Singapore becoming a sea of flags for its national day

August 05, 2010

Singapore is preparing to blanket its streets with thousands of its national flags, as part of a high-profile celebration of the country's national day.

The official theme of this year's celebrations will be "Live Our Dreams, Fly Our Flag", a theme that is being substantiated by the distribution of the red and white ensigns across the territory.

Residents' Committees (RC) in all of the major areas and apartment buildings are leading the distribution of the flags, some of which have already set records for the most number of flags flying at the same time.

Chairman of the Linear Green RC, Pauline Teo, said they were taking every available option to make sure as many banners are flown as possible.

"We're going door-to-door to remind them to fly the flag. And if they don't have the flag, we will supply them," she said. "And from downstairs, we'll look up - if the flag is not hung the right way, we'll go up and tell them to arrange it the right way."

The island state will mark the 45th Anniversary of its independence from the UK on 9 August. As well as adorning the buildings, people are being given clip-on flags to fly from their cars.

The Singapore Petroleum Company (SPC) has been tasked with distributing the car flags. Vincent Tay, SPC's marketing vice-president, said, "With SPC being a home-grown company with a large customer base, we had no problems issuing the 20,000 flags within a day.''