Uniquely Singapore- Photo of the day

Singapore is just a very unique place to live in. We pay $70,000 for a chance to own a car for 10 years. We give away fully-paid scholarships to foreigners and deny local citizens that opportunity. And although 40% of citizens voted against the PAP, they still have a 81 to 87 majority in Parliament.

So I'm starting a segment to feature things that make our nation Uniquely Singapore.

Starting with this: A shuttered police post.
Who would have thought crimes won't be committed in the mornings.

Lost in Translation

I was at Toys R Us the other day and wanted to buy an Elmo soft toy for my daughter. I approached this young chap for help. He was Mainland Chinese.
It's OK if he didn't know Elmo but he didn't understand what a soft toy was. Frustrated, I walked all the way to the counter to get assistance from a local staff.
How many of you have had similar experiences? Being a customer these days can be a harrowing experience because many PRC (and other foreign) service staff, who are employed in droves, do not know basic English.

Please don't get me started on the "effectively bilingual" nonsense. Since when is the national language of Singapore Mandarin? Lee Kuan Yew by his own admission said his insistence on bilingualism is wrong.

Further, the People's Action Party has prided itself for building a multi-racial society. It's one of the "core values". Therefore, there should be a unifying language for the service industry... English.

So I read to my chagrin in State Media yesterday that employers aren't sending their foreign workers for the Service Literacy Test. (SLT)
It's unthinkable that a developed country like Singapore doesn't have compulsory language tests for overseas hires.

Top immigration destinations like US, UK, Canada and Australia require foreigners to undergo some form of English literacy test. Hong Kong also adopts a point based test system for immigration.
Yet the Singapore government continues its arbitrary ways of assessing foreign residents.

A couple of reasons cited for lack of participation in the SLT.
1) Too costly to train for test
2) Too stressful for workers

Let's examine these reasons.
A worker who passes the test is eligible for a $100 reduction in foreign worker levy.
However, it costs each employer between $250-1000 per head for the preparation classes.
And the courses are not subsidised by the government.

Separately, the government has set aside $10 million of public money for programmes to integrate foreigners into our society. Curiously, I always thought the onus is on new immigrants to integrate with the locals.
You don't see the Australian government shelling out taxpayers' money to organise a Burmese water festival. If the Burmese want to celebrate their festival, they are free to do so on their own accord.
Still I'm not sure how splashing water on each other is the best use of a precious resource, considering we are already turning to recycled water for our daily needs.

Isn't the money better used to ensure quality service standards and raise the level of customer service in this country? Make English training courses mandatory and subsidise them.

Nevertheless, it's truly uniquely Singapore that the PAP takes in unskilled workers en masse only to train them on home soil. Shouldn't things be done in a more logical manner where workers are screened before they are given visas or even step onto our shores?

Granted, we are not asking for scholars to take up service jobs but there must be a minimum proficiency in basic English to communicate with our Malay, Indian and Eurasian brethren and our older generation who studied Malay as second language.
My Dad is one of them and he has so much difficulty interacting with PRC service staff in our food courts and restaurants.

Too stressful? Surely every kind of test brings some level of stress. Nonetheless, there have been reports that the SLT is "easy to pass". So it's probably just an excuse.
The reason why PRC workers aren't keen on learning English is because they just don't want to (and not compelled to) and expect Singaporeans to speak their language instead.

And by the way, this goes for Filipinos too. It's a misconception that every Filipino can speak English well. Many families live in poverty and can't afford to send their children to middle school.
And Malaysians too.

The SLT should be mandatory for workers of all countries where English is not the native language.
As I'm not bilingually blessed, eating can be pretty stressful when the PRC staff doesn't understand when I don't want bean sprouts and spring onions in my noodles!

Staff strapped companies need more foreign workers?!

I was at a Fortune 100 company's spanky new premises at Mapletree Business City.
The corporate giant takes up 8 floors, just about half of that building tower.

Like most office buildings, you need to exchange for a visitor pass before proceeding.
The company has its own "security" on the ground floor.
What struck me was that it was manned by two... you guessed it... foreigners with their foreign names proudly displayed on tags.
They were young Filipino women.

I suppose if the weren't hired, then the company probably has to turn away visitors. And this company is so damn sure they absolutely cannot find a single Singaporean to do this job.

You step into Universal Studios and you will find that about half the staff there are foreigners.
The PAP, to justify the building of the Integrated Resorts (IR), said that jobs would be created for Singaporeans. Yet then Filipino President Gloria Arroyo proudly proclaimed they had secured 5,000 jobs for Filipinos at the IRs.

