SPEECH BY MINISTER CHEE HONG TAT AT THE INAUGURAL LIFT AND ESCALATOR INDUSTRY EXCELLENCE AWARDS 2025

A very good afternoon to all of you. I am happy to join you today at the inaugural Lift and Escalator Excellence Awards 2025.

This event, organised by the Tripartite Cluster for Lift & Escalator (TCLE), recognises and celebrates the vital role that professionals in the industry play to keep our lifts and escalators running safely and reliably every day. And as Brother Melvin mentioned and you saw in the video earlier, there are millions of people who use this and escalators every and their safety is what our workers have worked very hard to ensure.

Singapore’s skyline tells the story of a nation that transformed from a small trading port to a distinctive global city over the last 60 years. We went from low-rise shophouses and buildings, to modern office towers and skyscrapers.

We went from many low rise buildings and shop houses, to now modern towers and skyscrapers. If you see the backdrop behind me, actually, every one of these structures here will need lifts and escalators for people to assess, even the super trees. To reach the top of the super tree, you need to take a lift.

As we continue to optimise our limited land by building upwards and downwards, underground and as our population ages with more seniors who may face mobility challenges, lifts and escalators become even more critical.

Before coming to MND, I was transport minister, and one of the things which we have been working on is to see how we can add more lifts to our pedestrian overhead bridges, especially in the older towns – like in my area, in Bishan-Toa Payoh, where there are more and more seniors who have mobility challenges. In the past, we may not have thought about it much, but today, we need it. They are useful. How do you then provide greater accessibility and ensure safety for our users?

Our high-rise, high-density environment, lifts and escalators are essential to ensure accessibility for all.

Celebrating Excellence

Today, we are honouring 15 outstanding individuals for their dedication and contributions to the industry. Their stories illustrate exactly the kind of transformation that we hope to drive in this sector.

Take for example, Mr Muhammad Zulkarnaen Bin Hashim, a supervisor at Hitachi, who leads a team of 16 maintenance technicians.

He has a track record of zero incidents at work and makes sure that all technicians in his team adhere to safety protocols by conducting regular briefings.

But more importantly, Mr Zulkarnaen is also a patient mentor. He often shares his technical expertise and uses technical challenges as opportunities for his team to learn.

Mr Teo Soon Peng is another example. As a Senior Specialist at Mitsubishi, he maintains the lifts at Suntec City and Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre.

When there was an issue with recurring lift faults in an office tower, Mr Teo managed to identify the root cause of the problem, tracing it back to a power supply issue.

Beyond routine maintenance, he has demonstrated deep diagnostic skills.

Mr Teo is currently pursuing a Diploma in Vertical Transportation, setting a good example for his peers to continuously upgrade their skills, something that we also want to encourage all our workers to go through - lifelong learning for lifelong employability.

A good example is . Mr Ganesh Prasad Vasudevan; I think you saw him in the video earlier. He is a Troubleshooter at KONE who diagnoses and resolves complex technical lift faults.

Through strong technical skills and teamwork, Mr Ganesh Prasad and his team achieved a 20% decrease in breakdown rates and a 30% increase in first-time fix rates over the past 12 months.

He also, like Mr Teo and Mr Zulkarnaen, mentors the next generation of new technicians, and under his guidance, many of his trainees are becoming more skilled and competent enough to troubleshoot complex lift faults, on their own, across Singapore.

So this is a good way to amplify and multiply the impact that we can create by training the younger workers and helping them to acquire higher skills.

I’d like to congratulate to all our award recipients today. You are the backbone, the pillar representing the L&E industry.

Your work is essential in ensuring that our lifts and escalators remain safe, reliable, and well-maintained.

L&E Industry Transformation

As our infrastructure ages and new technologies coming into the market, the entire industry must continue to transform so that we can stay resilient, raise productivity, and uplift the profession.

The progressive wage model that you saw in the video earlier. The important concept there is that this is a tripartite effort, bringing not just the workers, but also the employers and the government together to see how we can uplift both the wages and skills of our workers.

