Enhancing Support for Persons with Disabilities and Improving Access to Sporting Facilities
Ministry of Social and Family DevelopmentSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns MP Lee Hong Chuang’s inquiry on enhancing support for persons with disabilities (PwDs) regarding their well-being, independence, and access to sporting facilities. Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli B M M highlighted the Enabling Masterplan 2030 and upcoming initiatives like the Enabling Skills for Life Programme and Home Support Programme to facilitate community living. Under the Disability Sports Master Plan 2024, the government aims to foster inclusive sports awareness in schools by 2028 and launch an Enabling Sports Fund. Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli B M M also detailed infrastructure improvements, including retrofitting public swimming pools with wheelchair ramps and ensuring all ActiveSG gyms are inclusive by 2026. These efforts aim to equip PwDs with independent living skills while creating inclusive environments that allow for full participation in society.
Transcript
23 Mr Lee Hong Chuang asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) how can Singapore further enhance its support for persons with disabilities to enable their daily well-being, dignity, independence and meaningful participation in all aspects of the society including accessing sporting facilities.
Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: The Enabling Masterplan 2030 (EMP2030) guides our collective efforts towards enabling persons with disabilities (PwDs) to participate fully in society.
Under EMP2030, we are enhancing services to better equip PwDs with employment and independent living skills. Key initiatives that are in-progress include: the Enabling Services Hubs which bring activities and support closer to persons with disabilities and upcoming initiatives include: (a) the Enabling Skills for Life Programme (ESLP) (from the fourth quarter of 2025) which enhance independent and community living training, (b) the Enabled Living Programme (ELP) (from November 2025) and (c) Home Support Programme (HSP) (from 2026) which support persons with disabilities to continue living in the community.
Creating physical and social environments which are inclusive to PwDs is one of the EMP2030 strategic themes. Taking sports as an example, under the refreshed Disability Sports Master Plan 2024, we will focus on 10 strategic moves to (a) enhance awareness of disability sports and inclusive sports activities, such as having all mainstream schools conduct programmes for students to experience disability sports by 2028 to build understanding and empathy of challenges faced by PwDs when doing sports, (b) encourage more ground-up efforts to engage more PwDs to participate in sports, including launching the new Enabling Sports Fund, and (c) increase accessibility to disability sports activities and programmes.
As part of increasing accessibility to disability sports activities and programmes, one of the strategic moves is to enhance access to and within ActiveSG sports facilities. Sport Singapore has been retrofitting public swimming pools with wheelchair-accessible ramps and making ActiveSG gyms inclusive. In 2023, there were six public swimming pools retrofitted with wheelchair-accessible ramps and eight inclusive ActiveSG gyms. Today, nine swimming pools are retrofitted with wheelchair-accessible ramps, with one more to be completed by end-2025. There are also 15 inclusive ActiveSG gyms and Sport Singapore remains on track to make all ActiveSG gyms inclusive by 2026.
Building an inclusive culture in Singapore goes beyond the provision of hardware or physical infrastructure. It is a shared responsibility that requires all of us, as a society, to nurture and grow together.