Enabling Singaporeans to have a secure retirement

I would begin with a short introduction regarding myself to kick start my very first entry in the Blog. Hi everyone, I am Steve, a part-time student from Curtin Singapore who is currently holding a full-time job as a Customer Service Office in a Singapore Statutory Board called Central Provident Fund Board.

Looking for a placement for this attachment module was a huge challenge for me as while I hold my employment contract within the statutory board, I am not to work with any other companies or organizations. Fortunately when I was discussing this problem with my assistant manager, she offered to help me open a few windows of opportunities to perform the attachment within the board itself. Thankfully after 3 full months of negotiation between a few departments, the management and I secured an agreement for me to perform the 20 working-day module with the board’s very own Corporate Communications Department.

For non-Singaporean readers, I would include a slight background about the Central Provident Fund Board. The board’s main objective is to enable Singaporeans to have a secure retirement through a compulsory saving scheme whereby members have to contribute a maximum of 20% of their monthly income into allocated savings account by the board. These accounts are mainly untouchable till the retirement age of 65 but usage for housing purchase and investments are allowed if the members meet certain critical.

Looking back it had already been 3 weeks since my first day with the department. I would always remember my first day in the brand new working environment. My job scope as a Customer Service Officer simply required me to perform ground level communications with members of the public regarding all sorts of policy issues. It was a big shock for me as the first task allocated to me was to prepare a management paper for an Invitation to Quote (ITQ). This paper itself is to be done so that the organization, a government statutory board, could award any contract given to external vendor that would cost more then $3,000 Singapore dollar. All such contract work are compulsory to be awarded through a system called GeBiz so that there would be no biasness while we pick who to award it to.

I am very glade that the management team from the Corporate Communications Department had decided to give me an opportunity to craft such a paper as it had really opened my eyes to how the system actually works for a government statutory board in Singapore. During the process itself, it also highlighted to me the importance of many Public Relations related skills that I had never placed into practice other then during class presentation. One such thing would be preparing and delivery a client brief in real life.

I am looking forward to the different experience that I would gain from working with the department.

With that I would be ending my first post. I really look forward to sharing with all of you what I would learn in my coming weeks of the module. Bye!!