This is something that differentiates it, from the very traditional form of minimum wage, because the minimum wage is just one level, there's no ladder; you just set a number. The minimum wage also does not come with a skills ladder, which is important, because you want the workers to upskill, so that they acquire higher skills and productivity, and hence, higher wages

The government, of course, will do our part.

We give progressive wage credit to the employers to support their employeees. When you pay your workers more, the government give you some co funding. So this is something which is very reflective of how we solve problems here in Singapore - through the tripartite partnership. Tripartism allows us to do more together. Now, BCA supports this transformation through initiatives aimed at raising wages, improving training and working conditions, and also helping our companies and our workers to leverage technology.

The lift and escalator maintenance firms must adopt the progressive wage model as a registration requirement with BCA. This ensures that there's a commitment by the employers to help our workers to uplift their wages, and also to encourage the workers to invest in skills upgrading. To ensure that there's level playing field, government comes in and say, we make this a requirement.

Otherwise, there will be some companies that will do it and others that don’t, and there will then not be a level playing field. So to ensure fairness and to uplift the entire industry, we need a tripartite partnership, which is what we have done.

The PWM provides two career progression pathways for lift and escalator maintenance workers to either progress into supervisory roles or deepen their technical skills to become specialists. The workers can decide, in consultation with employers, which pathway you prefer to pursue. But no matter which pathway you choose, both are good pathways, because you can see the wages and the skills going up

To ensure our technicians are adequately trained and competent, a certification framework was established with the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).

We have made good progress in transforming our lift and escalator professional workforce since the implementation of Progressive Wage Model.

Median wages across all job levels have risen at an average of 14% in 2024 and 10% in 2025, above the baseline wage floor. What is even more encouraging is that the median age of our workforce has come down. We are able to attract more young people to join us, from 46 years to 40 years, over the last two years. This shows that more young professionals are willing to choose careers in this industry.

I hope we are able to retain as many of them as possible. As more Singaporeans are stepping up to join the industry, the number of Singapore citizens and permanent residents in our lift and escalator professional workforce, who are employed under the PWM scheme, has grown by 7% since 2023.

The improved wages and emphasis on continuous upskilling and professional development have repositioned the sector as an attractive career choice for Singaporeans. To be frank, there is more that we need to do together in this area. We are making some early progress, but we need to press on. We need to continue and again, the best way to do this is through our tripartite partnership, working together between government, employers and the unions.

Earlier, in the holding room, we were having a quick discussion, and I was sharing with colleagues that when I was Transport Minister, one of the things that we did together with the unions and our public transport operators was to come up with solutions to real bus tech challenges, where companies would offer problem statements. The students who are currently in ITE, poly, university would participate in these competitions and pit their skills against one another.

You can either have teams comprising of only students, or you can have a mixed team. Sometimes we have students pairing up with industry veterans who can guide them. And in the process of doing this, you achieve two objectives. The first is, we raise the profile of the recognition of this very important work that we do, that our workers do. As Brother Melvin mentioned, a lot of this is behind the scenes. We have a lot of unsung heroes doing this work quietly, day in, day out. When things are moving well, going smoothly, people do not recognise and realise the effort it takes, so it is important for us to find opportunities to celebrate the good work of our workers, our unsung heroes.

And second, when we involve the young people, we give them a stake and a sense of pride. We let them see the purpose and meaning of the important work that this sector offers, and through this process, I hope we are able to attract and retain more young people. We had a good discussion earlier and there was consensus. So let's organise ourselves. Let's get this done. So this year, we are launching the inaugural industry awards to recognise our workers. I hope next year we can have our inaugural Tech Challenge.

Second, on raising Productivity in the industry. BCA has been driving the adoption of Remote Monitoring and Diagnostics (RM&D) solutions since 2022 to help the lifts and escalators industry to level up through technology.

Earlier, few of the colleagues were explaining to me that they use different sensors, predictive maintenance. So instead of waiting for the lifts and escalators to break down before we start to fix them, this RM&D allows us to monitor the health of the equipment continuously and predict problems before they happen.

