By: Sunny Goh
First published: 04, TODAY

I love a good challenge, especially one as tempting as proffering an anti-organisation view to test the current new climate of political openness.

Mr Ngiam Tong Dow, an experienced retired civil servant who made a scintillating anti-establishment speech recently, will be my inspiration this time.

The HDB chairman criticised sacrosanct macro-government policies from land valuation to public housing to the Sing dollar.

Now that we have ushered in the New Year with the New Order, we could take a look at a few Old Order establishments that might be better-off restructured, or made redundant.

I will take one government agency to illustrate the point: The People's Association (PA) and its 107 community clubs.

The PA was a frontline counter-insurgency body to combat communism in the 1960s and '70s.

In the '80s and '90s, it took on a racial integration role to harmonise ethnic relations.

The anti-communism role is non-existent now while fostering racial harmony is being done at a level of subtlety and sophistication, best-served outside communal buildings.

Frankly, the name, "People's Association' and its four-ring logo seem outdated.

The PA is facing a dilemma. If it remains anchored in its traditional roles of "community bonding" and "bringing the people closer to the government", it is operating as a huge propaganda machinery.

If it moves with the times and operates as a happening place, it is duplicating the job of the entertainment and educational industries in providing small-business services from tuition courses to karaoke clubs.

At one stage, the PA went actively into providing kindergarten classes but this collided with the role of the PAP Community Foundation in providing such a political party-based service.

The PA Kindergarten classes were then scaled back.

It created a Dance Company of professional dancers only to close it down when both the concept and operability of the unit could not be convincingly sustained.

I am not advocating the retrenchment of PA staff or the removal of grassroots leaders.

But the community club (CC) concept would have to be redefined outside the current boundaries as found in the PA Mission Statement.

The PA could still perform its role of co-coordinating grassroots structures and national-level activities but it may be better off releasing the running of these CCs "back to the people".

For a start, full-time staff running these clubs should be delinked from the PA and transferred to mayors or MPs.

They should be employed directly by the MPs they are serving. The MPs, on their part, should be free to decide how best to use their CCs - even to close them down and re-direct the CC funds elsewhere if necessary.

This will certainly be a more effective way to gauge the usefulness of CCs and provide MPs with the flexibility to use their resources in whatever ways they deem fit.

I have always thought that having a huge "country club" facility in place of five or six standard CCs would be more attractive.

Why should only the affluent Singaporeans, who could afford such a luxury, enjoy private club facilities?

Working class Singaporeans and families deserve their social recreation as well and as much and the funds redirected from CCs would make such a facility more affordable.

And if the authorities are bolder, they can close down stand-alone public amenities such as public swimming pools - to the barest minimum from the existing 23 swimming complexes run by the Singapore Sports Council (SSC).

Someone should analyse why low utilisation led to the closure of six such pools last year.

Singaporeans are sophisticated and want choices.

A family of four would probably separately want to swim, dine, karaoke and exercise on the same weekend and at the same time.

The only way to get all these things done for the family is at a recreation club.

If the sole activity in a swimming pool is to swim, the chances of that "urge" occurring at the same time for all four family members is as high as the desire for father, mother, son and daughter to watch the sun-rise together.

An integrative approach is needed in the way we run Singapore Inc.

The PA and the SSC, on their own, can never hope to provide a wholesome attraction to modern-day living.

However, if someone in a higher position could get these and other bodies to put their act together, the chances of them staying relevant would be higher.

This is just one illustration of how we can make better use of our scarce resources.

The writer is managing director of the media firm, Academy Communication Pte Ltd. He also lectures on Public Policy, Organisation Theory and Sociology.