The alleged callous remarks by Singapore’s octogenarian leader Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew din have not gone down well with netizens who termed his views very disgusting and very uncalled for.  Interacting with journalist Mark Jacobson during a recent interview with the National Geographic magazine, MM Lee had expressed that he was fully aware of the displeasure of locals over huge influx of migrants who mitigated their chances to bag high paying opportunities.  Lee reported said, “Over time, Singaporeans have become less hard-driving and hard-striving. This is why it is a good thing that the nation has welcomed so many Chinese immigrants.”

Source: Top News

Temasek Review’s report on interview received a flood of comments from locals.  The National Geographic magazine published the interview a week back but it remains a ‘puzzle’ why the mainstream media has remained mum on the issue for so many days. Perhaps the media has become less hard-driving and hard-striving and need to be replaced.

Lee’s comments also suggest that Singaporeans ought to be as driven as him, working hard into their senior years for the economy and the nation.  Sure sure.  But trouble is, the majority of us aren’t as highly paid, with ‘confidential discretionary components’ to boot.  Be realistic, Lee.

Contributed by one of our readers (you can download the original in Chinese).

Every morning 5am, Monday to Saturday, more than hundred of private buses with 44 maximum capacity each will pass through Woodlands custom. These buses ferry workers, mainly female, from Malaysia to different factories in Singapore and transfer them back in the evening.

Looking at the other passageway for motorcyclists, everyday there are more than 30 thousand Malaysian workers crossing the causeway to work in Singapore. More than 10 thousand motorcyclists are also using Tuas Second Link. In the evening, these workers will ride back to Malaysia.

Since before Singapore’s independence, Malaysian workers are welcome to take up manual jobs that Singaporeans do not want. Employers of these workers are required to pay the Government poll tax, from about 300 SGD to 450 SGD per month.

Alright, we shall not talk about these workers from Malaysia as they are taking up jobs that Singaporeans rejected. Twenty years passed, I travel to Singapore frequently. On Dec 2008, I went to Singapore and saw foreign workers everywhere, working at food stalls, food courts and even the public bus drivers are hired from China. Out of curiosity, why there are so many PRC workers, I asked a PRC worker selling dim sum, “Where are you from?”

He was impolite and not even looking up when he spoke, “I am from Shantou, have been here for 2 months.”

I could sense that he was little angry and I was even more curious and asked again, “How much is your salary, should be very good?”

He replied bluntly, “Talking about this makes me boiled, when my agent take the placement fee from me, he promised that the salary will be S$1,800 per month but now I am getting only S$1,100. I have to work 4 hours overtime daily and cannot even earn S$1,800.”

He hit the table and said, “I paid 40,000 yuan for placement fee, which is equivalent to S$8,000. Even if I do not spend a penny, I have to work 7 months to reclaim my 40,000 yuan placement fee, how can I not angry?”

I shook my head and said, “I am sorry to make you angry.”

He said angrily, “Before coming to Singapore, I heard that there are plenty of opportunities in Singapore. But, what I see now is swindlers more than anything else and your Government is a bid liar.”

In Oct 2009, I came to Singapore’s IMM to shop and discovered that many shop promoters are workers from China. Wow! What happened? Singapore has become the second China.”

I chatted with my Singaporean friends at a cafe, I asked her, “Why is there a sudden increase of workers from China? Now, even the promoters who were usually taken up by Singaporeans have now been replaced by PRC workers. I have heard that many Singaporeans are unemployed at this economy downturn. Are the jobs replaced by these workers from China? It is really incredible, aren’t Singaporeans given employment priority? ”

She shook her head replied: “We are really pathetic, I’ll give you some data and you will understand why I am so sad and has completely lost confidence in the future of my country.”

To employ PRC worker, the employer must pay S$450 every month, adding up to S$5,400 per annum, when multiplied by 50,000 workers from China amounted to S$270 million. It is a huge amount of money which goes to the government. Lee Kuan Yew is very pleased that Singaporeans’ money he and Ho Ching have lost in the 2008 financial turmoil can be recovered soon. ”

I was shocked to hear that and asked: “S$270 million a very amazing figure, but what happened to those Singaporeans who have been laid-off?”

 She explained, “A person with no income can apply for employment-seeking grant which is only S$250 per person, but it will only be approved if the applicant has no other family grant. We need to understand this is two different issues. First, employing seeking grant is only S$250 per month as compared to each foreign worker’s poll tax of S$450 which S$200 less. By replacing a Singaporean with a foreign worker in exchange for S$200, the astronomical amount of money lost by both the father-in-law and daughter-in-law can be recovered. How can his son Lee Hsien Loong not exploit Singaporeans? Second, you must remember that, if the unemployed have savings or one of the family members is working, then the grant he applied will not be approved by the Government. The government can even save on S$250, all to be transferred into the pocket of the government ”
 
I am very surprised that Lee Kuan Yew has been describe to be so remarkable, and he is but a tyrant who has been a dictator for 50 years. I mourn for the people of Singapore.

