Corporate Shaker - Mr Chan Chong Beng - Part 2

Chan Chong Beng is Chairman of Goodrich Global Pte Ltd and Vice-President for Awards and Projects of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (ASME). He has attended the CEED Programme.

His sensitivity to the religious needs of others comes from his experience of living through the 1964 race riots as a ten-year-old boy. The curfew and patrols at night induced in him a sense of extreme anxiety that he has not forgotten to his day. "Young people today do not know all this", Mr Chan says in a refrain that runs like a common thread through the views of people his age.

Another dramatic incident accurred in 1998 after the race riots in Indonesia following the fall of President Suharto. Mr Chan travelled to Jakarta to check on the welfare of the Goodrich staff there. "I was among only three passengers on the flight from Singapore", he recalls with disbelief. Mercifully, his staff members were safe and his office was untouched, but he saw the broken glass panels of Chinese-owned businesses and other signs of destruction. Given the stability that Indonesia had enjoyed under the iron rule of President Suharto, what was amazing was how quickly law and order had broken down once the system had fallen. It was a chastening experience.

Turning to Singapore, Mr Chan describes the CEP as a step in the right direction of anticipating trouble as a way of preventing it. "We must keep up the good work of preserving Singapore's peace by inculcating the right values in our young, from school onwards."

Featured by Hearts of Resilience - Singapore's Community Engagement Programme 2011