PENANG YOUTH & UNIVERSITY STUDENT SMART CITY FORUM 2018

SPEECH BY CHIEF MINISTER OF PENANG

AT PENANG YOUTH & UNIVERSITY STUDENT SMART CITY FORUM 2018

“FOR YOUTH FOR FUTURE”

28 JULY 2018

Teng Kok Liang
Chief Executive Officer, Penang Youth Development Corporation (PYDC)

Ladies and gentlemen

Good Morning.

First of all, I would like to thank to Penang Youth Development Corporation (PYDC) for inviting me to present the views on Penang State's Smart City Initiative, which we hope this will help to transform Penang to one of the important international city in the region.

Governed by the CAT principle of “Competency, Accountability and Transparency” since the Penang Government came into power in 2008, Penang has transformed itself into one of the most livable cities in Asia as well as one of the leading states in Malaysia. 

And now, it is the time for Penang to step forward and develop into intelligent city. As such, we plan to initiate and integrate the concept of smart city into the governance and policy making.

With the development of technology nowadays, we believe this could potentially reduce the waste of time and resources, and eventually increase the productivity and quality life for all Penangites.

A sustainable development of a State depends on a systematic and realistic planning. It has huge impact on economic growth, liveability and sustainability of a city. Such planning’s should not only be cheaper and faster, but it is important that the plan is reliable, feasible and sustainable. To truly realize the potential of Penang as a modern and socially progressive state, a holistic transformation masterplan is needed. Therefore, to transform Penang into a holistic transformation masterplan is planned via the Penang South Reclamation (PSR) – a holistic transformation masterplan is planned via the Penang South Reclamation (PSR) project. 

The intent of the Penang State Government is in congruence with the Federal Government’s vision to spur productivity and transform innovation to wealth through strategic measures and programmes to boost the capital and human economy. The overall PSR masterplan, adopts towards the “Smart City” concept that has been engineered to attract talents, create value, generate demand, sustain supply and preserve the cultural legacy of Penang.

The concept offers opportunity to build a “City of the Future” from day one in all aspects of living, business, sustainability and governance. Once put into motion, the Penang State believes the Smart City blueprint on PSR would enhance the core transformation in all spheres of development especially towards economic, environmental and social integrating all three (3) aspects of Penang Paradigm into a single coherent agenda that would uplift Penang’s growth trajectory in the next five (5) decades.

The Smart City concept for this PSR project covers six (6) aspects such as:

-Smart Mobility & Connectivity - efficient, safe and well connected
-Smart People – Healthy, Skilful and Knowledgeable
-Smart Economy – well supported eco-system of business and industrial clusters
-Smart Living – high quality of life, opportunities for live, learn, work and play
-Smart Environment – climate responsive, low carbon, integrated and multi-functional use
-Smart Governance – effective, transparent and participatory 

For your information, Penang establishing good governance and clean leadership, building public infrastructure, developing human talent, promoting arts and culture, embracing sustainable development, undertaking community projects through 4P (public, private, people and professional) Partnership, wiped out hard-core poverty as well as uphold a harmonious society that respects differences in faiths and beliefs.

We strongly believe that Penang is currently on the right path of development, where all decision with best public interest are made through careful and extensive consideration of every aspects after listening to opinions of public and professionals.

With these words, I wish to congratulate PYDC and partners: Penang Institute, CISCO, Selangor Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (SITEC), CREST, Hexon Data and SRS Consortium, on their successful organization of this PENANG YOUTH & UNIVERSITY STUDENT SMART CITY FORUM 2018.

As I have been informed, Penang Youth & University Student Smart City Forum 2018 had received more than 100 applications, but only 80 participants were selected to attend the forum. I wish to congratulate to all of you and have a good forum today.

For Youth For Future, let’s make Penang better than ever.

Thank you.