Yeo Cheow Tong
Yeo Cheow Tong (born 1947) was the former Minister for Transport in Singapore and is the incumbent Member of Parliament for Hong Kah Group Representation Constituency.
In his early life, Yeo attended the Anglo-Chinese School. He received a Colombo Plan Scholarship in 1967 to the University of Western Australia, where he received his Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) degree. He worked in the Economic Development Board (EDB) from 1972 to May 1975, before entering the private sector.
In 1984, Yeo entered politics as the elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Hong Kah Constituency. A year later, he was appointed Minister of State for Health and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. In 1988, he became the Acting Minister for Health and later became full Minister in 1990. Since then, he has held different Ministerial positions including Minister for Community Development, Minister for Trade and Industry and Minister for the Environment. In 1999, he became the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, a position which was renamed as Minister for Transport in 2001.
In June of 2006, Yeo Cheow Tong resigned has position as Minister of Transport, leaving the Singapore cabinet. This was done after a long controversy between wife, lawyer Helen Yeo,and the authors of Singapore's best selling book, Escape from Paradise. Helen Yeo effectively banned Escape from Paradise from Singapore through her threats of a lawsuit against a Singapore bookstore, and the authors. She never did sue, as the authors published on their website Escape from Paradise, information about her that they had judiciously left out of their book. Many Singaporeans have linked the exposure of Helen Yeo, with the resignation of Yeo Cheow Tong from the Singapore Cabinet.