Bus tour takes you places, promotes racial harmony

Bus tour takes you places, promotes racial harmony

SINGAPORE- A tour organised by the People's Association (PA) to promote racial harmony kick off yesterday with about 400 residents from Pasir Ris- Punggol GRC boarding buses which took them to places such as Mustafa Centre and Pulau Ubin. The tours, which will be held this month and the next, will ferry residents around tbe island to rediscover Singapore's ethnic and cultural roots. Residents pay between S$11 and S$30 for the tour which covers up to eight des-tinations. According to the PA, games and activities will also be conducted during the tours ''to allow rich friendship building opportunities among residents''. A pilot tour was conducted by the PA between November last year and March this year. More than 14,000 residents went along for the ride. Following the tour's launch in Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC yesterday, the PA said it was considering extending it to residents of other constituencies. Yesterday, Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC resi-dents celebrated Racial Harmony Day at the Sengkang Community Centre. In his speech at the celebrations, Dep-uty Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, who is also a Member of Parliament for Pasir-Ris Punggol GRC, Recalled how it was ''difficult'' to establish stable racial relations in Singapore's earlier days''. Said Mr Teo: ''But over the years, through policies supported by the peo-ple, we have grown much closer together as one Singapore community. ''We live together in the same estates, go to the same schools, we eat together in the same hawker centres. We get together to celebrate each other's events.'' But Mr Teo stressed that racial relations remain susceptible to external in-fluences. Simgaporeans must be careful not to allow events in ''other parts of the world'' to spill over to the Republic and ''Casuse a problem here when thers is really not a problem here''.