MARINA Bay Sands is having more difficulty than anticipated in filling up its casino positions with Singaporeans. It has filled only 2,000 out of 4,500 gaming positions.  It is holding a recruitment fair this weekend at Suntec Convention Hall 603, as a last ditch effort to get Singaporeans to apply for casino jobs, in particular, dealer positions.

Source: ST

Mr Ken Davie, senior vice-president of casino operations at the Marina Bay integrated resort, said: “We’d expected to fill all the positions by now… But we had not had the response expected because gaming is very new in Singapore. We don’t think Singaporeans understand what the industry is quite about.”

So the benefits of the IR are really less tangible than expected?  And I guess we can expect more foreign talents being employed.  Great, our IR project is creating jobs for the world.

The Government should implement measures to increase the take home pay of low-wage local workers. This can be achieved through tighter restrictions on the import of foreign labour in domestic industries, skills development for higher value-added industries, productivity increases through capital investments and increasing government-funded income supplements.

Source: Gerald Giam

The Singapore government is one of the largest corporate buyers in town. If it buys products and services from locals, rather than to blindly trust the track records of foreign sellers, this is surely one way to develop the local industry and promote local entrepreneurship.

The civil servants would not dare to take this call. Why should they risk their high pay? So unless the politicians take the lead, most Singaporeans will remain slave to companies or see ‘foreign talents’ competing for even the lowest jobs (because companies will find all sorts of ways and means to import cheap labour).

President Arroyo announced yesterday that around 5,000 new jobs would be made available to Filipinos in the island resort of Sentosa in Singapore. Sentosa island is one of the main attractions in Singapore as it hosts an integrated resort and theme park. Resorts World at Sentosa Private Ltd., which operates the integrated resort, has announced that it would be hiring around 20,000 people by the middle of the year.

Source: Philstar

I wonder how did GMA manage to secure the jobs for her peoples.   That’s a quarter of all vacancies available at Resorts World, and who knows how much more will be give to other foreign nationalities.  From the massive response to recent local job fairs, it is apparent that many Singaporeans are in dire need for jobs.  Are Singaporeans screwed by a foreigner-first policy?  Who decided that these 5000 positions are unstuitable for Singaporeans; or that Singaporeans aren’t interested in them at all?

SINGAPORE, March 29 – Taiwan’s double world pool champion Wu Chia-ching has decided: He wants to be a Singaporean.  Tomorrow, he will take the first step towards this when he picks up his blue identity card, making him a permanent resident here. The 20-year-old will become a playing member of the national squad, and it is likely to be just a matter of time before he gets his citizenship.  His decision comes weeks after Taiwan’s sports officials tried to persuade him not to leave.

Source:  The Straits Times

According to ST, Taiwan’s sports officials reportedly tried to match Singapore’s offer and even threatened to confiscate the cash incentives they had given him when he won the world titles in 2005.  Cuesports Singapore’s vice-president Ivan Lim said: “He is not just here to win medals. We want him to be involved with the schools and be a role model for younger players.” 

Clearly, Singapore must have given him sufficient monetary incentives that overshadowed that of the Taiwanese.  That was probably the clincher for Wu Chia-ching, and not the opportunity to be “role model” for Singapore players.  I wonder:

• How much is given to attract foreign talents to take up PR in Singapore
• How much has been ‘lost’ to date
• Or are the amounts not even assessed or recorded and merely written off as sunk costs

PRs are transient and can leave Singapore any time they want and reside in another country.  Even if such talents take up a blue IC, there’s no obligation on them to serve Singapore as a citizen would.  Any obligation is purely contractual and based on the talent’s morals.  I agree that these talents are indeed important to Singapore but given the uncertainty in managing them, there should be transparency in the financing of such high-risk ’projects’.

http://theonlinecitizen.com/2009/02/the-wages-of-deceit/

Excerpts:

That the authorities are often keen to get quick resolutions to disputes means that workers are particularly vulnerable to being short-changed by employers who find it all too to get away with their misdeeds.

We help ourselves. Don’t expect others to help

Tom Wright painted a bleak picture of Singapore’s property sector going forward at The Wall Street Journal. His article ended with the following:
“I’m yet to see the light at the end of the tunnel [for Singapore],” says Mr. Tan, the high-end broker.
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Our skin isn’t as thick as it should be

The Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) organised a seminar on March 4 to discuss Singapore’s political blogosphere.  Tan Tarn How, Senior Research Fellow and Research Assistant Tan Simin presented their paper on trends observed in the blogosphere.  As reported in the TOC, the researchers identified the following limitations:

The online-offline firewall, while somewhat alleviated by offline [...]



Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew – The answer to the African problem?

Recently, I followed a thread “Democracy and Economic Growth” which started in PoliticsForum.org.   Apparently, members there often question the role of democracy in a developing nation. “During the wave of democratization in Africa during the 90s, many people had renewed hope for the continent, immediately equating newly established democracies to economic growth. Are these democracies [...]



Tell Singapore government: Ask them a question or give a suggestion

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