PM Lee Hsien Loong at the Clean and Green SG50 Carnival

Friends and residents, very happy to join you this morning to launch our Clean and Green SG50 Carnival. We did not start off as a clean and green city; you saw the video just now. 50 years ago, our pioneers lived in very basic living conditions; waterways were polluted; the streets were filled with litter; the rivers were full of even worse things. But right from the beginning, our leaders, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues, very much had clean and green, and making this a better place to live in, on their minds. As Mr Lee said in his memoirs, 

“After independence, I searched for some dramatic way to distinguish ourselves from other Third World countries. I settled for a clean and green Singapore”. 

So year by year, together with Singaporeans, we cleaned and greened different parts of the island. We cleaned up the Singapore River and the Kallang River, we improved our public health, sanitation, our waste management and water infrastructure. Lorong Halus dumping ground has become Lorong Halus Park, with the Serangoon River – it is now very beautiful. We also have park connectors and ABC waterways all over the island. Punggol itself has experienced a lot of this, whether it is Punggol Central, West, or North, and Serangoon (Coney) Island I think is the latest addition to our network, which I am going to visit very soon. 

Today, we can be proud that we have built a beautiful and endearing home for ourselves, including a “City in a Garden” with many green spaces and waterways that many of us can enjoy, including the Punggol Waterway Park. 

A few years ago, when we were building this, before it had all come to life, I tried to describe to Singaporeans what the Punggol Waterway would be like, because nobody understood what a waterway was; it is just a line on a map. So in 2008, as Minister Lawrence Wong reminded me just now, he was then working with me, we made a fly through of the waterway to show what it would look like along with houses, trees, bridges, plants along the water, sunset just in the right place, the shopping centre and fireworks. We showed Singaporeans and said this is Punggol 21 Plus. And indeed today we have come to the Punggol Waterway and I think it is better than my video. I think we should keep it like that, make it better than that and then I can show a new video of the real thing with a drone flying through one of these days. Dr Janil Puthucheary will make the video. 

One important ritual which we do year after year, just to remind ourselves of the importance of being clean and green is to plant trees all over the island together. It used to be tree planting day and is now known as the Clean and Green Festival. Mr Lee Kuan Yew started this in 1963 when he planted a Mempat Tree in Farrer Circus. He took it very seriously and for 50 years, every year, he never missed tree planting day, including November last year when he planted a sea teak tree in Tanjong Pagar. We plant these trees not only because it makes a big difference to our living environment, but it is a symbolic act to remind us of our goal to encourage everyone of us to play our part to make this a clean and green Singapore and build a better Singapore for our children. That is what we are celebrating today, so I am very happy that this morning 600 of us got together and planted 200 trees along the Punggol Waterway. This is part of the Clean and Green SG50 Mass Tree Planting this year, which is the largest mass tree planting that NParks has ever organised. Overall, by the end of this year, we would have had 15,000 people involved and we would have planted more than 5,000 trees. 

I am very happy also that in this Clean and Green Festival, we are celebrating those in our community who have gone the extra mile to make it beautiful and green. This includes our grassroots organisations who are passionate about the environment and we are giving awards to several of the outstanding ones, like Woodlands Constituency, which has been very active over the years in protecting the environment, and implementing many of their own initiatives: “Community Effort against High-Rise Littering”, “Let's Keep Our Community Garden Mozzie Free”, and “Bring your own Water Bottle”. Every year, they organise a “Woodlands Environment Day” and a “Woodlands Earth Day”. They are just one of many such grassroots groups doing good work. 

We are also very proud of our Community-in-Bloom (CIB) Programme. It has been very successful. We have 20,000 very enthusiastic volunteer gardeners tending 1,000 community gardens. They have got green fingers and an artistic eye and they guard their gardens well and spruce up the whole neighbourhood and give people a sense of civic pride and a lift in their eyes. One reason they have been able to reach out to people is because they have got CIB Ambassadors – people who not only look after the gardens, but who go the extra mile to rally the community and help others to enjoy gardening. Like Mdm Foziah Yeon, who is the Assistant Superintendent of Muhammadiyah Welfare Home. She has been an active gardener for nine years and has incorporated gardening into the Muhammadiyah Home programmes, as a form of therapy for the children and has also helped to set up a community garden in Temasek Junior College. To Mdm Foziah and all the other recipients, congratulations and keep up the good work.

I hope we can all follow their example – nurture our trees, tend our gardens, and protect our environment year after year. So that the trees and gardens will grow, will blossom and bear fruit and we can enjoy the shade and their beauty and this place will be even more beautiful. 

And so it is the same not just for Punggol or Pasir Ris-Punggol, but for Singapore. If we come together, each play our part, make this a Singapore which is cleaner and greener for one another, and make this a Singapore which is a special place and a clean and green city for many more years and generations to come. Thank you very much indeed.