It was reported in the media yesterday (30 Jan) that the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) will be packing the surgical face masks and deliver them to the CCs, where the People’s Association (PA) will distribute them to the public.
The government has announced that each Singapore household will receive four free masks, amid worries over the Wuhan virus and long queues for masks at retailers across Singapore.
The masks which will come in a pack of 4 will be made available progressively at 89 Community Centres (CCs) and 654 Residents’ Committee (RC) centres.
It will take seven days for SAF to pack the masks, with about 200,000 expected to be packed each day.
This is not the first time the SAF is conducting such an operation – during the haze crisis in 2013, it similarly packed and distributed more than 1 million masks to the public through PA.
Mask collection starts on 1 Feb
Collection of masks will start on 1 Feb and is expected to be completed by 9 Feb.
For details on when and where to collect masks, residents should check their community noticeboards, digital display panels and Government’s social media platforms. Residents will also need to bring their NRIC to verify their address when they collect the masks.
At a press conference yesterday, National Development Minister Lawrence Wong noted that the four masks to be given to each household should be sufficient, as more may be made available for families with members who fall ill.
Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing, however, said, “This is not a set of masks for us to take, open immediately, use it to go to the hawker centre. These masks are to be kept in the household for members of our families who might get ill and need to access medical help.”
He added, “We must all act in unison and not jeopardise the entire system by doing things that we think might benefit and protect ourselves, to the detriment of everyone else in society.”