The difference cannot be more apparent in other countries. When the Hong Kong government built Disneyland, thousands of jobs were promised to locals.
And that they delivered. Walking around the park, you see that nearly all the cast members are Hong Kong citizens. Despite proximity to the Mainland, you hardly find any PRCs employed.

What is the evidence that Singaporeans are fussier than Hong Kongers?
After so many years of easy access to cheaper labour, have Singaporeans firms become too lazy to focus on employee welfare and retention?
If certain jobs are "shunned" by locals, is it because the pay is insufficient to maintain basic quality of life, one with long term commitments?
The foreigners displacing Singaporeans hail from developing countries with dismal track record of job creation. Philippines, India and China are struggling to create jobs.
It is not surprising that a second rate graduate who can't find a job back home would jump at a chance to work in Singapore in overqualified positions. You will find university graduates working in Metro, Starbucks and in frontline positions. They also take up administrative roles.

The lower salaries they are paid compared to Singaporeans is still alot better than no salary back home.
Most of them also don't have as many long term commitments like housing, raising children, taking care of elderly etc.

Our government must stop saying that Singaporeans are fussy. The onus is on them to encourage companies to make jobs reasonable to Singaporeans. The onus is on the government to implement a Minimum Wage to ensure locals are not exploited. Hiring and firing laws must skewed more towards employees.

Singaporeans have the right to demand better jobs because our Ministers are the highest paid in the world.
Lee Kuan Yew boasted in 2007 that Singapore is entering its "golden period".
Goh Chok Tong, another one of our psychic politicians, promised to achieve Swiss standard of living by the turn of the century.
You can't paint such rosy pictures without ensuring that quality of jobs keep improving.
Do you want a "first world" country where its citizens continue to be cleaners earning $450 a month?

So there's a fine line between being fussy and the right to proper jobs.
And we certainly don't need Angmos to tell us which is which.

Double Standards

The case of caregivers at Nightingale Nursing Home at Braddell abusing a stroke patient is a stark reminder of the kind of society that our government has created.

Again, the perpetrators are not punished by law and the nurse/s in question continues to work at the home. As always, the relevant Ministry will only do so much as to conduct "reviews".

In a separate incident, a deliveryman caused an uproar in cyberspace when he posted in a forum that he was proud to have beaten a Singaporean Malay in a traffic scuffle with remarks laced with racist undertones. To date, despite numerous police reports filed against him, we haven't had any official word of any police action.

These two events, while totally unrelated, his one commonality. The offenders are foreigners.

In January last year, a PRC family "hijacked" an SBS bus for over fiver hours when they refused to disembark because they weren't allowed to bring a wheelchair on board. The police just stood and watched and SBS eventually chartered a cab to drive them home.

In 2009, hundreds of Bangladeshi and Chinese workers protested outside the Ministry of Manpower Building on different occasions and none were arrested. In a country where the right to peaceful protest is outlawed, the police inaction is perplexing.

Contrast these to the incidents involving Singaporeans.

In March 2008, a small group of protesters and their families (including children), were hounded (some arrested) for planning to protest against the unbearable cost of living on World Consumer Rights Day.

In May 2008, a Singaporean was promptly arrested after a couple of people lodged police reports against his alleged racist blog posting.

In January 2009, two Singaporeans were charged with criminal trespass for protesting outside MOM. Remember they didn't lay a finger on the hundred foreign workers who did the same.

We appreciate that every country has its own legal systems and practices.  I fully applaud the PAP for trying hard to stamp out racism. I fully understand that public demonstrations can cause problems to society if unchecked.

What I cannot fathom is the apparent double standards when it comes to foreigners.
Drawing parallels, what I cannot accept is legislation that is applied at the whim of the ruling party.
The SDA team contesting Tanjong Pagar GRC was unequivocally disqualified for submitting their forms 30 seconds late.
Yet Tin Pei Ling, then candidate for Marine Parade GRC, appears to have escaped unscathed for breaking the law when she posted a sarcastic remark on political rival Nicole Seah on "cooling off day".

There is an aged old proverb that goes "All are equal in the eyes of the law"

Have they forgotten?

Singapore Housing Bubble?

The PAP announced today that it will release more land sites for new homes to meet demand for housing.
A record 17,000+ homes are expected to be built.
You kind of wonder what the former Minister of National Development Mah Bow Tan was doing all these years.

