NYA 2009

My  month of July was mostly taken up by the 1st National Youth Assembly (NYA), culminating to the main assembly sessions on the 1st and 2nd August. We convened in the historic chamber of the Old Parliament House for the 1st session of the NYA, which was graced by Dr. Lim Wee Kiak, a P-65 MP for Sembawang GRC, Chairman of the Government Parliament Committee on Transport and a Member of the Government Parliament Committee on Environment.

It was quite an good experience. Although the assembly was supposed to be a session of compromise and discussion rather than a debate, there were still quite a few heated periods of debate during the assembly. Moreover, since the event was attended by Dr Lim, the media and also filmed, there was pressure to “not screw up”. It was quite sad that not all bills were passed, especially when we know of the effort the respective committees had put in. The food committee’s disappointment was a shared sentiment from those on the left side of the speaker in the assembly hall.

The next step is to actually clean up our bills and integrate the amendments agreed during the assembly as well introduce research figures and other findings and statistics which will form the basis of our submission to the actual governmental agency or ministry.

For now, we are all taking sometime off to enjoy ourselves before we are back into the parliamentary chambers in January 2010.

Oh. We are also in The Sunday Times, 2nd August 2009, Page 12!