SINGAPORE — After she saw the long queue at Marsiling Community Club (CC) at 10am on Thursday (Oct 29) to collect the TraceTogether token, Mrs Liow Li Kian, 60, went home and tried her luck again in the afternoon. 

At 1.30pm, she was among the 50 people in line at the CC to collect the token, which is a part of the Government’s contact tracing strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the tokens have been distributed since Sept 14 and residents were allowed to go to any CC to pick them up, the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO) halted this on Wednesday following long queues at some CCs last weekend.

There was a surge in collections after the Government announced last week that TraceTogether, either the mobile app or token, will be needed for SafeEntry check-in at public venues such as schools, shopping malls and restaurants.

Tokens will now only be given out one constituency at a time, starting with Marsiling, and residents must live within that area to pick them up. 

Mr Wong Kon, an 80-year-old retiree, waited for 20 minutes to get his token at the CC. 

“I have the app but I sometimes forget to turn it on as it’s quite troublesome. The token seems more useful because I can just scan it,” he said. 

Meanwhile, Ms Amu Ramiah, 46, who was also at Marsiling CC, said she did not want to download the TraceTogether app as she “did not want another app on her phone”. 

“Battery usage was also a concern for me,” she said. 

Ms Fang Fang Foo, 30, who was there to collect a token for herself and her mother, said that her mother did not have a smartphone. 

As for herself, she said the token would be more convenient for her as she would not have to keep unlocking her mobile phone and have the app drain her phone’s battery. 

As of 2.30pm on Oct 29, SNDGO said that over 400,000 tokens have been collected and the TraceTogether app has been downloaded 2.5 million times.

Details on collection dates for the token can be found on the TokenGoWhere website. By the second half of December, all CCs will allow collections, said SNDGO.

TODAY has asked SNDGO for the number of tokens collected on Thursday.