REMARKS BY MR ONG YE KUNG, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND COORDINATING MINISTER FOR SOCIAL POLICIES, AT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW ON UPDATED SALARY GUIDELINES FOR THE COMMUNITY CARE SECTOR, AT ALEXANDRA HOSPITAL

1.             Good morning. Happy New Year, everyone. It is a tradition in MOH that the Minister as well as the other Political Office Holders to visit hospitals and our healthcare institutions on the first day of Chinese New Year. I know sometimes our visit disrupts your work further, but it is an important thing to do. Because even on Chinese New Year, and in fact, any public holiday, healthcare workers continue to work hard. So, it is our way to show appreciation and respect to all our healthcare workers. Thank you very much.

2.             And to all the patients that I have met and who are now staying in our hospitals, I wish all of you a smooth recovery.

3.             Last year, during my visit, I announced a plan to increase the salary packages for a few big groups of healthcare workers – mainly nurses, pharmacists, allied health professionals, administrative, ancillary, and support staff as well. And all those were implemented in July last year.

4.             So, of course when I announced it last year, there was a group that said, “How about us?” And today, I would like to make some announcements about that, and that is for our Community Care Organisations (CCOs) staff. I visited St Luke’s Hospital this morning and met with several of them.

5.             MOH will be issuing our updated salary guidelines for CCO staff. There are about 23,000 of them.

6.             The updated salary guidelines will involve about a 7% or more increase in the total annual remuneration for this group of 23,000 staff. Of course, when we increase staff salaries, the cost of operations increases for the CCOs, so we will be supporting the CCOs. There will be a first tranche of support of around $100 million to help defray the cost of higher salary for our CCOs. And of course, at the same time, as I have announced last year, we are also increasing the subsidy for long-term care – which is basically what the CCOs do, in terms of nursing homes, Senior Care Centres (SCC), as well as Home Personal Care (HPC). These sort of services are what CCOs provide. We are also increasing the subsidies for these services for Singaporeans, and that will come into effect in July this year. So, this is quite a significant move for us.

7.             In the next couple of months, we will be issuing the details of the salary guidelines. CCOs will then need to digest them, make their necessary plans, and I think it should be ready for implementation end of this year, or early next year. So, to all our CCO staff, hope you have some patience. In time to come, all this will be implemented. And I hope that with this move, we continue to make healthcare an attractive career in every part of the healthcare system – whether it is in the acute hospital, outpatient or in a community care setting. That way, I hope more people will join healthcare to do this very meaningful work for Singaporeans.