Speech - Address by Ms Low Khah Gek, CEO/ITE, at Virtual Signing Ceremony for Company Training Committee MOU & unITE with nEbO MOU, on Tue 13 Oct 2020, 1145 AM

Secretary General of NTUC Ng Chee Meng

Chairman/ITE Board Andrew Chong

CEO/NTUC Club Lim Eng Lee

CEO/e2i Gilbert Tan

General Secretary/AUPE Sanjeev Kumar Tiwari

President/UITS Paul Sim

Chairman/AUPE ITE Staff Branch Anbuselvan Ramachandran

Friends of NTUC

ITE Colleagues and Students

Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

1           Indeed 2020 has been a rather unusual year because of COVID-19, Nevertheless, at ITE, we know the work of developing our staff capabilities, providing training for students and adult learners as well as helping them to secure jobs, must continue. Quietly, our ITE staff have been very busy. Today’s signing of two MOUs is the result of our collective determination to continue to forge new partnerships, initiate new programmes and expand new possibilities for all our staff and students.

ITE-UITS-AUPE MOU

2              The first MOU is between 3 parties: ITE, UITS and AUPE, to set up an ITE-Unions Company Training Committee (CTC).  

3              Sec-Gen Ng Chee Meng, we have been listening to all your speeches. My two union chiefs [Paul and Anbu] and I heard you spoke at various union and HR-related events and conferences. You highlighted the benefits of CTC and urged all companies and organisations to invest in enabling all their staff to upskill or re-skill, and to keep pace with the transformation in industry, jobs, workplace skills and the economy. This message resonates with us in the ITE management, UITS and AUPE ITE Staff Branch. Hence today we are signing the MOU to set up the ITE-Unions CTC.

4              In recent years, our teaching staff are really feeling the acceleration of industry transformation and our UITS branches at the 3 colleges have been working hard to create learning and sharing opportunities for the lecturers. [For this, I want to thank Farhan, Samuel and William, the Chair of UITS Branches at College Central, College East and College West, for taking the initiative to lead these professional sharing and development efforts.] Nevertheless, despite the fact that we provide staff with opportunities for professional development, today’s signing and the setting up of this formal ITE-Unions CTC underlines our joint commitment to grow our people, as well as to enable them to rise above the adoption of technology, re-design work processes and the new skills demand placed on them. Going forward, ITE and the two unions will multiply our partnership efforts to strengthen our staff’s capabilities, agility and efficacy.

5       One new initiative that the ITE-Unions CTC will be undertaking in the coming months, is to promote the role of Workplace Training Ambassadors or equivalent staff who drive workplace training, upskilling and reskilling of employees in their respective companies. ITE will work with them to co-develop and implement workplace training, CET courses, as well as support them to reach out to their co-employees through various Unions & their Affiliates.

ITE-e2i-NTUC Club MOU

6       The second MOU is between these 3 parties: ITE, e2i and NTUC Club. This partnership will focus on the development of our students and supporting their employment.

7       ITE’s collaboration with the NTUC Club youth arm, nEbO started in 2007 and our students’ participation in various activities have really enriched their exposure to the world of work and the needs of the community. Our students will also get to work alongside the union leaders and develop leadership and entrepreneurship skills. We will be seeing some of their activities and projects in the video later.

8       This MOU includes e2i who is also committing themselves to support ITE in ensuring employment opportunities and job placements for our ITE graduates, especially during this period of sluggish economy.   

Conclusion

9       With the signing of these two MOUs, we are set for an exciting journey ahead. We look forward to new ideas, new strategies, and new programmes that these two very synergistic collaborations will bring about.

10     I go back to the song ‘I Look to You’. We have always been very impressed by our students’ singing and indeed I think it is a very well-performed song. The quality of the singing is superb which is why I asked for the song to be played today at this platform; partly to remind us about the work that we do, our investment in our young, and how our young look to us. As what Sec-Gen has said “I look to you”, there are many facets to it. Now I will rephrase it to say that we look to each other, we look to our partners - NTUC, AUPE, our unions, our union branches in ITE -, we look to our staff, we look to our industry partners. We look to each other, so that we can continue to create and open up new opportunities for our staff, students, and the adult workers out there, and to uplift many lives together.

Thank you.