Contributed by one of our readers.   Download the mandarin version here.

The third party Integrated Facilities Management (IFM) service market in Singapore is poised for growth. With outsourcing and privatization trends gaining momentum among establishments and the rising awareness of the need for environment-friendly practices, the market is set to benefit significantly. IFM services market in Singapore earned revenues of US$472.1 million in 2006 and is estimated to reach US$1,011.6 million in 2013

Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Terrance Duncan said, “The Singapore Government has played its part by taking the leading role in boosting such service within the country.”  Clearly, government transparency is boosting the demands for third party IFM services.

The government and other private establishments prefer to outsource non-core activities that involved janitorial, landscaping and certain engineering services. Resistance from in-house management is also expected to fade away as businesses start to pay more attention to only core activities within the organization. This should provide a boost to the third party IFM services market.

Duncan added, “Realizing the full potential of opting for third party IFM services will benefit the entire organization in the long run. Moreover, finding the right partner and carefully negotiating FM contracts will benefit a company’s bottom line.”

Major market segments have joined the bandwagon of adopting IFM services. However, third party service providers will need to aggressively market their products and ensure that all benefits are understood in a competitive market such as Singapore.

Please make a guess what are these so-called ”benefits”. 

The non-core activities which engaged IFM services mainly involved almost all workers from janitorial, landscaping and certain engineering services. These workers who have been working in these government sectors have, overnight, become the third party private establishments who contract their former jobs. However, in the process of this change in organizations, they are no longer the staff of the government.

Consequently, they have forfeited their remunerations such as employers’ central provident funds (CPF), medical insurance, annual leaves, annual bonus and the starting pay. I can understand the benefit of these restructuring if Singapore Government has an annual budget deficit. But, is it necessary to rob the insignificant wages from these lowest level workers when Singapore Government pocketed the remaining amount of S$2 billion from the annual budget?

In the coming election, are you going to cast your sacred vote to Lee Kuan Yew and his son again? If so, it is not them who are uncompassionate and merciless, but you are.

The MOH blog casts the spotlight on the Government’s cyberspace journey and what may lie ahead. While new media has been used previously, for purposes such as party recruitment or personal sharing with the electorate, this latest new media push has centred on healthcare issues and policies.  But despite the positive experience – and the 1,530 MOH Facebook users so far – it looks like Mr Khaw and MOH could remain the lone ministry voices in the blogosphere in the near future.

Source: TODAY

No one really takes the local press seriously.  When it states that the public views something positively, it is very likely that that is how the government thinks it should be viewed by the public.  Hence, MOH’s “positive experience” could be a self-alluded one.

Anyway, a MediaCorp check with six Government ministries found the majority have little intention to follow in MOH’s footsteps just yet.  The Education Ministry, for example, “has no plans to start a corporate blog”. The National Development Ministry, which is “reviewing” its online outreach and engagement efforts, also does “not have plans to blog currently”. 

A certain academic posits that new media may not work well for every Minister or Ministry. “This practice (blogging) may not be suitable for all the Ministers, perhaps because of the sensitive or strategic nature of their portfolio, their personal image and style, or other factors,” he added.

Personal image and style?  Hmmm.  Let’s not forget that ministers are politicians who need to reach out to the constituents, to listen, to emphathise and to help.  The web, in effect, is an extension of that outreach.  If a minister really cannot connect with the ground because of image issues or stylistics, he shouldn’t be a politician in the first place.

JOHOR BARU – The 23-year-old Singaporean woman detained last Thursday after passing through a state checkpoint without having her passport stamped cannot go home, although her husband is willing to pay a fine. Her Malaysian husband is willing to pay the RM500 (S$204) fine but freedom seems a distant dream because he claims the authorities (Immigration) told him they were still undecided about his wife’s situation. Indra was on her way to Singapore with husband S. Evaraj when the incident happened. She was sent to the Pekan Nenas detention centre on Dec 10. Meanwhile, Singapore’s consul in Johor Baru Tham Borg Tsien said the authorities had explained that they were still contemplating charging Indra in court. “We are still waiting for a decision and have yet to meet Indra,” he said.

