SINGAPORE — Known as “Mr Fix-it”, Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan has, in his 19-year political career, been thrust into various government ministries that often take a lot of heat from the population.

Before being given the transport portfolio after the 2015 General Election (GE) to solve the problem of train disruptions, he was asked to resolve Singapore’s housing woes as national development minister. 

And before that, he played a key role when Singapore was hit by an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003, and he introduced processes to prepare the healthcare system to face another disease outbreak when he officially became health minister in 2004.   

The seasoned politician, who announced his retirement on Friday (June 26), played down his problem-solving acumen in a media interview. He simply sees any difficult assignment as an "engineering problem", he said.

“To me, somebody has to do the job and if I'm assigned, then I'm an engineer. I’ll treat it as an engineering problem.

“So, be clear what the problem is, explore the options, weigh the trade-offs and then once you decide, stay focused. And, especially, concentrate on the details because it is the details that will slip us up and that can cause difficulties,” he said. 

Shortly after speaking, Mr Khaw got emotional and teared up as he recounted Education Minister Ong Ye Kung’s tribute video posted on Facebook on Friday. 

In the video, Mr Ong said that Mr Khaw was his benefactor during his civil service career in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, by appointing him to lead negotiations in the drafting of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

Years later, Mr Khaw asked Mr Ong to contest alongside him and the People’s Action Party team at Sembawang Group Representation Constituency (GRC).  

“Two times my life turned because of Mr Khaw Boon Wan,” Mr Ong said in the video. 

Mr Khaw, after taking about half a minute to compose himself, said: “Very kind of him to acknowledge the small role I play in his career.” 

He added that the role of supervisors and managers is to nurture the young because there is a “termination point” to everyone’s career, no matter how long it runs.   

“But if you leave with a big pipeline of people whom you have helped to nurture, then the institution can stay on for decades and decades. And that must be the attitude you take in Singapore,” Mr Khaw said. 

Having spent 42 years in public service, Mr Khaw said that he had always enjoyed his work when assigned a portfolio or when he volunteered for one, such as taking on the task of fixing Singapore’s housing woes. 

“You can make a difference to large numbers of Singaporeans — (when I was in) healthcare, obviously, (and when I was in) transport, obviously. And it cuts both ways.

“Therefore, if something goes wrong, you irritate a million people at least, you know, and that's why it is ‘spiky’ in that sense,” he said. 

There was great pressure to deliver, and adding to the tension was that both housing and transport were key hot-button issues among voters during GE2011 and GE2015.  

“If I could not deliver on that one, I think the damage was to the party. So that was the great pressure on our shoulders. So we dared not rest, we just pushed on and fortunately, with the support of many people, excellent civil servants, we delivered. And so for this election, trains are not an issue. The key is to keep it up that way,” he said. 

On what would be the first thing he would do now that he is retiring, Mr Khaw said that it is still very much business as usual because he is still busy running the Ministry of Transport. 

It is still early to talk about retirement plans and he has not had time yet to think about it, with the aviation sector having been badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and the public transport operators also suffering huge losses.  

Mr Khaw then drew laughter when he told the media that his eight-year-old granddaughter was more concerned about his retirement than he was, thinking that Mr Khaw would now have to be responsible for buying groceries from the market.  

His emotional burst of tears aside, Mr Khaw said that he had been calm throughout the day despite announcing his retirement because it was something that was planned all along with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.  

“I met the PM this afternoon. The first thing I did was apologise to him, not being able to support him in the next term, but it was a decision that he was aware of and it has been in the plan for several years,” he said. 

What set things in motion for the retirement plan was Mr Khaw’s heart bypass surgery. 

“That was a very traumatic, life-changing event about 10 years ago when I began to think harder about succession planning,” he said.

He told reporters that Mr Ong Ye Kung is now ready to be his successor in leading Sembawang GRC, the constituency where he has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for the last 14 years. 

When asked to confirm the rest of the PAP candidates set to contest in the GRC for the upcoming polls, Mr Khaw declined to comment, saying that it would be better for Mr Ong to make the announcement. 

Mr Khaw described Mr Ong as someone who has “very good political instincts” and that a person like him would be able to go far wherever he is.