8 November 2003

SPEECH BY MR CHAN SOO SEN, MINISTER OF STATE FOR EDUCATION & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND SPORTS AT THE LAUNCH OF "OCEAN ECO-CAMP" FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS CUM PRIZE PRESENTATION CEREMONY FOR POSTER COMPETITION, ON SATURDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 2003, AT 1700H AT SENTOSA UNDERWATER WORLD

1. I am happy to join you today at the Ocean Eco-Camp 2003. I commend Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Underwater World Singapore for jointly organising it for our secondary school students.

2. I trust that this two-day camp will be a useful time of discovery for our student participants and that they will bring home precious lessons on how to protect the environment, how to relate to their peers and how to play an active role in our community.

3. How do we protect the environment? To begin, we need to be convinced that it is our responsibility to take care of the natural world that houses and feeds us. The theme of this year's Clean and Green Week, "Environmental Ownership", is an apt reminder that we are all joint owners of our environment. As joint owners, we each have an important part to play in preserving our environment. As the theme of the eco-camp is "Living in the Ocean," we will focus on what we can do to help conserve marine life and stop pollution of the waterways and the ocean.

4. Our everyday actions can have an impact on the seas around us. A careless or unthinking act such as littering, can affect the marine environment. This is because litter and other pollutants can be easily washed down the drains, into our rivers and seas. Let me use the example of a plastic bottle, which to many of us is only a harmless piece of litter. When it gets into our rivers and seas, unsuspecting marine animals like the sea turtles, can mistake it for their living prey, such as a jellyfish, and swallow it. The result, as you can guess, is the poor marine animal will die from choking or internal injuries such as intestinal blockages.

5. Other socially irresponsible acts can easily upset the delicate balance of the marine eco-system and threaten marine life, such as the dumping of fish and turtles into our rivers, reservoirs and public ponds. Recently, there was a news report on the Luohan Yu which some people have called Monster Fish as a result of fish breeders' experiments gone wrong. The report said that fish breeders emptied the sickly or deformed Luohan fish into our rivers and public ponds because they no longer found them attractive. The fish breeders defended their actions, saying that at least they did not flush the fish down the toilet bowls. Unfortunately, they missed the point that dumping the fish into the public ponds could upset the ponds' ecology because the fish would compete for food with the other species in the ponds and even spread diseases and infect other fish.

6. I hope that by participating in the eco-camp, our students' eyes will be opened to the numerous ways they can learn to be socially responsible and develop a heightened awareness of their part in preserving our natural environment. It is my hope that they will become ambassadors for the environment, and help to spread the message to the various communities on how we all have a part to play in keeping Singapore and the ocean green and clean.

7. Even as the 45 young people learn about the environment and how to relate to one another, I hope that they will also emulate the example of the 11 students from Ngee Ann Polytechnic who have put in time and effort to be green volunteers and help run this camp. These students have understood the need to play an active role in the community. Their civic-mindedness deserves praise and should be emulated.

8. It leaves me now to wish all student participants and the green volunteers a very fruitful and enjoyable camp.