Jubilee Post News & Views
Special Desk
Singapore is expecting to have most, of its economy back on track in June, and this is what trade minister Chan Chun Sing has said recently.
Singapore the, city-state has one of the highest numbers of coronavirus infection cases in Asia, with more than 34,800 people affected so far, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Majority cases being associated with infection clusters in dormitories that house foreign workers engaged primarily in labor-intensive construction jobs.
Singapore had imposed restrictions in early April to blunt the spread of the outbreak, and temporarily closed schools while asking most offices to switch to work-from-home policy. From Tuesday, measures are set to be eased in phases.
IN phase one, we will have 80% of our economy back on track. Then the last major remaining sectors will be retail and F&B, which we hope to reopen by the end of month,” Chan told news agency.
A section will be allowed to return to work in the first phase, though businesses will still encouraged to work from home whenever possible. Schools will also be reopening though students will continue learning from home on some days.
Chan said the government has worked with companies and workers to put in place the necessary measures for the work environment, transportation and social distancing in order to “open safely, and most importantly, to open sustainably.”
Singapore will monitor the effects of increased activity in the first phase and if the community infection rates remain low over the subsequent weeks, it would move on to the second phase.
Chan said that the transmission of the virus through communities has stabilized in recent weeks, but it would take Singapore more time to clear through the worker dormitories and identify all of the cases, including the asymptomatic ones.
Singapore was one of the earliest countries outside China to report cases and it could initially contain infection. Later, large outbreaks in the packed dormitories led to a spike in infection cases.
