TR EMERITUS

A former economics lecturer at the Singapore Management University (SMU), Mr Peter Kriz has had his Singapore PR application rejected to which he wrote on his Facebook: "Denied PR. Too funny." Mr Kriz who graduated with a degree and armed with a PhD from two Ivy League universities in the United States had been an assistant economics professor at the SMU for seven years. One would have thought that it would be a breeze for Mr Kriz to obtain Singapore PR since cleaners, construction workers, bus drivers, Chinese language teachers and even freelance prostitutes were given PRs easily in the past. The Straits Times reported last year of a PRC teacher in a private school Zhang Yuanyuan who obtained her Singapore PR within two months of application though she did not have any special qualifications or skills. Unlike some other countries like Australia, New Zealand and Canada which used a "point system" to assess the suitability of PR applicants, Singapore does not appear to have a well-defined stringent set of criteria for foreigners seeking to apply for PR. Not only is English proficiency not a pre-requisite for PR application, the income and occupations of the applicants do not matter much as well. Being obsessed with maintaining and perpetuating its political hegemony over the entire nation, the ruling PAP may be more interested to get economic migrants who do not question their policies rather than real foreign talents who are independent-minded, critical and articulate.   Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans. Please use our online web form to contact us.  Read More →

Reform Party leader Jeisilan Sivalingam has voiced out against the "large" size of the Singapore government. The 40 year old is a Process Improvement Manager in a multinational company located in Singapore and graduated from the University of South Australia with a Bachelor of Management, specialising in Logistic and Supply Chain Management. In an email interview with votingrp.wordpress.com, Jeisilan said he joined politics because he loves Singapore and he believes "that pluralistic democracy for Singaporeans is the only way to improve our lives." He took a swipe at the Economic Strategy Committee’s recommendations earlier this year to boost national productivity, but conveniently ignored the expenses incurred by the government: "We have an oversized government for such a small country – where else in the world would you find Ministers Without Portfolio? For a small country like us, do we need three generations of Prime Ministers in the Prime Minister office? Uniquely, we have a Minister for Manpower and then have another Minister to represent to worker. And these ministers don’t come cheap." Singapore must be the only country in the world with two former prime ministers in holding ministerial positions in the cabinet and continues to get paid by taxpayers on top of the pension which they are entitled to for the rest of their lives. "These are issues that need to be looked at with serious urgency and honest self-reflection. Complacency and Wasteful spending have to make way for a culture of prudence and being ‘lean’ when spending tax payers money," Jeisilan added. Under Singapore's unique political system, there is literally no opposition in Parliament to hold the ruling PAP accountable which occupies 82 out of 84 seats though they won only 66 percent of the votes in the last general election. Read the full interview with Jeisilan here.   Related articles: >> Kenneth Jeyaretnam asks netizens to step forward to fight for democracy >> Netizens express support for Reform Party >> Reform Party leader voices concerns over police harassment of netizens >> Favorable response from Toa Payoh residents to RP/SPP walkabout >> Reform Party’s response to PM Lee’s National Day Rally speech >> Reform Party calls for a more rational labor policy >> National Day message from Reform Party >> Kenneth Jeyaretnam: 45 percent of Singapore’s GDP goes to foreigners >>Proposed strategem for Reform Party for next 10 years     Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans. Please use our online web form to contact us.  Read More →

I cant help but ponder about the upcoming future of our public transport system in the near future. At the rate that it is going, it seems that the government is encouraging people to take buses from their homes and change to trains in order to travel to central city areas for their work. While the government has taken notice of the congestions experienced during peak hours, it seems to underestimate the problems that commuters are facing. As the current plan entails, more commuters are encouraged (or “forced”) to take trains to travel, as there is little cheap alternatives since long-distance buses are “facing extinction” to “prevent wastage of resources”. I personally believe that this is a flawed thinking to allow trains services to dominate long-distance travels (by long I mean say Punggol to Raffles Place, Orchards…etc.). You don’t consider two hawkers selling chicken rice in the same coffee shop as resource wasting; neither should you consider buses travelling near parallel to train services as resources wastage. Let me elaborate, sometimes back when North East Line begins to operate, there was some outroar when buses like 502, 111, 97…etc. which travels from Hougang, Serangoon North to CBDs, and Jurongs were cancelled or shortened as it was considered duplication of resources. While buses like 111 or 97 maybe, express bus 502 is certainly not since it travels on expressway and will serve as a good alternative to NEL to city areas. Express bus services like bus 502 could be allowed to run during peak hours, and relieve the congestions that now commuters are experiencing. But now it is impossible as both the buses and trains especially in the NEL areas are controlled by the same company, SBSTransit.  Furthermore, the current public transports are dominated by few heavyweights like SMRT and SBSTransits, this has clearly reduced the competitiveness in the industry and in the end consumers suffer. Consider a different scenario, if the public transport industry is open up. New small bus outfits are allowed to come up with any transport routes and get automatic approval to operate in 24hours. New operators could setup with little capital, and get the EZ-link terminals installed for a small fee (much like SingTel or Microsoft’s SME business startup package). In no time, the industry will become competitive with several niche new bus operators running, and the big heavyweights will begin to crack their entrepreneur heads on really optimizing their resources. There is really no big risk with opening up the public transport sector, furthermore employment will be up as new bus operators will provide jobs and cost saving to consumer. Unless there is direct competition, there will be no innovation. If NEL is owned by SMRT and buses 502, 111 & 97…are owned by SBSTransit, you think SBS Transit will give up their buses over “duplication of resources”? If we continue on our current way, well, the heavyweights will only continue to “bloat”. And since there is no survival threat (there’s no competition), the heavyweights will just have to innovate on how to optimize (read squeeze) their current revenues (EZ-link deposit non-refundable, fare increase every few years and so on).   Tony Ong  Read More →