It's Covid-19 infections season, and Singapore general election is threatening to appear around the corner, and that means the opposition Workers' Party members of parliament are still out and about to meet with residents.
WP chief Pritam Singh shared a post on Sunday, March 22 of his team mates doing exactly just that in the Aljunied GRC's Paya Lebar ward as they conducted their regular walkabout.
In his post, Pritam wrote that through his conversations, it was clear that there are privacy concerns about the new Singapore-made contact tracing TraceTogether app by the government, as well as resistance towards downloading it as it makes those with the app susceptible to being held accountable by the law for withholding app information when required to furnished them.
Pritam also highlighted and allayed the concerns about maintaining a degree of anonymity when using the app and the claim that the app is battery depleting, but lamented that such concerns should occupy Singaporeans when the fight ought to have been solely geared towards eliminating Covid-19.
Pritam wrote: "It is unfortunate that this debate takes place when the national focus should be singularly trained on defeating Covid-19."
However, this also raised the importance of Singaporeans freely asking difficult questions as it is their right to do so as citizens, especially those pertaining to the increasing use of technology in this day and age.
Pritam concluded his post saying:
Whatever your position on privacy, a United Singapore must be one where speaking freely and raising opposing concerns are fully respected as legitimate expressions of citizenship. Always good to have an open conversation with Singaporeans and many thanks to the hawkers and patrons at the Blk 105 hawker centre for their strong support, and speaking freely with Team Aljunied!