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The Daily Star, 28 July 2010 Singapore has proposed hiring 45,000 female domestic workers from Bangladesh on a pay higher than in the Middle Eastern countries. Singapore is home to around two lakh Bangladeshi workers, but this is the first time it wants to hire female ones. "Singapore needs 1.75 lakh female domestic workers. They would like to take 25 percent of them from Bangladesh provided we properly trained the jobseekers," said Nurul Islam, director of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training (BMET). Read rest of article here.  Read More →

Mr Abdul Malik, an alumnus of the top secondary school in Singapore Raffles Institution was propelled into instant "stardom" overnight after he was arrested by the Singapore police for "inciting violence and public disorder". Mr Malik had posted a comment on his Facebook taking Dr Vivian to task for the YOG mass food poisoning scandal on 15 August which caused 21 YOG volunteers to suffer from diarrhoea after taking food provided by the YOG caterer. According to international news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), Mr Malik posted a comment written in capital letters saying that the incident showed it was time to "burn Vivian Balakrishnan and the PAP". In the same posting, he also called on the public to “rally together to vote them out". He was arrested at his workplace on Tuesday morning by three plain-clothes police officers from Bedok Police Division whose Commander is DAC Teo Chun Ching and Head Investigator is DSP Goh Tat Boon. Below is a snapshot of the original comment posted by Mr Malik who got him into trouble with the police: Most Singaporeans do not buy the story of the police that Mr Malik is a "threat" to "public order" and feel that its approach has been over-bearing and heavy-handed. Prominent Singapore blogger Mr Brown wrote sarcastically that anyone with "half a brain" will realize that Mr Malik was not inciting any violence: "Personally, I think his only crime was typing in all caps and the overuse of exclamation marks (I suggest a month's community service for every unnecessary exclamation mark). You may even take him to task for misspelling the name of our Sports Minister (it's "Vivian" and not "Vivien", and he's a bloke). But I think anyone with half a brain will realize that in the context of what Mr Ghazali wrote, he was not inciting any violence or asking folks to set a minister on fire." (Read more here) Another netizen Kojakbt asked how a simple metaphor like "burn" can be misconstrued to mean "inciting violence and public disorder": "Now, you can physically burn a person but how are you supposed to burn a political party? Moving to the next sentence, “Rally together and vote them out!!!”, he was clearly qualifying his previous “burn” remark by asking the citizens to vote PAP out. Hence, reading both sentences together, the meaning of the word “burn” becomes clearer. It’s referring to burning as in the idiom, “burning someone at the stake”. Figuratively, it means “to chastise or denounce someone severely or excessively”  (http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/burn+at+the+stake). In short, it’s clear to most people who have passed their GCE ‘O’ level English that Mr Malik was speaking metaphorically when he used the word “burn”. I’m puzzled that the person who reported this to the police cannot understand simple English?" Mr Malik has also received numerous well-wishes and pledges of support from ordinary Singaporeans. One of them Dave Raff thanked Mr Malik for standing up: "Dear Malik: I have heard what had happen. most of them take it as a laughing stuff and simply view you as famous. this is not the way I guess. I would say many thanks to you and nothing can buy over your guts for doing so. you have said what needed to be said and the rest is in singaporeans hand when the time comes. I know how you feel on what happening around you and the rest of us. You are one of Singaporeans that stood up. I wish you the best in your journey and whatever it takes you have to be strong. God bless you." The PAP regime and the Singapore police should learn from this lesson and refrain from using the law to quash online dissent in the future or they will only be nurturing more "martyrs" like Mr Malik.   Related articles: >> Abdul Malik on his arrest >> Arrest of YOG critic to quash online dissent backfired >> Character assassination by Straits Times against YOG critic >> Public support for arrested YOG critic >> Outcry among Singaporeans at arrest of YOG critic >> Singapore police put YOG on world map >> Did Dr Vivian lodge police report against YOG critic? >> YOG critic arrested by Singapore police >> Participant of “I hate YOG” Facebook arrested by police 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 →

