SINGAPORE – Thick smoke was seen in the city on Thursday (March 3) afternoon after a fire broke out in a construction site beside International Plaza on Anson Road.

The fire at the construction site of Tanjong Pagar Centre has been extinguished, and there were no injuries.

The fire involving construction materials “occupying an area of about 10m by 10m, was raging at the ground floor of the construction site”, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said.

SCDF officers and vehicles arrived at the incident site within five minutes of being alerted at around 6pm, it said. The fire was extinguished using two water jets at about 6.15pm.

Photos and videos showed tongues of flame, and a thick plume of smoke emitting from the site.

Marketing communications manager Jamie Chua, 28, said “super dark” smoke could be seen even from her office on the 23rd floor of PwC Building, which is about 800m from Anson Road.

“It looked scary from a distance because there was a lot of smoke,” she said.

Mr Michael Hakim, 28, sent a video to The Straits Times which shows a close-up of the flames.

The business development manager of mobile app Medicloud was leaving his workplace at International Plaza when he saw the fire.

“I saw grey dark smoke coming from the back of the building, and it was a huge fire at the building that was under construction,” he told The Straits Times.

He began filming the fire, and at one point, it appeared to be getting bigger, he said. The construction workers did not seem to know what to do at first, then they started taking down the construction site hoarding, he added.

The police arrived first, and began evacuating people from near the site, he said. They also blocked road access to the area.

When the fire engines arrived, the SCDF officers climbed to the second floor of the building under construction to get a good view of the fire before taking action.

“The fire was unexpected , but there was no panicking. Kudos to the civil defence officers,” he said.

Mr Andy Koh, 27, was leaving work when he saw the fire and took a video of it.

The automobile industry executive said he saw one fire engine arrive at the scene before he rushed off. “There was a lot of smoke and a lot of people were watching,” he said.

The cause of the fire is currently under investigation, said developer GuocoLand Group.

It said in a statement that there were no casualties and all the workers were accounted for. It added: “The safety of our staff and workers remains our top priority.”

joseow@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 4, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

He may be deaf, but 20-year-old Brendan Lau has never let his disability slow down his drive to succeed.

The Millennia Institute student is one of many students receiving their GCE A-Level examination results today (Mar 4). But unlike other students, he has had to work extra hard to pick up English vocabulary, keep up in class and communicate with friends.

Despite this, he has done exceptionally well, even emerging as one of the top five high-scorers in his school’s preliminary examinations last year. In fact, Brendan is so good at his studies, that many of his able-bodied classmates turn to him for help when they are having problems with their work.

Schoolmate and friend Charisse Agustin, 21, describes Brendan as a “really good tutor” who makes learning fun, and encourages her to think about questions or topics she has difficulties with. Instead of going home after school, he sometimes stays behind to help friends like Charisse with their schoolwork, and even shares his notes with them.

Clearly, Brendan has made an impact on his friends’ lives by being generous with his time and knowledge.

“(It is) a joy to be with Brendan every day because he’s really an amazing person,” she said in a text message to AsiaOne, adding that he had helped to look after her even when she fell ill during a school Overseas Community Involvement Programme trip to Batam.

His generosity and kindness has also prompted his friends to take care of him in return.

While Charisse already knew some sign language and could communicate with Brendan, classmate Lena Loke, 20, signed up for a sign language course at The Singapore Association for the Deaf so she could build rapport with him, and help her teachers relay messages and announcements to him.

One of the things Lena respected most about Brendan was his determination to prepare for the A-Level exams despite having scored well on the SAT, and having the option of going to a university for the hearing-impaired in the United States.

“His show of resilience and hard work was very consistent,” she said.

But the pathway of education has not always been so clear for Brendan.

Stricken with a gastrointestinal illness when he was just an infant, Brendan suffered total hearing impairment as a result of the medication he took for the ailment.

Nevertheless, his mother, Madam Fong Lee Ming, 45, did her best to educate him and prepare him for challenges he would face as a student. The family live in a 5-room flat in Redhill with his 19-year-old sister and his father Mr Lau Chin Park, 53, an accountant.

