5 mayors for new districts to serve everyone

New mayors will lead beefed-up councils to carry out grassroots welfare programmes and help in job placements

By LAUREL TEO

SINGAPORE will be divided into five districts, down from the present nine and each to be managed by a super community development council (CDC).

A full-time mayor will head each of the councils, said Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong yesterday, at the Clean and Green carnival held by the Marine Parade Town Council in Serangoon North Avenue 1.

The five new CDCs will be: North-east, North-west, South-east, South-west and Central.

He also named Mr Othman Haron Eusofe (Marine Parade GRC) as the mayor for South-east CDC and Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon (Jurong GRC) to head the South-west CDC.

The other three mayors will be named in about two weeks' time, after the announcement of the Cabinet line-up, he said.

PM Goh said that the position of full-time mayors would be elevated to the level of parliamentary secretaries or ministers of state (MOS).

"They won't be called MOS. They'll be called mayors. But their salary scale, their grade, protocol-wise, can be as high as MOS," he said, adding that like the MOS position, mayorships could be a testing ground for candidates who have the potential to fly higher among the political ranks.

Explaining the broad roles of these super CDCs, PM Goh said, "Job placement will become a very important function of CDCs, and the job placement should be actively pursued."

The councils, being close to the ground, would also implement more community and welfare programmes, leaving the Community Development and Sports ministry (MCDS) to concentrate on policies and regulations, he said.

They would also look after health programmes like health screenings aimed at the elderly, he added.

Residents in opposition wards would not be left out, he assured.

"This is to reach out to all people, even those in opposition wards, " he said.

PM Goh first announced the concept of CDCs in his 1996 National Day Rally speech. The councils were set up following the 1997 General Election, to improve community bonding and manage a spectrum of social services, from child-care centres to public welfare assistance.

At the moment, there are nine councils.

The seven larger ones - NorthEast, Central, Marine Parade, Tanjong Pagar, Ang Mo Kio-Cheng San, Bukit Timah and Sembawang-Hong Kah - each cover multiple constituencies.

The other two take care of the opposition single wards - Potong Pasir and Hougang.

But the Prime Minister said that there had always been plans to consolidate the nine into five main councils.

"When you have nine, you can't have all mayors as people in charge of CDCs. Nine mayors in Singapore would be too many, so some would be chairmen, some mayors, that was a transitional arrangement."

"But five we believe would be a good number."

After touring the carnival, PM Goh and his Marine Parade GRC team made a three-hour victory parade through the constituency.

To reach out to all

'This is to reach out to all people, even those in opposition wards. I mean the programmes for the old, for example, we're not going to deny the old in the opposition wards from the national health-care programmes. These are national programmes, they are not meant for particular constituencies. So we thought it's better to have larger CDCs to look after the national programmes.'

- PM Goh, on why having larger CDCs will serve better all Singaporeans, even those in the opposition wards of Hougang and Potong Pasir

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