Source: The Star

It’s been 6 days and our consul hasn’t seen the poor woman.   Elsewhere in the web, some Singaporeans have been speculating that the Malaysian authorities are just waiting for higher offers of ‘fines’.  I guess this is no longer ‘feasible’ given that the case is now reported in the press. 

Inefficiency and bureaucracy on the part of the Malaysians are not good reasons to deny her right to see the consul.  Our Foreign Affairs Ministry officials should start doing what we have been paying them to do post-haste.  Indra’s husband visited her for 10 minutes on Sunday where, he said, she cried and begged him to find a way to get her home.  Maybe if MFA officers had gotten their bonusses this year things might have been different for Indra.

The opposition has not dismissed the idea of using the internet to reach out to the voters on the “cooling-off” day which will be introduced in the next general election. Under the new law, the minimum campaign period will be extended from nine to ten days. All forms of mass rallies, home visits and public display of party symbols will be banned on the eve of polling day to enable voters to reflect “calmly” on their choice.

Source: The Temasek Review

Though PM Lee acknowledged that it would be difficult to enforce the law in cyberspace, he hoped the spirit and principle of the “cooling-off” period would be upheld by Internet users without elaborating on the topics they should refrain from writing or discussing.

“I can’t control several million videos on YouTube. But your website, what you are putting out in your own name, I think that should end on the day before cooling-off day,” PM Lee added.

Well, I can almost be certain that bloggers will continue to write about the campaigning and the controversies that arose in the past days.  Should the PAP refrain from using the Internet then, it will be a gross miscalculation on their part as net chatter could determine the decisions of the fence-sitters.

The web is too huge to be policed and the political costs are too huge for the PAP.  I think this ‘cooling-off day’ will benefit Singapore alright, but not as how Lee Hsien Loong intended.  It allows Singaporeans a day to consume free and adulterated information via political bloggers so that they can make the right choice in the polling booth.

APART from their regular 13th month wage supplement, civil servants will not be receiving any other bonus next month.  However, they will receive a one-off payment of a quarter month’s pay subject to a cap of $750. This is to acknowledge their support for wage restraint during the recession, the Public Service Division (PSD) said on Thursday.  The 60,000 civil servants also went without a mid-year bonus this year.

Source: ST

The States Times makes clear that ”civil servants – from the Customs officer to the Cabinet minister – end the year with 1.25 months in extra payment, one of the smallest bonus packages in recent history.”  Perhaps with the elections looming, the ministers do not wish to lavish themselves further.  But what for the 60,000 civil servants?  The impact of this non-bonus hits the Customs officer much more than an already grotesquely paid minister.  The way I see it, these 60,000 are political victims.  But to the ministers, the loss of bonus of 60,ooo is only a statistic.  These 60,000 should vote wisely.

Today published a letter by Chia Hern Keng. I try to second guess what the editor is trying to do. Since those guys there do not dare to write in clear, I am spelling out my thoughts here (which are in italic).

Arthur

Looking at the Dubai financial debacle, one cannot help but be taken aback. How could such a mammoth economic strategy have unravelled just like that?

I believe economic pundits will have all the answers. In the meantime, let us remember that life can be unpredictable. Success is never guaranteed despite all the ingenuity.

Smart guys do fail.

I like the Chinese saying “failure is the mother of success”. Still, failure can very painful or even destructive, so let that saying be taken in another sense: “Learn from the failure of others so that our nation can succeed”.

Singapore as a nation can learn something here.

In other words, never be too sure about success, be it on the corporate or national level.

In fact, past success can breed over-confidence resulting in overlooking certain major risks that eventually may do a business or nation in.

Our government is too cock sure of itself. We will all be sorry one day.

When I hear the over-simplified sayings that “entrepreneurship is really about risk-taking” and “fortune favours the brave”, I get a little disturbed. What are all the business management courses, the enlisting of business consultants, the use of market research and so forth, for but to minimise risk-taking?

In other words, entrepreneurship is very much about “kiasuism”.

Don’t listen to rubbish about taking risk and be an entrepreneur. Look at how those kiasu kiasi government people are pushing all the risks to the small guys like us.

