Meeting with Resorts World

A continuation of my engagement encounters with Resorts World.

Yesterday, a group of people who were interested in developments at Resorts World was invited for a closed-door meeting at RWS headquarters on Sentosa. Naturally, the first thing I had to do was make sure that I could at the very least blog the above statement.

In the event that I would make any further faux pas, I checked with Krist Boo (Vice-President, Head of Communications, Resorts World at Sentosa) who called the meeting, if I could at the very least mention that such a meeting occurred. Alas she paused for a while but monkey eventually got the green light to let it be known that this meeting took place. I hope that writing this doesn't get anybody in trouble! *fingers crossed*

To quote Krist at the beginning of the meeting, "We believe in doing what is right" and "we are committed to engage you". And that's why were all sitting there at 10am on a Saturday morning (18 Apr 2009).

At the end of the meeting, we were also asked to actively engage RWS instead of waiting for them to engage us. Moral of the story is, don't hesitate, start emailing RWS if you have questions and don't wait till information falls on your lap.

I truly hope to believe that RWS is really sincere in engaging stakeholders and are trying to do so, to the best of their limited abilities. So kudos for trying. I want to believe it when they say that they have to do it first in order to prove to us that they are doing it right. Hopefully it would not be too late by the time things are cast in stone.

Again, I must say that my intentions of blogging this is purely, and somewhat optimistically or naively, to share the fact that RWS is doing some form of engagement. In the field of environmental management and in my personal opinion, engagement is an important and wonderful thing. I like sharing wonderful things with my readers.

I can only hope that this is the beginning of more engagement and collaboration with Resorts World and other corporate entities in the future. If so, that would be a good progressive step in Singapore's business environment and civil society.

Why is engagement a wonderful thing?
Here's a document by The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management that explains briefly why "public, private and voluntary organisations preparing policies, plans, programmes, and projects relating to the environment should develop and implement policies for stakeholder engagement". [Read the document here]

Previous posts on Resorts World:
I signed the No Whaleshark petition, have you?, 12 Mar 2009
A chat with Resorts World, 2 Apr 2008
EIA of Sentosa Integrated Resort, 30 Jan 2008