross injustice. This brief trip back in time is not to rehabilitate elitism, but to show that the current period against it – or at least one that pays lip service to not believing in an elite class – may be an aberrant one. In the West, this has been taken to extremes, manifesting in a debilitating disregard fo r e xperts and fatal results during the Covid-19 pandemic against the advice of doctors to vaccinate. In Singapore, it is the elite schools that are targeted, in the idealistic slogan that every school is a good school. Though, for perplexing reasons, this scepticism has not yet been extended to the natural reverence the majority of Singaporeans harbour for lawyers and doctors. Their expertise is assumed to be universally applicable – a mentality that has narrowed parents and students' conception of what success looks like. In any case, the ills of elitism have been thoroughly aired, including the type of entitled, discompassionate divas that it ends up producing. The very consensus of who deserves to be elite has also fractured. I wonder, though, if this enmity has led to some unexpected side effects. This is a train of thought sparked by recent reactions to the Government's SG Culture Pass initiative set out during the Budget statement in 2025. Self-sabotage Under the scheme, $100 would be given t o Si ngaporeans aged 18 and above for the consumption of the local arts, redeemable from September. One would expect rejoicing, but there was uproar from a group of vocal naysayers. They accused the credits of being the very thing it counteracted: elitism. Why? Because the money could be better spent on support for groceries. This, I thought, was a case of anti-elitism as self-sabotage. Central to this worldview was that the arts is an elitist activity patronised only by the rich and the hyper-educated aesthete, when one type of activity for the elite and one for the others is exactly the sort of segregation and self-limiting mentality that perpetuates divides. There was no sense that this $100 in credits was a way of making the perceived barrier more permeable. To put it in context, the Government also announced $800 in CDC vouchers. This was bread for all, and roses too. Yet another potentially problematic by-product is that the word 'elite' has since been tainted by association. No one dares lay claim to the word 'elite', or acknowledge that someone else may be elite in his or her field. The rare exemption is perhaps in sports, where athletes accept the cut-throat nature of their competition, and where non-athletes are so tangibly outside their league that there is no point in pretending otherwise. This is not in itself a problem – elite is after all just a word – though I find no easy replacement term that can immediately convey excellence to the same degree. But it incidentally comes at a time when there is a general reluctance to impose any kind of objective standard, supplemented by that compassionate but useless invention: the consolation prize. This applies to things: Is no one taste now better than another? As well as people, where so many takes on social media are considered equally valid, measured just by virality. It is the kind of ChatGPT mentality where how often something is repeated or the number of clicks on a website can influence results, with no regard to its truth value. The war against elitism may have come at the expense of standards and good sense. Reclaiming elite This impulse to drag discourse to the same level – usually downwards – has the right intentions, timely given that, for so long, highly selective elitist standards have been imposed as objective metrics. To right the ship so discourse is levelled upwards though, perhaps elite can be thought of as separate from elitism, rehabilitated without the corresponding concentration of resources and power. This should be expanded so that who is elite becomes not just about education but also because of other qualities – role models people can aspire to in different contexts. What constitutes an elite has always been reliant on man-made barometers, negotiated by the community. There should be no shame in aspiring to be elite. Anti-elitism should not mean an absence of the elite, but that all who put their heart and minds to it should have a fair shot at claiming its pedigree, or getting closer to it. It is a lifelong dusting off of mediocrity, and it begins with first recognising what is good. Hear Me Out is a new series where young journalists (over)share on topics ranging from navigating friendships to self-loathing, and the occasional intrusive thought. Check out the Headstart chatbot for answers to your questions on careers and work trends.
