A couple of days ago, someone wrote to ST Forum accusing Singaporeans of becoming racist.
I don't think Singaporeans are racist.
I think Singaporeans are more cowards than racists.
Why do we not even make a noise when half the people in our office are foreigners? Because we are cowards.
Why do we accept the unbearable squeeze in our trains, buses, hospitals and malls due to the massive influx of immigrants without a single protest? Because we are cowards.
Why do we allow almost 2 millions new citizens and PRs to go without a single day of national service and not confront our MPs about this? Because we are cowards.
Kudos to LKY's daughter Lee Wei Ling for writing a letter to the ST Forum arguing that Singaporeans are not racist.
In her letter, she mentioned that nearly a third of doctors from the National Neuroscience Institute are Indian nationals!
For years, NUS, a government university, has refused to increase the intake of medical students.
This despite the desperate need to train more doctors to meet the burgeoning demand for healthcare caused by the sudden surge in foreign residents and a fast ageing population.
The PAP has also been positioning this tiny country as a medical tourist hub for rich foreigners and as many as 200-300k flood our hospitals annually.
Obviously,our former Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan must have been "caught off guard".
His solution, like all his counterparts in other Ministries, is to import more foreigners.
They even went to the extent of expanding the list of recognised foreign medical schools, including several from India.
What's worse, and I quote
"Foreign-trained specialists now need only to complete two years of supervision, compared to three previously, while for foreign-trained non-specialists, the duration has been halved - from six years to three."
It doesn't take an expert to conclude that we are playing with fire here and the chance that the quality of medical care will fall is very high.
If Singaporeans were less cowardly, they will take the Health Minister to task.
I for one would not trust an India trained doctor...not even for $8.
Two days ago, a PAP supporter Yap Yien Li wrote to the ST Forum accusing Singaporeans of becoming more ‘racist’ based on comments posted on a TR Facebook (started by fans) about a photo showing three expat Indians sitting in strange positions on a SMRT train.
An unlikely public figure came to the defence of Singaporeans – Lee Wei Ling, the only daugther of PAP paramount leader Lee Kuan Yew. In a letter published in the Straits Times Forum today, Lee who is also the director of the National Neuroscience Institute argued that Singaporeans are not racist.
Using herself as an example, Ms Lee wrote that two of her best friends are Indians and she has many friends who are of mixed Indian-Chinese heritage.
She then made a shocking relevation that 27 percent of doctors in NNI are Indians:
“At my hospital, the National Neuroscience Institute, we have a disproportionate percentage of doctors who are Indians – 27 per cent. There are many Indian doctors in other hospitals. By and large, race is not an issue for patients, except for a few among the less educated and the older among them.”
Ms Lee did not reveal the number of expat Indians among them, but MOH has been increasing the intake of Indian doctors with M.B.B.S from Indian universities to make up for the shortage of local doctors in Singapore.
Besides working in unpopular specialities in public hospitals like Neurology, many expat Indian doctors are also deployed to work in the polyclinics. One polyclinic in the central part of Singapore has 6 Indian doctors and only one Singapore doctor among its staff.
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