But will increasing home supply solve Singapore's housing woes?
Yet again, the PAP is failing to address the root of the problem

What are the reasons for sky-high public housing prices?

1) Like all the other social problems in Singapore, our housing bubble is a result of sudden surge of demand due to PAP's lax immigration policy. Lee Kuan Yew remarked in April this year that we need another 900,000 workers cramped into this tiny island. Even if 17,000 more homes are built, where do we house  these foreign workers? And it's not like houses appear instantly as in Sim City, it takes 3-4 years for their construction.

As of mid 2010, data from United Nations put Singapore's foreign population at almost 2 million or a whopping 40% of the population!
Similar data for other developed states: South Korea (1.1%), United Kingdom (10.4%), USA (13.5%), Australia (21.9%), Hong Kong (30.8%)

2) Cash over valuation (COV) is what a buyer agrees to pay the seller when he feels a particular flat is worth more than its valuation.  A friend of mine told me that he recently got a foreign couple offering $60,000 COV for his flat in Bukit Panjang. Many richer foreigners from China and Indonesia can easily afford outrageous COVs for resale flats. A young Singaporean couple will have to "outbid" COV or wait several years for a Built-to-Order flat. This overinflates the value of the resale market.

The above is taken from the HDB website. The resale price index has shot through the roof and is at an all time high! It has even easily surpassed the 1996 peak. And we know that prices of new HDB flats do trend the resale index.

And to debunk the PAP's claim that housing is affordable to ordinary Singaporeans, this chart clearly shows that resale flat prices has oustripped median household income by 2:1 in the last two decades.

In November 2009, Member of Parliament Chiam See Tong asked how much HDB flats cost and the profit margin added to the cost when selling the flats to which then National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan replied in Parliament:
“The total cost of building flats varies based on when we build, where we build and what we build. It includes cost of land, as well as cost of construction of the flats and ancillary services. It varies from $230,000 for a 3-room flat in Punggol to $530,000 for a 5-room flat in Tiong Bahru.”

But in order to make a fairer assessment of the costs, we need a breakdown of cost of land and construction which the PAP has refused to do.

Since the government owns most of the land, there is no excuse not to do so.
Besides, the Land Acquisition Act empowers the President to acquire land cheap for public purpose, except that it is not always the case.
There have also been unconfirmed reports that land has been acquired, left barren for years and then sold to private developers to build condominiums, obviously at a handsome profit to the government.



In any case, PAP policies could very possibly lead the country to the point of no return. Although never mentioned in our state controlled media, there is a housing bubble waiting to burst.

In 2008, it was reported that 33,000 or about 8% of HDB households defaulted on their payments. That is about the same scale as the sub-prime crisis which plunged American homeowners into the abyss. Many Americans were (and still are) in a position of negative equity- a mortgage debt higher than the value of the property.

The one and only reason why the Singapore housing bubble hasn't burst is because waves of foreigners come in the shore up demand for flats, this at the same time where the Ministry of National Development has deliberately kept supply low. The result is that property prices continue to trend higher.

So what good will raising supply of housing do when immigrant numbers continue to swell?

And what will happen to home prices when 60% of Singaporeans finally wake up from their slumber and decide to vote for policies that will see significant reductions in foreign residents?

Unfortunately, there is no pain free way out of this mess that PAP has created for Singaporeans.
And as the saying goes, what goes up must come down.

For the sake of restoration of social sanity and to pursue a Singaporeans first policy, and in the interests of our future generations, we have to bite the bullet hard.

This country cannot sustain the uneven proportion of foreigners in the long term as our physical infrastructure and cultural fabric is already at breaking point.

The housing bubble will burst...but when?

Foreigners- be thankful

An Indian "FT", in a desperate attempt to justify his existence in Singapore, commented on a Temasek Review Emeritus post:

"There is nothing that an “FT” cannot do here that he cannot do back in India or China."

Let me correct this to " If an employer cannot prove that Singaporeans cannot fill a role, then "FTs" cannot be employed"

Actually, the phrase "foreign talent" has been over abused. 10, 20 years ago, the foreigners we employed from Western countries were indeed foreign talents- they were expatriates who brought skills and knowledge Singaporeans had very little of.
Today, the foreigners you see here are mostly just foreigners.

In the same period of time, Singaporeans have acquired these talents that should enable us to manage and lead on our own, unless the PAP's much touted education system has failed. To date, we have yet to hear any admission of failure.