Remembering him as an observant child, the housewife said that she was glad she took the approach of helping him expand his vocabulary at a young age. Not only was he a good reader by the time he was three, he also grew up to be an intelligent young man, and enrolled into a biomedical engineering course in Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

After a year in the course, Brendan was faced with a tough decision. “I realised that I had made a critical error in judgement in choosing to go to polytechnic. I ultimately decided that if I was ever going to make anything out of my life, I would have to follow what I was truly strong in – the arts,” he wrote in a WhatsApp interview with AsiaOne.

With much grit, Brendan left the polytechnic and pursued his interest at Millennia Institute (MI), where he says he encountered a “culture of care”, and found his determination to do better in his studies.

“Prior to being in MI, I didn’t really have a goal or aspiration. Looking back, I think I was living for nothing more than the next day,” he said.

The heavy workload, difficulty navigating lessons without being able to hear, and various responsibilities given to him ignited his drive to face his problems head-on.

“All these things forced me to realise that if I was going to conquer them, I’d have to learn how to be a lot more resilient and conscientious than I was before I came to MI. I also realised that would have to apply not just to my studies, but to my life goals as well.”

It helped that Brendan had supportive parents, who encouraged him and told him: “The only way you can convince yourself that it is your real interest is to be good at it”.

And he has not let them down with his efforts. Noticing the transformation of his attitude after joining MI, Madam Fong says it was the right choice for him to pursue his interest instead of staying on in the polytechnic. She denied the credits of his success, however, choosing to give credit to the “dedicated teachers and the hard work they put in”.

One of his teachers, Mrs Tamilselvi Siva, taught Branden his favourite subject – history. When asked why it was his favourite subject, he praised Mrs Siva for making her classes interesting, and added that he liked to learn about “interesting perspectives on the intricacies of the human condition”.

The history teacher also had high praises to sing of Brendan, calling him “the epitome of perseverance”.

“Never once has he attempted to give less than the best, be it in CCA or his academic subjects,” she said.

Brendan’s interest in history will hopefully lead him to a political science course at the National University of Singapore, where he hopes to enrol with his A-Level results: five As in Literature, History, Economics, General Paper and Chemistry, and a B for Project Work.

There is no doubt that his teachers believe in his ability to achieve what he sets his mind to.

“My advice to him is to follow his heart and embrace all obstacles,” Mrs Siva said, while also reminding him to always be firmly grounded and humble.

Brendan’s home tutor Ms Rose Ho has witnessed how far her student has come, and lauds him for being resilient, responsible, sensitive and mature.

“I have faith he will make good in whatever he sets out to do,” she said.

ljessica@sph.com.sg

Some 3,000 landscape maintenance workers will be able to earn at least $1,300 a month from June 30, up from about $1,100 on average now, with the roll-out of a new wage system in the industry.

These workers can also look forward to skills training and better career progression under the system, which is called the progressive wage model and similar to the one started in 2014 for cleaners.

Under the model, landscaping firms registered with the National Parks’ Board Landscape Company Register have to send at least half of their staff for compulsory training courses by June 30.

By June next year, all the staff in a company must have completed training, or it cannot bid for government landscape service tenders, the National Trades Union Congress said in a statement yesterday.

Nine in 10 of the 270 landscaping firms here are in the register.

The wage model applies to Singaporeans and permanent residents, and will see workers paid according to a tiered scheme. Workers will get a pay rise after they go for training in areas such as improving soil quality or identifying plant growth, and are promoted by their employers.

Minister of State for Manpower Sam Tan said employers can adopt a structured and targeted approach to provide more training and raise the skills of their workers, enabling them to operate more complex machinery, and thus raising their productivity.

“All these will result in a raised salary for the workers,” he said yesterday, during a visit to the National University of Singapore.

He said the wage model is part of the nation’s productivity drive, and the Government would give grants to defray costs. Landscaping companies pay $30 to $150 per worker for a three-day training module, after a 90 per cent government subsidy.

Implementing the wage model has helped Swee Bee Contractor to raise the skills of its workers, said its director Ivan Heng.

“This has improved the productivity of our company as the workers are better equipped to handle new technology,” said Mr Heng, who has already sent 27 workers – half of his staff – for the training.

As of January, over 1,300 workers from 151 landscape companies have signed up for the training courses.