And we can also then decide which lifts, due to greater usage or any wear and tear, we can go in and do the maintenance earlier, maintain it more regularly.

We don't have to apply the same formula to all this. We can use a differentiated approach based on the data. This shift from reactive repairs to preventive maintenance means fewer unexpected breakdowns and less disruption for users.

With RM&D, maintenance teams can work more efficiently and manage larger lift portfolios with a leaner team. In other words, they are more productive. Lift owners are also able to reap savings through predictive maintenance that could prevent serious and costly damage downstream and improve the reliability of their lifts.

Today, over 1,500 lifts in private residences and commercial developments across Singapore are installed with RM&D solutions and they are serviced by nine solution providers. With more than 20,000 lifts in public housing estates, HDB's upcoming adoption of these solutions will accelerate this momentum further.

Third, BCA has worked with the tripartite partners, to improve the working conditions for the L&E industry through the SS550:2020 standards launched in 2021. These standards mandate better visibility and improved ventilation in our lift and escalator technicians’ working spaces, creating more comfortable environments for them.

The standards also strengthen workplace safety measures by requiring the installation of stopping devices for emergency situations, and mandatory car top toe boards and barricades for better fall protection. These are important things that we can put in place to help provide a safer working environment for our workers.

A More Future-Ready L&E Industry

At the International Built Environment Week held earlier in September this year, I announced that BCA would be implementing a Firm-based Regime for lift and escalator firms from 2027.

Under this new regime, building owners and developers must engage licensed lift and escalator firms for certification of complex installations. This will benefit building owners and developers as they can leverage the collective expertise and resources of firms, as opposed to relying just on individuals. Our lift and escalator professionals will also benefit, because the firms will offer specialised resources and structured training for them to advance their skills, to allow them to build relevant expertise and forge meaningful careers.

This move aligns Singapore's approach with international practices to keep our lifts and escalators operating safely.

Looking ahead, we are seeing more innovative applications of new technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) in the lift and escalator sector. This can help to empower our workforce to deliver more effective and faster services.

One example is KONE's AI-powered Technician Assistant, co-developed right here in Singapore.This tool uses AI to analyse data from KONE’s equipment and draws from its extensive knowledge base to provide technicians with real-time, step-by-step guidance to diagnose and fix issues. Technicians will be able to troubleshoot thoughts more accurately and to resolve issues independently. It's like they have a tool to help them, to augment them, to give them information, give them data, and give them the diagnosis. I think that's something that can help to give our workers greater information and hopefully help them to become more productive and more effective.

With Singapore's ageing buildings, evolving safety requirements and rapid advancements in technology, much of our lift and escalator infrastructure will be upgraded in the coming years.

This represents significant business opportunities for the industry but it also means that we have to solve the earlier problem that I mentioned. How do we attract more young people so that we can also grow our workforce? Otherwise, the business opportunities are there, but you may not have young people to be able to take on those new opportunities.

So, I’d like to encourage our industry and our workers to continue to focus on this area, and work together. Let's continue to upskill and develop the talent that we need so that collectively we are able to seize these new opportunities that will be coming in the years ahead.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by thanking NTUC, TCLE and our industry partners for working closely together with the Government to transform Singapore’s L&E sector.

Our progress would not have been possible without your strong collaboration and support. And I hope this can continue.

There are things that we can do together that we are really starting, but we can go further. We can do more. And there are new things that we can do that we have not yet started,. But no matter what, the important thing is for us to do it together, leveraging on our strong tripartite partnership for the benefit of our companies and our workers, and of course, because we serve a very important group of clients, stakeholders, the public, who use our lives and escalators every day, millions of them, they too will benefit, when we are able to raise standards, improve productivity and adopt new technologies.

So, congratulations once again to all our award recipients. I hope the awards that you are receiving will not only encourage you to continue to further deepen your skills but will also inspire others to follow in your pathways.

Thank you for keeping our lifts and escalators moving safely, reliably, and efficiently.