Er. Dr. Lee Bee Wah’s speech during debates on MCCY’s Budget
A five-storey regional library, a 20-court badminton hall, six swimming pools and a 5,000-seater stadium with a FIFA-approved football pitch are some of the facilities residents can enjoy when the new town hub at Tampines opens progressively from the end of 2016. When there is such news, do you know what the reaction of my residents is? I will receive a lot of emails.
Yishun is one of the larger and faster growing towns in Singapore. We have over 50,000 households today, and nearly 6000 households moving in this year and next. These new households will consist mainly of young adults and young families. They will have a very large demand for sporting facilities.
Already, our existing facilities are not enough to cope with the population. Residents are finding it difficult to have access to their favourite venues and sports on a regular basis. Yishun urgently needs more sports facilities, and in greater variety.
Yishun Swimming Complex (source: myactivesg.com)
There is only one swimming complex to serve the entire Yishun town. It has only 3 pools, which consist of one competition pool, one teaching pool and one wading pool. By contrast, Queenstown, which has about 20,000 less residential units, has a swimming complex with 5 pools. On top of that, residents tell me that the pool is very rundown. When they go swimming with their friends and relatives in other parts of Singapore, they feel very envious of the beautiful and modern swimming pools elsewhere. They look forward to water play facilities like those in Jurong East swimming pool.
I have been bringing up this request for a few years, and I will keep bringing it up as long as residents’ needs are not addressed. The Yishun Swimming Complex urgently needs to be refurbished, redesigned and expanded. Under the 1.5 billion dollar sports facilities master plan announced in 2014, community sports facilities are supposed to be upgraded and rebuilt. Could the Minister clarify if there are any plans for Yishun, especially the swimming complex? Certainly, I hope the next big announcement of a sporting facility will be for Yishun. Thank you.