It may be argued that the cream of the crop in India and China prefer posh government jobs in their own countries or head for US and UK.
Indeed, A Chinese publication stated that most of the top Chinese scholars end up in the US.
So what talents are we really attracting?
Are some of them here on fake qualifications?

It is totally unacceptable that mediocre foreigners are employed to do jobs that Singaporeans want to do, especially in the PMET area.

For any foreigner reading this, these are the only reasons why you are here:

1) Your mere presence would add to GDP growth. Our Ministers' bonus are tied to this

2) HR managers are foreigners themselves and so the affinity to hire their own. In some countries, HR managers must be locals

3) You are happy to work for lower salaries because you don't have long term commitments that Singaporeans have and the Sing dollar is alot stronger than your home currency

4) Our Ministry of Manpower does not properly scrutinise foreigners and there are lapses in due diligence. My company has an application for a foreign hire approved in ONE hour

5) You could somehow decide to turn citizen and add to the ruling party's voter base

My advice for foreigners is that be thankful for getting the chance to live in a modern, clean and safe country that Singaporeans have built over 40 years.
Be thankful that hundreds of thousands of Singaporean men sacrifice their time and careers to protect you if the inevitable happens.
Be thankful to know that for you to stay in your job, a Singaporean has by default made way to accommodate you.
Singaporeans are more than capable bankers, strategic planners, project managers, IT specialists, academics, sales leads etc etc.

Singaporeans first?

Now that the dust of the GE is settling, many anxious Singaporeans are waiting to see if there would be policy changes from the PAP.

Already, both MM Lee and SM Goh have announced their resignations from Cabinet.
The timing of their decisions is a moot point. How many people would have still voted SM Goh if they knew he was leaving his post?
How many swing voters would have voted Opposition had they known that LKY would no longer be MM?
It can be argued that Chiam See Tong failed in his GRC bid because many voters weren't sure if he could last the distance.

However, the biggest talking point amongst my peers, colleagues and acquaintances is the foreign worker issue.
We want the PAP to come out and declare a "Singaporeans First" policy. Most if not all of the Opposition parties have promised to do so if elected.

There have been more and more reports surfacing online about extremely lax immigration policy, not just in terms of numbers but quality of the foreign workers that have swelled up our tiny island.
One Indian national posted in the Singapore Expats Forum about how the Ministry of Manpower failed to detect his false educational qualifications. How many more such cases are there amongst the 1.5 million foreign population?
Just to clarify, I think most of us are aware that we do need unskilled workers to do jobs that Singaporeans won't want to do, eg. construction. Many countries around the world employ workers from developing countries for such jobs too.
Most people are taking issue with the foreign PMETs who compete for jobs that Singaporeans want to do or are upgrading themsleves for.

It is not that Singaporeans hate foreigners. It's just there are far too many of them in our country and it doesn't take a PhD to conclude that they must be taking away good jobs from the natives.
In fact, it's the PAP's flawed immigration policy that has created distrust between locals and foreigners. If you knew you can be replaced by a foreigner who's cheaper, has no NS obligations, has a Masters (Many Indians obtain higher degrees very easily!), wouldn't you be a little resentful and suspicious?

On that note, the Times of India reported that 60,000 Indian PMETs will be hired in Singapore this year.
Firstly, that's far too many for our liking . Secondly, how many of those will be on fake qualifications?

And it's not just the Indians. Our precious office spaces are filled with Filipinos, PRCs and Caucasians of all types. Don't get me wrong, some diversity in the workforce is good. If a comapny was selling into Indian state markets, it may make sense to hire a skilled Indian professional. A Caucasian with considerable regional business development experience could be an asset to a firm.
But it becomes farcical when we are employing foreigners to do jobs that Singaporeans can do, from receptionists to technicians and marketing execs.
A market research team in a big consumer goods MNC is entirely made up of Filipinos and Indians.

If the PAP is really doing some real soul-searching, please do the following:

1) Declare a Singaporeans first policy not just for jobs but other basic services like education and health care

2) Grind immigration to a halt this year. We don't want another 60k Indians on our shores or MM Lee's grand vision of another 900k foreigners!

3) Review the employment passes that have been given out. Set a quota to renew just 50% of these, obviously retaining the best talents with proper qualifications

4) Give Singaporean sons who do National Service a level playing field. Some things that could be done incldue reduction of NS time, priority in tertiary courses and further subsidies to school fees.

We hope we won't be disappointed.