TR EMERITUS

Disgruntled casino employees, particularly dealers, from Marina Bay Sands could be submitting their letters of resignation as early as Monday. A social-networking website HWZ had a thread which suggested that there was a "mass resignation" of dealers early this month. According to one employee with the integrated resort who declined to be named, he was aware of at least eight staff serving the VIP rooms who would be leaving this month.  ".....many dealers are unhappy over issues such as pay, hectic work schedules and training.", he wrote. Frustrated by issues such as not getting paid in a timely manner while on medical leave, unable to take leave, as well as the hectic schedules, more demanding work and being paid less than dealers at Resorts World Sentosa (the other integrated resort) were some fo the reasons given prompting the resignations. 1. No Night Allowances 2. Only Midnight Transport that cock up all the time 3. Our schedule can end on Sunday, and they still haven release the next schedule on Saturday. 4. The available leave for the WHOLE OF THIS YEAR is FULLY TAKEN. 5. They pay our tips wrongly. Deduct our pay when we are on MC stating "No MC Given". Took them 2 weeks to pay us back. 6. They put up notices to ask dealers if they want to come back for OT to help COUNT AND SORT PLATES FOR THE F&B DEPARTMENT. When interviewed by AsiaOne, one employee said that the reason why there could be an exodus of dealers submitting their resignation is because "their contract is up". "They have three months of training and are bonded for six months after that. If they want to leave early, they have to pay (for the training). Now that the six-month bond is up, many want to leave," he said. It is understood that the training for many dealers began in February. Their bond began on the day Marina Bay Sands opened its doors, which is April 27. So, their six-month bond ends on Oct 26. If the dealers tender their resignation on Monday, that would give them about a month's notice before their bond ends. The employee said that he knew of at least three dealers who intend to quit next week. One of them had actually left a higher-paying job in the service industry to become a dealer as it was a new experience. The dealer even turned down an offer to work in a bank. "The dealer regretted not taking up the bank job," the employee said, adding that the dealer is now looking at either working in the Sentosa IR or in a bank. When contacted, a Marina Bay Sands spokesman would say only that "we have not received any mass resignations from our casino team members".   Roger Foo Reference: HWZ and AsiaOne  Read More →

Dear UN-Habitat,   I refer to the 23 Sept 2010 Straits Times report of the conferment of the 2010 UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Awards to Singapore's HDB for providing one of Asia's and the World's greenest, cleanest and most socially conscious housing programmes.   Ms Jane Nyakairu, chief of information services at UN-Habitat, was reportedly impressed by the HDB for providing adequate shelter and home ownership for so many.  But has Ms Nyakairu ever wondered how did the HDB manage to own so much land to be able to provide so many homes in the first place?  In 1960, the government owned only 40% of the land in Singapore.  By 2004, it has come to own 90% of the land.  How did this tremendous increase in land ownership come about?  It came about as a result of the Land Acquisition Act in 1966, which allowed the government to take over land in return for compensation that can be as low as $1.  Thus, the housing success that the HDB is honoured for comes from the forcible acquisition of land from the people on the cheap.  It is no different from Stalin taking over all the factories in the country and giving a job to each and every person in those factories.  So while each person may be given a job, the factories that provide those jobs come from previous owners, not Stalin.  Similarly, the land upon which 80% of Singaporeans are housed in HDB flats comes from Singaporeans, not the government or the HDB.  To honour the HDB is to honour the Stalinist methods with which the HDB achieved its supposed success.  To view it in another way, had the government not forcibly acquired 90% - 40% = 50% of the land in Singapore, will these lands remain fallow and no houses will be built on them?  Certainly not, Singaporeans would have built houses on them had the government not forcibly taken them away.  We would have been housed just the same, whether the land belonged to the government or to individuals.   Thus, one important criterion that the UN must take into consideration in conferring such awards is that the government should pass on all savings in land cost to the people instead of profiting handsomely in the process.  Currently, a supposedly socially conscious new medium sized flat located at a far flung corner of Singapore can be sold for as much as $300,000.  Even with the token subsidy of $30,000, the flat still costs $270,000.  This is not a socially conscious price tag for most first world cities.  It is a market price that is so much higher than the construction cost and the cost of the land upon which it was built bearing in mind that the cost of land is not the same as its current market value.  The value of the land may have appreciated manifold over the decades but it doesn't change the fact that it was acquired for as low as $1 which is the true cost of the land.  Yet, you will never find any detail about the building costs and land costs for a flat in HDB annual reports.     Thank you     Ng Kok Lim  Read More →

Dear Mr Moeller,   I refer to your letter to the Straits Times dated 24 Sept 2010.   It's easy to fall into a tunnel vision when reading a book that focuses on the success of just one country.  It may deceive us into believing that the country's success is the result of its own unique situation and political model.  Such tunnel vision doesn't provide us with the broad vision necessary to understand why some countries are successful and others are not.  Singapore is not the only candidate that befits the description of the most successful country in the world over the last 40 years.  There are three other commonly accepted economic miracles over the last 40 years - Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.  When you put these four together, there is very little that separates one from the other.  It is not meaningful to look at each success story in turn and say that this model or that model worked.  If different models worked, then you have to ask yourself if it is indeed the model that worked and not something else altogether different.  Ultimately, you can't avoid asking yourself the most fundamental question of why Singapore and the other three East Asian economic miracles are the only ones to have achieved such phenomenal succcess out of hundreds of developing nations after the Second World War.  The most fascinating observation which we cannot ignore is the fact that all four are East Asian societies.  What is the probability that out of hundreds of developing nations, the four that would eventually rise above the rest are all East Asian?  When you include China's phenomenal growth over the last twenty years, the answer becomes evident - somehow, East Asian societies work.   Thus, we cannot view Singapore's success independently from East Asian success.  While Singapore has succeeded in exploiting openings offered by the global economy, exploitation of opportunities is not something unique to our post independence history.  Singapore merchants have been exploiting opportunities in trade, shipping, rubber and so on for nearly a hundred and fifty years before the time of the PAP.  Singapore didn't suddenly become a land of opportunities after the PAP took control.  It has always been a land of opportunities ever since its founding in 1819.   Any book that tries to explain Singapore's transition from Third World to First World by looking at Singapore alone will tend to offer a tunnel view explanation of the truth behind our success.  It's like looking at the success of Denmark independently from the success of the rest of Protestant Europe.     Thank you     Ng Kok Lim  Read More →