TR EMERITUS

OPINION When we asked Alex Tan if he was disappointed with the low turnout at Hong Lim Park two days ago for his maiden speech to Singaporeans, he said he was glad that twenty Singaporeans took the effort to make the trip to listen to him. For all the criticisms hurled at Alex for his youth and inexperience, he has three important attributes which few Singaporeans had: courage, dedication and perserverance. It was Chinese New Year and he could well spend his time with his family and friends, but he chose to go to Hong Lim Park and speak about national issues concerning Singaporeans publicly. The lukewarm response from Singaporeans did not deter him and he promised to continue making speeches weekly at the same place from now onwards. There is no doubt that Alex still has a long way to go. His speech was short and succinct, if lacking in details and substance, but those who accused him for not offering concrete alternative solutions are missing the point altogether. It is not the job of Singaporeans or the opposition to offer solutions to help the ruling party given their severe limitations. Let us not forget that the PAP has the entire civil service at its disposal. It has scholars, academics and researchers working full-time to churn out reports, data and graphs for it. Alex Tan has none of these. The primary role of Alex is to highlight issues which are seldom discusssed openly in the press, to increase the awareness of Singaporeans and to galvanize them into action. For all his faux pauses, MM Lee is right on one count: Singaporeans are champion grumblers. We complain, lament and whine all the time to one another, but do we ever bother to take serious action to help ourselves? If Singaporeans do not organize themselves and stay united as a people, they will continue to remain as "sheep" being ride roughshod over by the ruling party again, again and again. Singaporeans keep complaining that there are no credible leaders in the opposition, but who will dare to step forward if they do not have the support of the people behind them? What Alex is doing is taking a very small step forward on the behalf of everybody and hopefully he can inspire other Alex Tans out there to follow his path as well. There are many Singaporeans who are not willing to come out in the open, but surely it is not too much to ask of you to lend support to brave individuals like Alex wanting to make a difference? We must not forget the fact that the PAP was an opposition party before and it took them a few years in office to demonstrate their ability to govern Singapore. Compared to the 1960s and now, we have a citizenry who is more aware, educated and knowledgeable - there is no reason why we cannot have a credible opposition to counter the PAP. It is unhealthy for a nation to have only one voice for nobody has the monopoly on the truth. Without people like Alex Tan highlighting issues close to our hearts publicly, Singaporeans will forever live under the illusion that all is well in paradise after being fed with the usual daily dose of propaganda from the state media. We need somebody to expose this fallacy once and for all. There is something really wrong with Singapore and the faster we realize it, the better it will be for everybody.  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent During a visit to Swissotel The Stamford last Sunday, where he was briefed on the "exciting developments" taking place in the hospitality sector, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: "We have to think of all these ways of adjusting to a new situation, because we want the tourism industry to grow. It has a lot of potential, and it can create a lot of jobs... jobs for Singaporeans, and there will also be some proportion of jobs for non-Singaporeans because they need a whole range of skills and abilities." Foreigners make up more than one third of Singapore's workforce, especially in the F&B, retail and tourism industry. Local employers often complain that they have "no choice" but to turn to foreigners as Singaporeans are not keen to take up the jobs on offer. The recently opened Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) IR is rumored to have a significant number of foreigners on its payroll out of the 10,000 workers it is expected to employ when it is fully operational. Even before it was officially opened, Philipines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in April last year that RWS will open about 5,000 new jobs for Filipinos. She had sent a delegation to Singapore to explore possible job opportunities for migrant Filipino and they went to discuss available slots for Filipino workers such as workers for hotels, casinos and performers with Tan Hee Teck, CEO of RWS. (read report here) PM Lee also brought up the issue of Singapore's low productivity level which was only 60 to 70 per cent that of other developed economies such as the United States, Japan and Hong Kong and expressed optimism that Singapore can catch up with them. "So if we invest, if we train, if we organise ourselves properly, I am sure we can do that over time.....'If the productivity doesn't go up, and we don't get the growth, you may feel that while you are relaxing a bit more, the mood, the buoyancy, the optimism, will be quite different," he added. A key reason for Singapore's low productivity is its over-reliance on cheap foreign workers as demonstrated by the graph below: [Source: Kojakbt, 3in1kopitiam moderator] Due to the easy availability of foreign workers, companies often take the easy way out by hiring more to reduce costs rather than think of innovative ways to do so by increasing productivity. Though there is a quota for local workers to fill before an employer can hire foreigners, this can be easily circumvented by applying PRs for earlier arrivals thereby converting them into "locals" and freeing a slot for another foreigner. In Singapore, both citizens and PRs are lumped together in one single category "local". PM Lee should be reminded that it is not the business of Singapore to create jobs for foreigners. Our priority must lie with Singaporeans first. While other countries like Australia and Britain are actively taking measures to curbed the inflow of even skilled foreign migrants to protect the livelihoods of their own citizens, the ruling party continues to import large number of foreigners to compete directly with Singaporeans. Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong said lately that there will not be a "turnaround" in the ruling party's pro-foreigner policy and the number of foreign workers may actually increase in the next few years.  Read More →

Dear Mr Lee,   I refer to your comments made at the Kent Ridge Ministerial forum as reported by Straits Times on 20 Oct 2009.   You said that Singapore's approach is to leave the market to decide the right level of pay.  But where is the market that decides your pay?  Our political market is a virtual monopoly so you end up deciding your own pay.  We should get the recently set up Competition Commission of Singapore to even up the political playing field so that a healthy political market can develop that will decide the right level of pay for our politicians.   You said that any job is better than no job.  But a job that pays three million dollars a year is infinitely better than one that pays three hundred dollars a week.  Show us you mean what you say when you said "never mind the Gini coefficient, if you don't have a job, you get zero against those jobs" by taking on those jobs that pay three hundred dollars a week.   You said that salaries of unskilled workers would be kept low because of competition from China and India.  But jobs at coffee shops, bus companies and food courts need not face competition from China and India.  Yet they do because we allow them to.   You said that at the higher end, workers deployed to oversee foreign operations will attract higher pay.  But deployment is a decision that we make.  Why are we deploying such large numbers of foreigners in well paying jobs in government linked companies?  The billion dollar losses by Temasek should warn us of the value that we're getting from these so-called talents.   You said that social class divide is unavoidable.  The European nations show us it can be avoided.   You said that Li Peng's children probably deserve the high level positions they hold but with one thousand and three hundred million other Chinese, there is a good chance that there are even more deserving candidates.  Therefore, while connection is important in life, one of the basic tenets of the Singapore pledge as well as an important ingredient to Singapore's success necessitates that we do not favour the favoured more than he deserves.     Thank you     Ng Kok Lim  Read More →