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  The Straits Times 1 Sep 06
War on dengue was NEA chief's baptism of fire
By Meng Yew Choong

DENGUE is well under control here following last year's epidemic, says National Environment Agency (NEA) head Lee Yuen Hee.

He is one of the key players responsible for taking the number of infections down from an all-time high of 714 cases per week (in September last year) to fewer than 100 (per week) now.

Getting Singapore's mosquito count down to acceptable levels was one of his biggest challenges since he took over as the agency's chief executive in May last year.

He remembers the war on dengue as a baptism of fire - dengue cases hit an unprecedented total of 14,209 last year. Carpet combing for breeding sites and fogging did the bulk of the job. At the height of the outbreak, he even went door to door with his staff to educate residents on how to keep mosquitoes at bay.

A year later, his friends still inundate him with queries and complaints about the two things his agency is synonymous with - mosquitoes and litter.

'Sometimes, it does feel like a Meet-the-People Session,' he joked. But the NEA - jokingly referred to by insiders as the 'Nearly Everything Agency' - comes close to taking care of Singaporeans from the cradle to the grave, said Mr Lee.

Its diverse role includes looking after air quality, public swimming pools, hawker centres, monitoring climate change, providing the weather information service, earthquake monitoring, tsunami warnings, and even operating a cemetery and columbariums.

The 46-year-old father of two, a former director of manpower at the Ministry of Defence, said that the job had become a part of his life.

'Whenever I eat at hawker centres, I would be observing how hawkers prepare food, and the cleanliness of the place. 'Even when I visit my friends' homes, I am on the lookout for possible mosquito-breeding spots, so much so that some of them joked that I am no longer welcome.'

On the drive to create a truly clean and green city, he feels that enforcement should take the back seat to public education, especially when the target group is relatively young.

'We would like people to have a greater sense of ownership of the environment. In this regard, I feel that educating the young will lead to significant dividends for the environment later.'

Looking forward, the biggest milestone for NEA will be to get people to practise what they preach. For example, a survey here found that most people are aware of environmental issues such as pollution.

But when it comes to green activities such as recycling, only 5 per cent bother to lift a finger.

'We need people to be proud of the environment,' he said.

On a more global scale, Mr Lee added that NEA is also helping Singaporean companies to mount serious bids to win projects overseas. 'The expertise that we have developed over the years, such as knowledge in public cleaning, incineration and pest control, can be exported, and we hope to help the private sector here to spread their wings abroad.'

So far, NEA has assisted some companies here in providing mosquito-control advice to Saudi Arabia, as well as bidding for a major waste-management project in the Middle East. Summing up these ambitions of his agency, Mr Lee said: 'We would like NEA to be known as aN Enterprising Agency.'
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