Ten social work pioneers who laid the groundwork for improving lives in Singapore were honoured yesterday.

For their contributions in the last 30 years, they were presented with tokens of appreciation by Social and Family Development Minister Tan Chuan-Jin at the 10th annual Social Workers’ Day yesterday.

More than 500 social service practitioners attended the event at Gardens by the Bay.

Speaking at the event, Mr Tan said: “They have set the foundation for social work in Singapore. They have made a difference to the lives of the people they reach out to, and have been a source of guidance and inspiration for all the very young social workers today as well.”

Among the pioneers honoured was Professor Tan Ngoh Tiong, former dean of the School of Human Development and Social Services at SIM University, who decided to embark on a career in social work in 1975.

Prof Tan’s contributions include serving as vice-president of the International Federation of Social Workers, and twice serving as president of the Singapore Association of Social Workers (SASW).

He said: “If you want to do good for as many people as you can, for as long as you can, you need to be a trained professional with a purpose, values as well as knowledge, and that’s why I enrolled in social work.”

Another pioneer, National University of Singapore senior lecturer Rosaleen Ow, said: “Society is increasingly having sub-groups popping up, people we didn’t notice before. We can no longer put our heads in the sand and say that we don’t want to work with people who are different.

The theme for this year’s Social Workers’ Day is “honouring diversity”, SASW said in a statement.

Ms Agnes Chia, the president of SASW, which organises Social Workers’ Day, said social workers should recognise and avoid judging the wide variety of marginalised groups, such as disabled people, single parents, prisoners or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

She said: “It is important to provide the fraternity of social workers with a platform to come together and discuss the core principles of social work, so as to continually guide our practice.”

Social workers, of whom there were about 800 in Singapore in 2012, could also help change social structures and policies to ensure everyone has a share in the social and economic benefits of growth, the SASW statement said.

linyc@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 16, 2016.
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Singaporeans could each, in future, be issued with an e-identity card (e-IC) that can be used for all online transactions, including those with government agencies and commercial firms such as banks.

The Government is mulling over advanced technologies, believing that an e-IC would better protect online identities, as threats of fraud and identity theft mount.

The Straits Times understands that the e-IC, which would sit in the cellphone SIM card, does not replace the physical identity card.

An e-IC would also allow people to ditch their multiple e-banking tokens with different banks, and remove the hassle of remembering different usernames and passwords.

It would be similar to the kind of e-IC that is in use in places such as Hong Kong, Estonia and Finland.

In tender documents seen by The Straits Times, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) said: “Digital identification and authentication are growing in importance. Today, identity is a core enabler for a wide range of services.” The Mobile Digital ID, as the e-IC project is now called, would sit in the cellphone SIM card, according to details in the tender, which closes on March 31.

The Mobile Digital ID will be based on advanced encryption techniques, known as public key infrastructure (PKI), that are more secure than and could supersede the use of one-time passwords (OTPs), which are delivered via SMS or generated by a security token.

The IDA believes the idea has potential to work in Singapore, which has among the highest mobile penetration rates in the world, hovering at 150 per cent.

This means each individual has at least one cellphone.

The IDA is looking for contractors to design and build the system for a four-month trial with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and Ministry of Health.

While no timeframe was given for the project, a trial will begin as early as next month to assess its ease of use and whether it meets needs.

Today, people need to remember their usernames and passwords to log into a website. For some transactions, they need to enter an OTP.

With the proposed system, authentication is done by entering and sending a personal identification number (PIN) tied to the Mobile Digital ID account via SMS.

With PKI, hackers will not be able to capture the PIN even if they intercept an SMS. Fraudulent transactions on fake websites will also not be possible as the encrypted PIN must match the user’s record in the central system.

If the owner loses his cellphone, he will have to report its loss as he would a lost identity card.

Scammers will only be able to use the e-IC on the cellphone if they know the owner’s PIN.

Mr Aloysius Cheang, Asia-Pacific managing director of global computing security association Cloud Security Alliance, said: “The investment will be huge for such a system, although it seems much easier for even the uninitiated and promotes e-commerce on the go.”

This article was first published on March 16, 2016.
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Before the year began, Punggol resident Sue Bing Hao was concerned about whether he could find convenient childcare options for his four-year-old daughter.

“There are a lot of young families here and I’ve heard of cases where parents had to travel up to 40 minutes to take their kids to childcare,” said the 30-year-old interior designer.

But the opening last month of a new jumbo childcare centre at Punggol Waterway Point that can accommodate 375 children made the question moot. His daughter now goes to NTUC’s My First Skool (MFS), a five-minute LRT ride from their home.

Most childcare centres set up in HDB void decks can usually admit only about 100 children but this one in the neighbourhood mall is bigger – and means a shorter waiting time for parents. Mr Sue waited six months to enrol his daughter at this childcare centre, while other parents in Punggol, a new estate with many young families, had to wait one to two years.

It was officially launched yesterday by NTUC secretary-general Chan Chun Sing, who first brought up the idea last year of opening bigger childcare centres to cater to growing demand.

MFS also said yesterday it would be expanding enrolment from the current 13,000 to 20,000 by 2020. It currently has 123 centres and plans to build more. This is in tandem with the Government’s plans to add 20,000 more childcare places between 2013 and 2017.

The new childcare centre, for children aged between two months and six years, is the anchor operator’s largest centre to date. Anchor operators receive government grants and priority in securing Housing Board sites for centres in exchange for keeping fees below $720 a month, among other things.

Three jumbo MFS childcare centres are slated to open in Edgefield Plains in Punggol, Jurong West and Sengkang by the third quarter of this year. They each can take in between 200 and 500 children.

NTUC First Campus chief executive officer Chan Tee Seng said that the number of staff will grow from the current 3,500 to around 5,000 by 2020. The staff-to-child ratio depends on the age group, and is 1:20 for six-year-olds and 1:8 for two-year-olds.

Mr Chan Chun Sing said he was heartened to see the concept bear fruit. “I’ve never understood why we used to constrain ourselves with the void-deck structure with small centres of 50 to 100 each… (This is) a tremendous opportunity for us to convert (retail) space for community use and have the children closely integrated into the community.”

yuensin@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 16, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.