Gerald Giam to pose questions regarding National Day celebrations during upcoming Parliament sitting

Singapore — Following updates that this year’s National Day Parade would be pushed back to Aug 21, MP Gerald Giam (Workers Party-Aljunied GRC) shared that he would be bringing up a number of questions at an upcoming parliament sitting.

There is currently some trepidation among members of the public regarding the upcoming festivities, with a number of people questioning why the National Day Parade (NDP) is to proceed when dining-in restrictions have been tightened once more.

As such, Mr Giam will be bringing up questions that members of the public might have about the event at one of the next Parliament sittings.

At the start of his post, Mr Giam states that he filed a question earlier this Wednesday (Jul 20) for the Ministry of Defence to look into the reasons for allowing the National Day Parade (NDP) to take place during a period of tightened measures. Singapore has implemented Phase 2 (Heightened alert) once again, which is to be carried out from 22 Jul to 18 Aug.

Many Covid-19 frontliners and essential workers will likely be invited to the event. With this in mind, Mr Giam questioned if the parade could possibly increase the risk of the Covid-19 virus further spreading to others since the attendants are likely to continue interacting with many members of the public after the event is over. While everyone should be thankful to frontliners and essential workers, they should not be exposed to unnecessary risks.

Also, while the National Day Parade is a traditional holiday that the country has enjoyed partaking in, it is more important to wait until the situation is better before celebrating it.

There has since been an update, that the National Day Parade 2021 will be held on 21 Aug instead. Mr Giam acknowledges this in his post but cautions that the number of cases should be monitored before carrying out an event of such a large scale.

Mr Giam wrote that he planned to ask two questions in the parliament sitting on or after Aug 2 to the Minister of Defence. The first was to find out the reasons for giving the National Day Parade to proceed in the midst of Phase 2 (Heightened Alert). The second was if there was a possibility that the event would cause the risk of the virus spreading would rise since Covid-19 frontliners and essential workers will be invited and will interact with many members of the public afterwards.

Several netizens pointed out that there are bound to be rehearsals for the event as well, which could propel a further spread of the Covid-19 virus.

Another questioned if there was a backup plan in case the situation did not improve.

Considering that many people were negatively impacted by the pandemic, several netizens urged that the money be directed towards helping the needy instead.

You Zi Xuan is an intern at The Independent SG. /TISG