The wage model will also be implemented in the security industry, starting in September this year.

chiaytr@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 4, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

Safeguards targeting rarer coral species to be put in place if seas become too warm: NParks

Even though Singapore has lost over 60 per cent of its coral reefs through extensive land reclamation, its waters are still home to about a third of the world’s hard coral species. But they could still be under threat – this time from warming seas as a result of climate change.

The National Parks Board (NParks) is ready to jump into action if sea surface temperatures creep up to a point that Singapore’s corals are in danger of bleaching.

A coral safeguard programme targeting rarer coral species will be implemented, said Dr Karenne Tun, deputy director of the coastal and marine division at NParks’ National Biodiversity Centre.

“We will collect fragments of these species from as many colonies as we can find, and grow them out in various reef areas as well as in aquaria, to ensure that we are able to maintain the population,” she told The Straits Times. “We will also out-plant them back on the reefs after the bleaching event passes.”

Meanwhile, NParks has initiated monitoring schemes to better understand how elevated sea surface temperatures may influence the photosynthetic responses of corals.

Coral reefs cover just 284,000 sq km of the ocean floor – about 0.1 per cent of the total ocean area – but they support a surprising amount of biodiversity. Around the world, these underwater palaces support about 30 per cent of all described marine species.

In Singapore waters, there are more than 250 species of hard corals. The total reef area here is an estimated 13.25 sq km.

But even as a global climate pact was forged in Paris last December, coral reefs worldwide are reeling from the impact of climate change.

Marine scientists say coral reefs are one of the habitats most under threat, due to the dual effects of ocean warming and ocean acidification. “Ocean warming is a direct impact of climate change that increases temperature stress on corals,” said Dr Intan Suci Nurhati, a coral researcher from Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

When carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, carbonic acid is formed. The increasing acidity will lead to higher rates of erosion of the physical structure of reefs, said Assistant Professor Huang Danwei, a marine biologist from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) department of biological sciences. Current and projected rates of global warming mean many stony corals will expel the symbiotic microalgae living within them and nourishing them, Prof Huang added. But expelling the algae causes coral bleaching.

In October last year, science journal Nature reported widespread coral bleaching. This caused the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to officially declare a global bleaching event on Oct 8, the third in recorded history, after 1998 and 2010.

These were El Nino years, referring to the phenomenon linked to prolonged warmer weather that is expected to continue this year as well, with scientists warning of bleaching events. In 1998, about 25 per cent of corals here died, while 5 per cent of them did so in 2010.

Prof Huang, who runs the Reef Ecology Lab at NUS, said coral reefs can protect shorelines and support recreation and tourism.

“The dive trail at the Sisters’ Islands Marine Park attests to that. We have many more coral reefs that have the potential to become world-class dive sites, right in our backyard.”

audreyt@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 4, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

Space for picnics and events, multipurpose lawn and more greenery are part of plans.

A part of Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) Jurong campus will be transformed into a vibrant public park over the next few years.

The university is seeking ideas from leading architectural firms to develop the 9ha site, which includes the space in front of the Chinese Heritage Centre, Yunnan Garden and Nanyang Lake.

Besides creating space for picnics and events, the plan seeks to showcase the historical significance of Yunnan Garden, the birthplace of Nanyang University in the 1950s.

NTU officials said the space in front of the Chinese Heritage Centre will be turned into an area where large-scale events and gatherings can be held. To create this space, a stretch of Nanyang Drive in front of the heritage centre will be diverted.

More greenery will be added but planting will be carefully curated with a focus on medicinal plants, an area of research interest for the university, as well as trees that offer shade.

Advice will be sought from the National Parks Board on suitable species that are local to the area, and also offer educational value.

The park will include a multi- purpose lawn for student activities and fitness equipment for general use.

NTU’s president, Professor Bertil Andersson, said whenever foreigners visit the campus they are struck by the beauty of the sprawling 200ha campus.

“Yet most Singaporeans, including Jurong West residents, don’t know about it and don’t think of using it for gatherings or picnics.”

He added that enhancing the green spaces will also balance the build-up of the campus in recent years.

“With an enrolment of 34,000 students, more facilities such as teaching and learning spaces and residential halls have been added.

“To balance that, we feel the need to do more to enhance the green spaces and make them more user-friendly.”

He noted that NTU, besides climbing international academic rankings, has also been acknowledged for its beautiful campus.

