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 22 October 2009, Thursday

Council Appointment Ceremony 2009

Zainudin Nordin @ 16:41pm

The Council Appointment Ceremony was held on the 19th July 2009.  Here are some pictures from the event

Standing Tall for the National Anthem

Delivering my speech

A group picture with the Prime Minister

Taking questions from the media

Granny quilts by the Silver Co-operative

 
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 20 October 2009, Tuesday

National Orange Ribbon Celebrations

Zainudin Nordin @ 10:56am

The National Orange Ribbon Celebrations held at Bishan Active on July 18  2009, was a memorable one.  3000 people came together, to celebrate and embraced being one people.  Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew who was the Guest of Honour at the event unveiled a nine-foot tall star shaped sculpture.  The sculpture named "Symbol of Graciousness" was filled with Multi-colored  paper stars, each bearing a pledge by Singaporeans to live in harmony.

More than 150,000 pledges have been collected since July . The Orange Ribbon pledge drive is continuing till the Youth Olympics in August 2010.  Log on and be a part of this ground breaking movement by submitting your pledge today. 

 Click on this link  http://orangeribbon.onepeople.sg/2009/

Here are some pictures from the celebrations.  Enjoy!Smile

 

 

 
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 7 October 2009, Wednesday

Mayor's Swearing Ceremony 2009

Zainudin Nordin @ 10:37am

On 29th June 2009, myself and  four other mayors were sworn in by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

 During PM's speech, he highligted three areas of focus for the CDCS : -

 (1) CDCs should encourage and enable self help in the community

 (2) CDCs must continue to build and exploit links within the community

 (3) CDCs must continue to strengthen our social cohesion

Here are pictures from the ceremony

 

 

 

 
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 24 August 2009, Monday

Education Services Union National Day Walk 2009 - Speech

Zainudin Nordin @ 14:25pm

Speech at the ESU National Day Walk 2009

 

A very good morning to you, Brothers and Sisters! Thank you for joining us at the ESU National Day Walk 2009 this sunny Sunday morning. I hope that you and your family enjoyed yourselves during this short 1.5km Fun Walk.

 

This walk is not only part of our efforts to organize family-centric events, but is also organized to celebrate our nation’s 44th birthday.

 

We started 2009 with the worst global recession in 60 years. More than seven months have passed and as it turns out, the global downturn is even worse than the original projection of 1% to 2% that the IMF projected.

 

As an open economy, Singapore is very much affected by the recession. In the first quarter of this year, our GDP declined by 12.7% from the last quarter of last year. Retrenchments exceeded the 10,000 mark, higher than when we were hit by the Asian Financial Crisis in 19998. Unemployment rose from 2.5% to 3.3%.

 

So far, the education cluster has been spared from the massive retrenchments, shorter work-weeks and paycuts that have affected the other industries. We should also not be carried away by the rebound in the second quarter and continue to maintain vigilant about the times ahead and remain cautious.

 At the workforce level, we should enhance our labour productivity potential by making ourselves more employable, multi-skilled and adaptable than workers in other countries.

 

 On the union level, we have introduced the Education Incentive to encourage our workers to continuously upgrade and train themselves. We are also looking at increasing the scholarship budget so that more of our members’ children will benefit.

 

As you know, this year, ESU has been actively raising funds for our members in need through the ESU U Care Fund. The ESU Pledge Card is one of the many welfare initiatives done by the union for YOU and your family! Today, I am proud to announce that we are on our way to meeting the $10,000 collected from the pledge card.

 

Thank you for your generous contribution and for your continued support to the union. Do join us for our ESU 3rd Anniversary Dinner on 10 October 2009!

 

Happy National Day and have a great Sunday ahead!

 

 

 

 

 

 
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 17 July 2009, Friday

Speech at the 62nd IIW (International Institute of Welding) Annual Assembly and Conference

Zainudin Nordin @ 16:57pm

It gives me great pleasure to welcome all of you to Singapore. May I wish you a very successful meeting and International Conference. I would also like to invite you to spend time enjoying the sights and scene of our country. Singapore has much to offer, we are a small but very dynamic country with a varied industry from ship building, marine and offshore industry to power, gas and petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, electronics, banking and trading. You will find our multi racial community that brings with it an array of food, cultures and languages equally interesting. So please find time to venture out from this meeting to enjoy the Uniquely Singapore experience.

 

I understand that your mission is to act as the worldwide network for knowledge exchange of joining technologies to improve the global quality of life. Let me therefore pose you a challenge on how this is going to be achieved with your membership of 53 member countries, each with their own diversified and political agenda. How do you make sure that your agenda is of the right priority and that you have effectively brought about an improved quality of life for the majority of the World’s population. That the voices in your organisation are given adequate considerations and that it is accepted that the concerns of the less developed is also given sufficient attention.

 

I also understand that worldwide, the welding industry is experiencing a declining trend in take up rate for employment in this industry. From welders to welding engineers, our younger generation are not finding the study and employment of the welding arena an attractive proposition and as the technologies and applications of welding plays a large role in our everyday life, we must reverse this trend, or be faced with a significant handicap that will pose a real threat to our future and the growth of our economies, your second challenge is to help find ways to reverse this trend.

 

In Singapore, our shipbuilding, ship repair, building construction and the power, gas, and the petrochemicals industries do apply a fair amount of welding. On this front, we are heavily dependent on skilled welders in the construction and maintenance of the assets from these companies. It is also recognised that the layout of such plants with constrains on free space do preclude the use of fully automated welding robotics and processes. Coupled to this is the competing cost for capital; we have no choice but to be very labour intensive to get our work done. Therefore when we combine this need for skilled welders with the fact that the younger generations of our populations are not taking up such an occupation, this declining trend is posing a very great challenge to our growth. Your hosting of the 62nd Annual Assembly and International Conference here in Singapore is timely and has given me the opportunity to pose you a 3rd challenge ie to find clever and workable alternatives out of this serious predicament.

 

I thank you for being here and while working hard to make this World a better place for all to live in, do not forget also to find time to enjoy the Uniquely Singapore experience. May I wish you all the best and that your meeting here will find more paths to making this a globally better place for all.

 

Thank you.
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