Pick up free surgical, N95 masks from over 130 collection points

Singapore residents can collect free masks at 15 CapitaLand malls and selected Sheng Siong, Prime Supermarket, Cold Storage, FairPrice Xtra and Giant outlets from Aug 26 to Sept 26.

These are among the more than 130 collection points islandwide where the masks will be available, Temasek Foundation said in a statement yesterday.

Each household can collect 50 medical-grade surgical masks and 25 N95 respirator masks, which have "95 per cent particle filtration efficiency or better".

To collect the masks, residents must show a paper or electronic residential bill that has their SP Group utilities (residential) bill account number.

The number will be scanned and recorded before the masks are given out. Residents can also provide their SP residential account number for manual validation.

Household representatives are encouraged to reduce plastic waste by taking their own bags to carry the boxes of masks when the collection exercise begins, as no bags will be provided.

The surgical masks will come in two boxes of 25 masks each, or one box of 50 masks. The N95 masks come in one box of 25. The masks are of standard adult size.

To reduce crowding, 11 of the 15 CapitaLand malls will have a digital queue system for people to get into the queue ahead of time. They will be informed when it is their turn to collect their masks. They can also check the queue length at each collection point before going there.

The malls with digital queue systems are: Bedok Mall, Bugis Junction, Bukit Panjang Plaza, Funan, IMM, JCube, Junction 8, Lot One, Plaza Singapura, Tampines Mall and Westgate.

Other malls involved in the collection exercise are Aperia Mall, Jewel Changi Airport, Raffles City Shopping Centre and SingPost Centre.

Collection hours at the malls are 11am to 8pm daily.

Not all malls or supermarkets are collection points. People can go to stayprepared.sg/masks to check the collection points, hours and stock levels.

Residents can collect the masks on behalf of others by showing their SP account numbers if they have been authorised to do so.

Temasek Foundation reminded people that it is a crime to misuse another household's information to falsely represent someone to collect the masks.

This is the fifth distribution exercise of Temasek Foundation's Stay Prepared initiative, which was introduced to help prepare communities for emergencies such as Covid-19.

Temasek Foundation said: "It is important to have better masks ready for higher-risk situations. For example, residents with flu symptoms should put on a better mask such as a medical-grade surgical mask to go see a doctor."