PM Lawrence Wong at the Launch of Jobs Nearby @ CDC (Oct 2025)

Mayors
SPS Shawn Huang who is our host adviser
District Councillors
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

Good morning and I am very happy to join all of you today for the launch of Jobs Nearby @ CDC – the latest initiative by our CDCs to improve the lives of residents.

Role of the CDCs

As you have heard just now from Mayor Low, CDCs have come a long way since they were formed in 1997.

Over the years, they have implemented many meaningful programmes to strengthen community bonds and build a more inclusive society. They have done so not just on their own, but through many partnerships. Mobilising our wider community businesses, schools, Social Service Agencies, and volunteers – so that we can all work together to build a better Singapore.

And there are many such programmes across our CDCs like the CDC Emergency Relief Funds which provide residents with support when they face sudden crises or Walking Trails @ CDC which promote active lifestyles. And the Law Awareness Weeks @ CDC which promote awareness and understanding of the law – through partnerships with Pro Bono SG, our university law faculties, and the Singapore Corporate Counsel Association.

Of course, the most popular initiative by far is the CDC vouchers. It was started by our mayors during the Covid period as a simple paper-based and targeted scheme to help heartland merchants and hawkers who were impacted by the restrictions during Covid, restrictions which you all may have forgotten, like Circuit Breaker, but these impacted our businesses and we wanted to help them. So the mayors started the idea of a CDC voucher. It was a very small scheme, but since then, the CDCs have evolved and upgraded the voucher scheme significantly.  We have made it into an easy-to-use digital platform. They have on-boarded many heartland merchants and hawkers by helping them adopt e-payments and digital payment systems. And so CDC vouchers have now become a nation-wide scheme to help Singaporeans cope with cost-of-living pressures. And this year in the Budget, when MOF decided to give a one-off SG60 bonus to all Singaporeans, all adult Singaporeans, we decided to distribute this bonus through the same CDC voucher platform –and these CDC and SG60 vouchers have been very well received.

All this would not have been possible without the hard work of our Mayors, volunteers and CDC staff, as well as our many partners, so to all of you today, I would like to say a very big thank you.

Launch of Jobs Nearby @ CDC

Going forward, the CDCs will continue to play a very active role in nurturing this spirt of volunteerism and helping Singapore strengthen our social fabric and becoming a better we-first society. As you have heard just now, there are many initiatives that are underway but today, the CDCs are ready to launch a new major nation-wide initiative and this is to address one of the most pressing concerns that Singaporeans have, which is jobs.

There are still job vacancies in our economy right now. Unemployment remains relatively low. But Singaporeans can sense that the job landscape is changing so there is rising anxiety, we recognise that The anxieties are partly due to near term uncertainty created by the US tariffs as well the changing business environment, which means businesses are holding back on their expansion plans and holding back on new hirings.  But the uncertainty is also because of new technologies like AI that are starting to change business processes and job requirements.

So how do we respond to all these new trends? Our starting point and most important focus is to still to keep our economy strong, dynamic and vibrant, and to ensure that we can navigate the rapid changes in the external environment.  And that is something that DPM Gan and the ministers in the Economic Resilience Taskforce and the Economic Strategy Review committees are focussed on.  And they are looking at different ways in which we can refresh our strategies and steer our economy forward. But at the same time, we cannot just leave the creation of good jobs and the matching of skills to new demands to the market. These things do not just happen by chance. We have to be proactive at this. And that is why when EDB brings in a new investment into Singapore, it is not just counting the number of factories or the dollars of investment put into Singapore. We specifically look at the jobs created for Singaporeans, and we ask, what kinds of skills are required for these new jobs, and how can we train Singaporeans better to take on these jobs? And that is why we have expanded SkillsFuture to help Singaporeans reskill and upskill.  And we have stepped up career counselling and job matching services, to better match job seekers and fresh graduates with these job vacancies. 

So these are efforts being done at the national level and we will continue to do all we can at the national level and we have plans to do more.  

But national efforts alone are not enough, they have to be complemented by community initiatives because some job seekers have very specific needs.  For example, they may prefer to work near home, so as to better balance work and family responsibilities. Or they may prefer to have more flexible work arrangements.  At the same time, heartland businesses and merchants always tell us, they need more workers but they cannot find them. Sometimes these business do not have the HR resources for recruitment, so when they have a vacancy, all they do is put up a poster near their shop, but the word does not get around that there is a vacancy.  And sometimes not all of their vacancies are reflected in the national jobs bank.

So there is a gap, and this gap is best bridged at the local or community level and that is where the CDCs come in.   

And we have seen good examples of this in recent years. 

For example, at North East CDC some years back, then-Mayor Teo Ser Luck pioneered an initiative to match residents with nearby job opportunities and he was able to make use of the CDC’s networks and partnerships with local merchants to do this.

More recently, South West CDC took the idea further. Not just offering job matching services or having job fairs but deploying Job Ambassadors to work with residents. So the Job Ambassadors engage the residents, help understand their needs and provide personalised help and hands-on support through their job search journey.  And these Job Ambassadors previously were doing their work as CDC Ambassadors, so through that engagement on the ground, they have built up an extensive network of business partnerships because of the CDC Vouchers scheme. And now as Job Ambassadors, they are able to bridge between merchants as well as residents. And the results of these pilots have been very encouraging for example, Ms Jariis Tan, whom I met just now, was a stay-at-home- mum caring for her three young children. Earlier this year, she was ready to return to full-time work, but she needed to find a job close to home with flexible hours so that she can continue with her care-giving responsibilities.  And through South West CDC, she secured a customer service role at a logistics firm that fit her needs perfectly. And you heard also, the other residents and job seekers who have successfully secured jobs through this initiative, like Mr Rosman with Focus Security, Mr Ramkannan, and Mr Alex Yee.

So these successful matches give us confidence that we are able to scale up this initiative nation-wide and now our CDCs are ready to launch Jobs Nearby @ CDC across all districts in Singapore.

What will this mean for residents? First, every CDC will maintain a District Job Bank. This is different from our national jobs bank. This is at the district level, and residents can then make of the opportunities of this job bank to find jobs near their homes and the job bank will include vacancies for full time, part-time, and flexible jobs.  Second, the CDCs will have Job Ambassadors to provide customised assistance and end-to-end guidance throughout the job matching process. And third, the CDCs will deploy Community Job Clinics in heartland spaces like our CCs, Resident Network Centres, and coffeeshops to better connect job seekers directly with local employers.

And all of this that the CDCs will do, will complement our national efforts through SkillsFuture, Workforce Singapore, NTUC’s e2i, as well as our many efforts through our tripartite partners. So when we put all this together at the national and at the community level through the CDCs, we really have significant efforts to help Singaporeans secure good jobs.

As a small open economy, Singapore will always be exposed to global ups and downs.  When the world is going well, we feel the boost. When the world slows down, we feel it very quickly as well. We have no control over these external swings.  But with our combined efforts, we can mitigate the impact on our people. So whatever the state of the world or whatever the state of the global economy, we will ensure that jobseekers and workers in Singapore are supported and well-cared for. That is our commitment.

Conclusion

For nearly three decades now, CDCs have been trusted partners in the community – helping residents, strengthening bonds and building a we-first society. 

I am confident that with Jobs Nearby, our CDCs will once again make a meaningful difference – by helping Singaporeans find good jobs close to home, support families, and strengthen our communities.

Together, we will continue to build a more cohesive and inclusive Singapore, where every citizen can look forward to a better and brighter future. Thank you very much.