In line with our Labour Movement’s theme for May Day this year – Every Worker Matters – every domestic employee matters, too, as they are often the ones that help care for our loved ones and families. As such, the Labour Movement worked through the Centre for Domestic Employees (CDE) to appreciate our domestic employees for their tireless sacrifice and hard work with the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) May Day Domestic Employees Celebrations.
This year’s celebration with our domestic employees was held at Wild Wild Wet, one of Singapore’s largest water parks, where some 2,000 domestic employees were treated to the park’s water rides, carnival game booths, a mass workout and water tele-matches. Guest-of-Honour Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Manpower and Education Low Yen Ling also participated in the activities to celebrate the day with our domestic employees.
In addition to the fun-filled activities, 25 children from NTUC First Campus’ My First Skool (MFS) also put up a heartwarming performance for the domestic employees. Today’s celebration is a wrap-up of the efforts by NTUC and CDE to partner all 142 MFS centres island-wide in a month-long campaign to encourage some 11,000 preschoolers to appreciate domestic employees. This is in line with the objective of inculcating values of empathy, respect and appreciation among the young.
To further appreciate our domestic employees, CDE also invited various partners to provide freebies, promotional perks as well as fringe activities throughout the day. These include free health screening, food and beverages, goodie bags as well as special promotional rates for telecommunication services. The partners are Aptiv8, Health Promotion Board, POSB, SATA CommHealth, Singapore Red Cross, Singtel, Sosro (Teh Botol), StarHub and The Salvation Army.
Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, Assistant Director-General of NTUC and Chairman of CDE said, “It is important for CDE to not only focus on the hard issues like those related to our domestic employees’ employment or welfare, but also to organise fun activities – like today’s NTUC May Day Domestic Employees Celebration – to allow them to relax, recharge and enjoy their time-off. Just as they have invested time and energy into caring for Singapore families, we too have a responsibility to take care of them and this requires an all-stakeholders approach. We are grateful towards Wild Wild Wet; our preschoolers and their parents, teachers and management from My First Skool; and all our other partners for coming onboard to collectively appreciate our domestic employees on this very special day.”
