President’s Message

Greetings to friends and partners in Pest Management industry,

I humbly send my well wishes to all of you as the acting President of Singapore Pest Management Association (SPMA) for the remainder of the term 2018/2021. The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent circuit breaker measure have proved challenging to all of us and we stand in solidarity, not just with our fellow brethren in Pest Management sector, but also with fellow essential workers in all sectors such as Healthcare, Logistics, Waste Management, Environment Management, Food & Beverages, and many others.

It only seemed like yesterday when the breaking news of a new form of coronavirus (later named as Covid-19) came in December 2019. Most of humanity were busy preparing for year-end closing and festive seasons. By end of January 2020, Covid-19 has reached pandemic status and gained foothold our shores in an unprecedented scale, even challenging the experience and expertise of those who lived through SARS pandemic of 2003. Covid-19 has become the world's crisis.

I will quote 35th USA President John F. Kennedy in his definition of the word "Crisis"

Crisis 危机 (Weī Jī):
When written in Chinese, the word ‘Crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents "Danger" (危) and the other represents "Opportunity" (机).

While Covid-19 virus continues to spell illness and death especially to the vulnerable demography, it also challenges the economy and livelihood of millions in Singapore. While Pest Management sector was categorised as Essential Service, manpower shortage and continuing vector threat has become and continues to be obstacles for pest management businesses. Malaysia-Singapore border closure has cut off a significant manpower source of Malaysians commuting trans-border daily pre-circuit breaker. When foreign worker dormitories later become a major singular Covid-19 concern, pest management businesses lost even more manpower from this focus quarantine group. Shortage of masks, hand sanitizers and other PPEs steadily grew as supply chain disruption brought by many source countries' lockdown cascade day by day. All these scenarios unfolded as the dengue cases continue to rise in the background and threaten Singapore population confined at homes. Disruptions on vector control programmes in mosquito, housefly, rodent and cockroach hotspots such as construction sites and kitchens become an obstacle on top of another.

However, in all these seemingly never-ending chain of challenges, there presents opportunities. Pest management businesses were forced to adapt new business models, innovative technology and digitalisation in order to survive. Tele-commuting, digital platforms and new service offerings has become the new normal. While it is ironic that it takes a crisis to force innovation and adaptation, such new changes promise increased efficiency, productivity and effectiveness even for peace time. During this crisis as well, the unity of Pest Management industry to survive this hurdle has been demonstrated more strongly than before. Information gathering, resource sharing and moral support has united each one of us, even in the middle of uncertainty and confusion brought on by constantly evolving information of Covid-19.

We are very grateful to our government and healthcare workers who are on the frontline to fight the transmission of Covid-19. We thank National Environment Agency (NEA), Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), Ministry of Health (MOH) and other agencies for working with us, advising us and keeping us updated on the development of Covid-19 and circuit breaker, for the sake of our workers' health and safety. Most importantly, the nation owes it to each essential service business and its workers who persevere during such demanding time.

As Phase 2 kicks in and economy regains its momentum, the threat of Covid-19 still looms overhead but government, businesses, medical and research have gained foothold on managing the threat better than when it started. In SPMA, our battle continues to manage disease vectors that have taken advantage of circuit breaker restrictions to proliferate. The journey may not turn easier but we are optimistic of everyone working together in strength to overcome this. We look forward to crucial industry information dissemination, advancement of pest management knowledge, professionalism and technology, as well as focussed collaboration with industry partners and agencies for common good.

I therefore humbly continue to seek each one of you for your guidance and support as our SPMA council endeavours to bring the industry through this challenging time together.

Together we strive to serve,
Albert Lee