Three years ago, it made the American Express Travel and Leisure magazine’s list of the world’s most beautiful universities.

NTU alumni welcomed the news to develop parts of the university into a public park.

Said NTU business graduate Alicia Tan, 36, who met her husband, an NTU engineering graduate, on campus: “The NTU campus is close to my heart as it is where I met my husband, on one of my evening runs. My husband and I still go back there to run.

“I have always felt that the lush greenery and open spaces on campus are under-appreciated.

“Turning parts of it into a park will enable more people to appreciate the beauty of the campus and enjoy it.”

sandra@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 4, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

At least 100 events are being held this month, as first anniversary of his death approaches.

As the first anniversary of Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s death approaches, groups of Singaporeans are planning activities to commemorate the legacy of the country’s founding Prime Minister.

At least 100 events are being organised by individuals and community groups this month, People’s Association (PA) deputy chairman Chan Chun Sing said during a visit to Yio Chu Kang Community Club on Wednesday.

These activities include a tree- planting exercise at Jurong Lake Park – a nod to Mr Lee’s campaign to green the country – and a brisk walk at Sembawang Park to celebrate his commitment to stay healthy. The late Mr Lee made it a point to exercise daily.

In Tanjong Pagar, the constituency he represented for 60 years, residents and grassroots leaders will host two events, including a remembrance service at Tanjong Pagar Community Club on March 23.

Mr Lee was more than a leader to the residents, said Senior Minister of State Indranee Rajah, an adviser to grassroots organisations in Tanjong Pagar GRC.

“He was also their MP, with whom they had a close bond and a direct relationship,” she said. “We thought we should do something to remember Mr Lee… we also wanted to look forward, building on his legacy.”

Talented sand artist creates touching SG50 tribute to Mr Lee Kuan Yew

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

YouTube screengrabs

Meanwhile, the National University of Singapore’s Harmonica Orchestra is dedicating its annual concert on March 25 to Mr Lee’s memory. Short clips on his life will be screened alongside songs like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, the opening piece at his state funeral.

“For our Singaporean members, the concert is a good time for personal reflection. And for our members who are not Singaporeans, it is an opportunity to remember the man who made it possible for us to receive a good education in a wonderful country,” said the orchestra’s secretary Le Ngoc Ha Nhu.

Adding to the ordinary folk’s efforts are four remembrance events – three by the PA and one by the Silent No More network.

Silent No More, founded in July last year by 25-year-old Jaromel Gee as a private Facebook group, is made up of People’s Action Party (PAP) supporters who counter negative comments about the party online.

Mr Gee is getting about 150 of its more than 5,000 members to organise a candlelight rally at the Padang on March 23, the day Mr Lee died. He was 91.

Volunteers will hand out electric candlelights to passers-by who will be asked to fill the Padang, where hundreds of thousands of people had queued for hours a year ago to pay their last respects to Mr Lee at Parliament House.

Mr Gee, who owns a trading company and is a PAP member, said the effort is neither endorsed nor supported by the party. He said his decision to organise the rally was prompted by the spirit Mr Lee engendered. “He brought Singaporeans together and we queued for hours to pay our last respects. With this event, we hope to tell Singaporeans to move on, carrying his spirit,” he said.

Snapshots of S’poreans paying tribute to Mr Lee Kuan Yew compiled into a book

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

The PA events will be held at three sites picked for their association with Mr Lee – Tanjong Pagar, Parliament House along the Singapore River, and the Istana Park in Orchard Road.

Panels of photographs and short write-ups on Mr Lee’s contributions will be erected at these sites for people to reflect on his legacy.

The PA is holding the events following queries from several people on whether there would be any events to remember Mr Lee, said Mr Chan, a Cabinet Minister who is also secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress.

“We don’t see it as a session for us to grieve or be sad, but a celebration of Mr Lee’s life work and values, and what he had given us to build the future,” said Mr Chan.

Tanjong Pagar resident Sunny Lim, a retired hawker, plans to attend at least one commemorative event.

Said the 67-year-old: “It’s been a year (since his passing) but we still need to remind ourselves of what he had done for us.”

rachelay@sph.com.sg
leepearl@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 4, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

Eulogies delivered at Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s funeral service

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

Youtube