The Temasek Review was quoted by BBC News in an article on 26th August featuring immigration issues in Singapore, a sign of its growing popularity and clout as an alternative news source and authority on Singapore politics. The article titled "Singapore’s tough balancing act on immigration", which was written by Mariko Oi from Asia Business Report, BBC World, Singapore, focused on the growing complaints from Singaporeans at the government's immigration policies. Our article in March criticizing the PAP's open-door immigration policies was quoted: "Without warning, the floodgates were opened to allow foreigners into the country indiscriminately," says an opinion piece on the popular online forum Temasek Review. "In the past, the foreigners [who were] given a permit to work in Singapore were either highly qualified or filled positions [which were] shunned by Singaporeans. They are now competing directly with them (Singaporeans) for limited jobs." [Source: BBC News] This is not the first time that Temasek Review was quoted in a respectable foreign publication. In January this year, we were quoted by Wall Street Journal: "On Temasek Review, a Web site dedicated to Singaporean affairs, one writer recently warned Singaporeans would be "replaced" as "3rd class citizens" by foreigners, while another said that immigration "will emerge as the single most important issue" in Singapore's next general election, due by 2011." [Source: Wall Street Journal] Our correspondents have received numerous emails from foreign journalists seeking their opinions on the latest socio-political developments in Singapore as well. According to one journalist from a prominent international newspaper, it is almost impossible to obtain any genuine news about Singapore from the local media. "It's all government spins and propaganda. As we do not have an office in Singapore, it is almost impossible for us to speak to the Singaporeans on the ground and so we have to rely on secondary sources like your blog which is becoming an authoritative source of information for many foreign correspondents," he quipped. Though the Temasek Review is run largely by anonymous individuals, its surging readership is sufficient proof that the "message matters much more than the identity of the writer." In the meantime, the readership of Temasek Review has more than tripled in the last four weeks and has since exceeded that of TODAY Online in Singapore according to the latest traffic rankings from Alexa.com: Temasek Review's traffic ranking in Singapore on 27 August 2010 - 177, up 20 places from last week's 197.   TODAY Online's traffic ranking in Singapore on 27 August 2010 - 181: We will like to thank all our readers for their kind support and we will continue to do our best to be your UNCENSORED voice in Singapore. As you can see for yourselves from the YOG fracas, it is of paramount importance to have an alternative news source of sufficiently high readership to counter the lies, hogwash and propaganda churned out daily by the mainstream media which is merely a mouthpiece of the PAP regime. Without the internet, many scandals of the YOG will never come to light such as the substandard food given to the YOG volunteers, the collapsing roof canvas at @SCAPE, the poor turnout at the games, the mass food poisoning outbreak involving 26 volunteers and lastly the arrest of a YOG critic by the Singapore police which made the international headlines. All these news were first leaked out on the internet before the mainstream media picked them up and TR often adds as a "magnifier" even when it is not the primary source, to disseminate the news not only in Singapore but worldwide because we have so many readers including foreign journalists and diplomats. Whatever is published here is read by tens of thousands of readers each day. As an independent unofficial news agency in Singapore, we owe our allegiance only to Singaporeans and nobody else. Being a non-commercial site run entirely by volunteers who have no vested interests in politics, we are free to speak up for you without being worried about our profit margin or offending those in positions of power. TR is a 100 percent Singaporean-centric online newspaper run by Singaporeans for Singaporeans. We understand you because we are true blue Singaporeans who had sacrificed two and a half years of our lives in service of the nation. Your interests come FIRST for us and we are accountable to you. We are your humble servants. Due to our limited resources, we need every single one of you to be our "citizen journalist" on the ground. If you have any news for us to write about, please email us directly. Your invaluable input will definitely have a real impact on the state of affairs in Singapore.   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 →