Looking back in history, there was a genius in China called Zhuge Liang who worked as a general for a kingdom.

It was written that “he never took risks”, which contributed to his great successes in the battlefields even when his troops were outnumbered.

Still despite all his knowledge and ingenuity, his kingdom eventually succumbed to another.

That holds a lesson for us. Nothing is sure even with all the intellect and ingenuity that a nation can muster.

Government brags about the way they have the smartest Ministers and civil servants to rule the country. Well, even if you have all the smart guys there, things can still go wrong.

And sometimes too much intellectual strategising cause planners to lose sight of the simple reality: Many people do not live by strategising for success but in fact live life as it comes, with a certain acceptance and contentment no matter what the future might bring.

Especially when you get arrogant and proud.

For this reason, society should not be designed only for the smart and those seeking for success but also to ensure that the ordinary masses which form the base of society are well taken care of.

This is why I think meritocracy should always be tempered by some human-centred values so that society’s foundation can be strong.

That is why I am tired of all those rubbish about meritocracy. The rest of us have been forgotten in the economic equation.

When economic plans and strategies fail as in Dubai, is there a rootedness or foundation to fall back on?

It looks like in the case of Dubai, those who worked and invested there have fled elsewhere – abandoning even their properties and of course their outstanding loans, adding further to the economic collapse.

It is quite clear that those people gravitated to Dubai for economic reasons only. Let us learn from that.

Watch out guys for all the so-called foreign talent. Some of them will fled the very second Singapore falls.

SINGAPORE has moved up a notch to become the world’s third least corrupt nation, after New Zealand and Denmark, according to the annual ranking released by graft watchdog Transparency International (TI) on Tuesday. Singapore was ranked the fourth least corrupt last year. This year it shares the third spot with Sweden, which tied in first place with New Zealand and Denmark in 2008. The other country in the top five spots is Switzerland.

Source: ST

To the layman:  Definition of corruption - dishonesty for personal gain: dishonest exploitation of power for personal gain

In this light, this accolate may appear ironic to some.  One such person is likely to be the very vocal Singapore dissident Gopalan Nair:

• 20 years ago, when Lee spoke of his achievements in his 3 hour speeches to the people, they were all ears, because they were not aware of the truth. Now, even if Lee pays you to listen, you might still refuse since we are no longer as gullible. Perhaps you might tell him to go tell the sailors. In the minds of the discerning, we now know that he is nothing more than a ruthless corrupt money grabbing dictator, no more no less.

Are his views merely brought upon by a personal vendetta against the Lees?  After all, he does making very sweeping generalisations about how you and I feel about the government:

• Locally in Singapore, every single Singaporean has lost respect for the very foundations of society, namely the Judiciary being corrupt, Lee and his Ministers being corrupt in paying themselves millions of dollars, the Civil Service being corrupt for refusing political critics their normal rights, and the list of infamy goes on. Lee Kuan Yew and his government has, to put it bluntly, been discredited.

But now thanks to the internet and the democratisation of information, we laypeople have access to a whole host of information on how corrupt our Government is (or not).  Don’t rely on ‘international’ indices (who ensures Transparency International is transparent in its assessment?) or the vocal minority (which appears to be growing in size, I believe).  We are now empowered to read, understand and make our own assessments.  We owe it to ourselves and our children to vote wisely.

MR ALI Ahmad embraced Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew like an old friend at his home in Henderson Heights on Sunday.  Mr Ali, 90, first met Mr Lee in the 1950s when he was a bus driver with the now-defunct Singapore Traction Company.  Mr Lee was then a lawyer who helped to mediate a dispute between employees and the company.  Sunday was the first time Mr Ali had met Mr Lee since then. ‘I am grateful for what he did. I am very happy to see him again,’ he said.

Source: The Straits Times

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.
We would expect people to continue to dig the dirt and tell it to [...]



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

We informed people about the “Tell Singapore Government” subsite and have received some interesting reaction at some forums.
See: 3in1 Kopitiam, Sam’s Alfresco Coffee, Singapore Kopitiam, SgForums
Our responses to some of the comments are listed below. If we are not answering some other specific questions, that is because we do not know how.
 

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