Getting to know Hong Kah North residents on the agenda ahead of election: Grace Fu

SINGAPORE – Over the next few weeks, Ms Grace Fu – who is the MP for Yuhua SMC 

which is having parts of it absorbed into Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC

– plans to familiarise herself with the Hong Kah North area and the issues its residents face.

Like Yuhua, parts of Hong Kah North SMC have been merged into the new group representation constituency

under the changes to electoral boundaries announced on March 11

.

The new

Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC

will also include Bukit Batok SMC and parts of the existing Jurong GRC, namely Bukit Batok East and Clementi.

Speaking on The Straits Times’ current affairs podcast The Usual Place on March 20, Ms Fu said she is familiar with four of the five wards that make up the new GRC – Bukit Batok, Bukit Batok East, Clementi and Yuhua – since they are served by the same town council.

The existing Jurong-Clementi Town Council serves Bukit Batok SMC and Yuhua SMC, as well as Jurong GRC.

“We have regular meetings because we have the same set of employees who help us manage the municipal issues. So we are fairly familiar with one another,” she said.

“Hong Kah North, on the other hand, is an area that I’m less familiar with.

“Over the next few weeks, I have to catch up, I have to be updated, I have to get myself familiar with the landscape, the topography – where are the hawker centres, where are the coffee shops – and what are the issues that the residents are having,” added Ms Fu, who has been representing Yuhua since 2006.

On the boundary changes, Ms Fu had earlier said that this was expected for Yuhua, as it is a mature estate with a declining number of voters.

Yuhua SMC had the lowest voter count of 20,252 among the single-member constituencies. Under the boundary changes, parts of Yuhua have been absorbed into Jurong East-Bukit Batok GRC, while the remainder will become part of the new Jurong Central SMC. 

During the podcast interview, Ms Fu again noted that while the number of voters in places like Yuhua has been declining as children of the original residents have moved out, new towns nearby, such as Tengah and Bukit Batok West, are growing very quickly.

She said right now the ratio of residents to MPs “is just so high. Although we have very hard-working MPs there, it’s just not even. So we need to even that out. I need to take on more load”.

“As a GRC, we want to serve the residents better. We want to look at how we can draw resources from each of the divisions so that we can support this growing population better – absorbing them in terms of schools, pre-school centres, community centres, transportation nodes, for example,” she said.

“These are all areas where we can find synergies within the GRC to serve the residents of every division.”

She said that with parts of Yuhua now being part of the new Jurong Central SMC, residents have approached her to ask the reason for the change.

“I have to explain to them the cause of this change and, at the same time, assure them that we will have a proper handover, and that I will brief the incumbent properly about the existing programmes, so we hope that there is some continuity,” she added.

Ms Fu, who is also Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, fielded a range of questions during the 45-minute podcast, including on the recent changes in electoral boundaries, the upcoming general election and her ministry’s spending plan for the year ahead.

Asked whether she thinks climate change and environmental issues will be on voters’ minds, Ms Fu said such topics have become election issues in other countries.

But in these cases, climate disasters have disrupted lives, with floods damaging homes or preventing students from going to school, she noted.

Singapore, however, has been taking steps to protect its people from climate change impacts.

“I count my blessings being in Singapore... from the work that has been done by generations of ministers before me, we have actually laid a very good foundation,” she said, citing how the Republic has been expanding its drainage capacity and building dams to prevent flooding.

Flood-prone areas, which are low-lying areas with a history of flooding, have been reduced from about 3,200ha in the 1970s to less than 30ha today, according to the website of national water agency PUB.

“So I think we are in a good position to remove some of these issues from the elections, because people are not being bothered by the outcomes,” Ms Fu added.

While she does not expect these issues to be part of the major electoral topics in the upcoming general election, Ms Fu said she is not ruling it out.

Singapore is in a good position to build infrastructure to help mitigate the effects of climate change. But she noted: “We can never be sure, because if you have a successive period of intense rain... it may become an issue.”

Asked about her experience as a woman in politics, and if she has observed any changes over time, Ms Fu – who joined politics in 2006 – said gender is now less of an issue and there has been greater acceptance from residents.

When she first joined politics, she noted that she was often asked about her sentiments on being a female politician. But this attention to her gender has waned over the years.

Still, she noted that the appearance of female politicians tends to come under stronger scrutiny than that of their male counterparts.

“The spotlight on women in politics remains different. I think the men seldom get (any) sort of feedback on how they dress, how they look on camera,” she said.

“(But for women), how you dress (and) how you carry yourself matter more.”