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SINGAPORE \u2013 Gerard Ee, who has often been dubbed \u201cMr Fix It\u201d for taking on some of Singapore\u2019s thorniest public roles, has retired for the second time after a lifetime of public service.<\/p>\n
On Aug 31, the 77-year-old stepped down as chairman of the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC)<\/span><\/a> and as a board member of MOH Holdings, closing the chapter on his official commitments.\u00a0<\/p>\n From November, he will also relinquish his role as chairman of the Changi General Hospital Health Fund while remaining on its board.<\/p>\n \u201cMy CV now has only one line,\u201d quipped the former Nominated Member of Parliament.<\/p>\n It is a far cry from two decades ago, when his three-page resume listed more than 20 board and committee appointments.<\/p>\n This retirement comes 21 years after his first in 2005, when the accountant left his professional life as an Ernst & Young partner.\u00a0<\/p>\n But instead of retreating into a quieter life, he found himself repeatedly called upon to step into the hot seat \u2013 and doing so without pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ee said he received director fees only for his roles at the AIC and MOH Holdings. His other volunteer roles were taken out of a sense of duty to help.\u00a0<\/p>\n Among them were leading the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) through its biggest crisis, heading a committee to review ministerial salaries and chairing the Public Transport Council, where he had to face public scrutiny over fare hikes.<\/p>\n With the the average life expectancy of Singapore residents<\/span><\/a> at 83.9 years, at 77, Ee is mindful about the passing of time.<\/p>\n In 2025, he faced an early-stage prostate cancer diagnosis and five rounds of radiotherapy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a very early stage… so it\u2019s not frightening, not horrendous. I nipped it in time,\u201d he said. The cancer was picked up during his regular health checks.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cIt (the cancer) is gone already, so I don\u2019t think about it any more.\u201d<\/p>\n His pragmatic manner, coupled with a healthy sense of humour, extends to his philosophy on ageing.<\/p>\n \u201cAccept that you are ageing, accept that there is an expiry date,\u201d he said. \u201cDo what is necessary to prepare for it so that no one will suffer because of your demise. So make sure you have done your planning, have your will done, and your family is cared for.\u201d<\/p>\n Ee has two children in their 30s with his wife, a homemaker. His son is a property agent and his daughter is involved in supply chain work.<\/p>\n He also draws support from a group of friends from his alma mater St Joseph\u2019s Institution, whom he meets regularly.<\/p>\n Of the 10 of them, seven have some kind of prostate problem, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Prostate cancer was nothing like his battle with Stage 3 colon cancer about 20 years ago. Then, a tennis-ball-sized tumour came with a sobering 40% five-year survival rate.<\/p>\n The illness was compounded by the stress of managing an unexpected public crisis.<\/p>\n Just 13 days into his 2005 retirement, then Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan tasked Ee with restoring confidence in the NKF after chief executive T.T. Durai and his board resigned amid public outrage.<\/p>\n Durai had sued Singapore Press Holdings over a Straits Times report that he had a gold-plated tap in his office toilet. He withdrew his defamation suit after his lavish salary and perks, questionable use of donations and other damaging details were made public during the trial.<\/p>\n Ee inherited a full-blown crisis: nearly 50,000 donors cancelled their regular donations in a week, the NKF headquarters was vandalised, and anxiety gripped staff and patients.<\/p>\n Overwhelmed on day one, the devout Catholic spent an hour praying in his office.<\/p>\n \u201cI had no idea what to do or what to start with,\u201d Ee recalled. \u201cI never prayed so hard in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n In the months that followed, he steadied the charity by commissioning an independent public audit of its work and setting up proper financial controls and other governance measures.<\/p>\n He had to make tough calls, including retrenching over 100 staff, mostly in fund raising, after the charity stopped actively raising funds for several years.\u00a0<\/p>\n During his seven years at the helm, he stabilised NKF\u2019s operations and expanded its services to more patients and improved patient care.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet the strain of leading a charity under intense scrutiny took a physical toll.<\/p>\n For example, the skin on his hand began to bleed, which he attributed to stress.<\/p>\n Another high-profile assignment followed when he headed the committee to review ministerial salaries. The public interest in the matter brought renewed pressure, and his hand bled again. \u00a0<\/p>\n The committee recommended significant pay cuts after pegging ministerial pay to a much wider pool of top earners here, and factoring in a 40% discount off the market benchmark to reflect the ethos of political service. The Government accepted its recommendations in 2012.<\/p>\n Ee\u2019s introduction to volunteering came early. As a boy, he was exposed to charity work by his father, the late Ee Peng Liang, affectionately known as Singapore\u2019s \u201cfather of charity\u201d and founder of the Community Chest.<\/p>\n But it was only in his late 20s, while helping his father with the logistics of a TV fund-raiser, that he met many people with disabilities. That left a lasting impression, which sparked his life of service.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cIt was the first time I felt touched. In spite of their condition, they were so cheerful and positive, and it was then that I felt the tug to want to do something more.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the next few decades, Ee championed causes such as accessibility for people with disabilities, youth rehabilitation and active ageing.<\/p>\n The long list of organisations he chaired includes the National Council of Social Service, the Charity Council, the Council for Third Age, Automobile Association of Singapore and the Eastern Health Alliance.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Ee, success has always been measured in human outcomes.<\/p>\n \u201cI very much believe that when you do good, you must focus on the outcomes and not the output. And the easiest way to measure outcomes is the answer to the question: how have peoples\u2019 lives improved because of what you have done to help?\u201d<\/p>\n Ee, the youngest of five children, said he never felt burdened to live up to his father\u2019s reputation. This is even though some people who had once sought his father\u2019s help turned to him after his father\u2019s death.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI would do my best, but I would not try to imitate my father because I can only be a poor imitation. I can only be myself, for better or for worse,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In his second retirement, Ee intends to keep sharing his experience with younger people and share insights on ageing and other topics on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n Asked what he hoped his legacy would be, he returned to the lesson from his father.<\/p>\n \u201cThat my existence has benefited people. He said at the end of the day, the most important answer is whether your existence has benefited anyone or not.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, with a chuckle, he added: \u201cAnd he went on to say even a dog has given much love and happiness to its owner.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 Gerard Ee, who has often been dubbed \u201cMr Fix It\u201d for taking on some of Singapore\u2019s thorniest public roles, has retired for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cI can only be myself, for better or for worse\u201d<\/h2>\n
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