Chee Soon Juan invites cleaners & security guards to his café for lunch

Opening his doors once more to less-recognised groups of people, Chee Soon Juan invited cleaners and security guards to his café.

As part of his café Orange & Teal’s first year anniversary, he “continued to reach out to our friends who keep the Rochester Mall clean and safe by treating them to the café’s best dishes”.

In a Facebook post on Friday (Jul 8), Dr Chee wrote that they had originally invited the cleaners and security guards for lunch but “in their usual self-effacing manner, they said “pai sei” and didn’t want to bother us”.

“And so, we gave them all take aways, assisted in part by those who gave through our pay-it-forward initiative”, Dr Chee wrote.

Last year, in a similar initiative, Chee Soon Juan invited two marginalised groups of people in Singapore to dine at his café; cardboard collectors and poor elderly people.

In a Facebook post on Friday (Aug 13), Dr Chee wrote: “Rather than indulge in self-glorifying parades and making grandiloquent rally speeches, society should commemorate our independence by lifting up the poorest among us”.

He noted that for years he had always spoken against a system that did not pay much attention to the weak and vulnerable.

“Well, now I have an opportunity to do something about it, albeit in a small way. I’m inviting them for lunch at our café”, he wrote. The Secretary-General of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) Dr Chee called for anyone who knew cardboard collectors or poor elderly people to make arrangements to bring them over to the café.

Chee Soon Juan opens his café to cardboard collectors and poor elderly