SINGAPORE SPORTS COUNCIL STADIUMS

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SINGAPORE SPORTS COUNCIL STADIUMS:

(Opening hours): 14.

Mr Baey Yam Keng asked the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports why Singapore Sports Council stadiums are open for public use only till 8.30 pm, and whether the opening hours can be extended so that more members of the public can benefit from the facilities.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports (Mr Teo Ser Luck):

Sir, the opening hours of Singapore Sports Council (SSC) stadiums are based on public demand. A demand survey conducted in 2006 reflected that the public supported opening stadiums as early as 4.30 am for early birds to exercise before going to work. The survey also indicated that the number of joggers to the stadiums decreased significantly by about 50% after 7.30 pm. SSC has therefore decided that an appropriate closing time would be 8.30 pm. And SSC has, so far, not received any call from the public to extend the closing time beyond 8.30 pm.

In considering the opening hours of the stadiums, we have to ensure that there is a consistent demand, which has to be balanced against the cost outlay.

Mr Baey Yam Keng: Sir, I would like to ask the Senior Parliamentary Secretary if he could share with us the figures of the 2006 survey to establish the demand in the morning hours as early as 4.30 am and whether that is reflective of demand across the island or only of specific stadiums. Without the need of increasing

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the financial burden on SSC by extending the opening hours, I would like to ask if the SSC could consider shifting the opening hours from 4.30 am-8.30 pm to 6.00 am-10.00 pm. My gut feel is that there are potentially more public users between 8.30 pm-10.00 pm than during 4.30 am-6.00 am. To maximise public infrastructure with changing lifestyle habits, I would like to ask if the Senior Parliamentary Secretary could request the SSC to do another review and to assess the need for changing the opening hours.

Mr Teo Ser Luck: Yes, I have the statistics for the different stadiums, from 7.30 am to 8.30 am, 5.30 pm to 8.30 pm. These figures show that, after 7.30 am, significantly, there is a reduction of the utilisation of stadiums and the number of joggers who go there to jog before 8.30 am, and then subsequently there is no request after 8.30 am from the users to open up later than that.

I agree that maybe lifestyles have changed, people may be working late or working very early and they want to schedule their exercise timing or routine at different time slots. We are definitely willing to consider. If we look at what happens in other countries, there are also stadiums that are open 24 hours. Obviously, we are more than willing to look at letting the stadiums or other sports complexes stay open, if there is a demand in that area. We definitely want the utilisation to be better, as compared to today.

So, we are open to that idea. We will definitely review that. In different areas and locations, there may be different levels of demand. We are open to that.

Mr Hri Kumar Nair (Bishan-Toa Payoh): Would the Senior Parliamentary Secretary not entertain the possibility that fewer people go to stadiums after 8.00 pm because they know it is going to close at 8.30 pm?

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Mr Teo Ser Luck: Yes, we are all a very obedient lot.

The SSC and our sports policy objective is to encourage sports participation, and we want to build a sports culture. As I have mentioned, if lifestyles have changed the habit of putting sports within their everyday life and the timing needs to be more flexible, we are more than willing to be open about it. So, there could be stadiums where we know there is a higher demand after 8.30 pm, eg, maybe a stadium that is nearer to an industrial area that operates irregular hours that need us to open at different times and we know that the workers around there need that flexible time to go to the stadium to work out, we are happy to consider that and to open it. At the end of the day, our objective is to have better utilisation of the stadiums. That is what public sports facilities are for.