OPENING ADDRESS BY MR TERENCE TAN, CHAIRMAN, YOUNG SMOU AT THE SMOU & WAVELINK LUNAR NEW YEAR LUNCHEON AND HONG BAO PRESENTATION, 2 FEBRUARY 2017 Our Guest-of-Honour, Minister Brother Ong Ye Kung, Her Excellency, Mrs Dorte Bech Vizard, Ambassador of Denmark, Sister Mary Liew, President of NTUC, Central Committee and flow on members SMOU President and Officials Brothers Robin Foo, Thomas Tay, Exco and members Brother Rob Johnston, Assistant General Secretary of ITF (Welcome to Singapore! And glad that you and your family can join us today) Tripartite partners from MPA, MOM, SSA, SMEF Distinguished guests Ladies and Gentlemen
Good morning everyone! Happy Lunar New Year! I would like to wish all 金鸡报喜, 金祥如意! Introduction Each year, SMOU and Wavelink celebrate the Lunar New Year Luncheon and present Hong Baos to honour SMOU pioneering members as well as the senior citizens from the various community homes. As the Chinese saying goes “饮水思源”, meaning remember the source when drinking water, or remember the roots of where you came from.
Ladies & Gentlemen, without our pioneers and their support, SMOU and Singapore will not be where it is today and it will Not be possible even for SMOU to celebrate its 65th anniversary last year. SMOU believes in living out our core value of “Caring and Sharing”. And what better way to care and share by inviting our senior SMOU members as well as the elderly from various community homes to share an afternoon of joyous celebration with us. Let's give them a round of applause! Today while we are celebrating the Lunar New Year, we will be witnessing the pre-sea graduation of our first cohort of cadets from the Tripartite Engineering Training Award (TETA) Programme. From various backgrounds and different occupations, they went through 9 months of classroom training and are waiting to start their 15 months of ship board training. We congratulate them for taking on this rewarding journey and await exciting stories on their seafaring adventures.
I recalled Brother Ye Kung visited SMOU in August 2009 as the Deputy Secretary General of the NTUC. During that meeting, SMOU Executive Committee members shared with him our heartbeat to train and give Singaporeans a second chance to enter the maritime industry as it is a good career that offers good wages. He walked the talk. Within months, the first cohort of the TNTA Programme commenced in 2010. Brother Ye Kung, thank you for helping to champion the Singapore maritime core, without your help, the TNTA programme wouldn’t exist today. (Applause) And I am pleased to inform you, that today we are already in its 12th Cohort and recruitment is currently on-going for the 13th Cohort of the TNTA Programme and we have trained 300 cadets over the years. We would also like to thank our tripartite partners especially the shipping companies for your strong support towards these programme. Poignant Look into the Shipping Industry The year ahead of us is a challenging year not only for the maritime industry, but also for the different sectors. SMOU is committed to be pro-active and work with our CA companies so that we can value-add to them and ride through the difficult times together. In addition, we also have our members’ interests at heart by setting aside a S$1.1million SMOU Care Fund so that our aging needy members can have a peace of mind should they have any financial or medical difficulties. SMOU is also committed to continue to help our seafarers upskill and invest in training the next generation of seafarers. No matter how strong the headwind may be, I am confident that together with our tripartite partners, we will be able to overcome the challenges in ahead of us.
With that, I wish everyone good health, happiness and a prosperous Lunar New Year.
Thank you! |
