TR EMERITUS

I share my experience on getting a replacement transit card. When I found that I lost the card, I went to the TL Simply Go app. They gave me an option to get a replacement card sent to my home. They said that it would take 3 to 5 days for the card to arrive. The replacement card did not arrive after a week. I could not contact the transit link office. They do not provide any email or telephone number. I went to the bus interchange and 2 MRT stations. I spent 2 hours. I still could not get the replacement card. The staff said that the replacement card was mailed to my home on the previous day. They did not tell me about it. Here is the irony. The easiest way for me to get the replacement app was to go to the passenger service counter at Ang Mo Kio interchange. I can get the card on the spot. But the app did not say this. The outcome is that I waited for over a week, spent 2 hours visiting three counters, and still did not get the replacement card. During the past week, I spent over $10 in adult fares which were more than twice of my concession fares. The customer service from Transit Link is terrible. Nobody called to tell me of an easier way to get the replacement card. The Smart Nation project, i.e. to adopt online practice, is not that smart after all. It ended up wasting a lot of time for the customer and the service provider. It would have been smarter for the app to say, "Go to the Ang Mo Kio Interchange and get a replacement card on the spot". I hope that the Smart Nation people inform LTA and Transit Link office to adopt a better approach.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

Buses to Fix the Broken Trains Went to the office this morning to find that the train system was on the blink again. People were having to leave the MRT stations to get onto buses to send them back to their favourite place – the office. The breakdown in the train system coincides with the announcement that Singapore will be taking yet another step to returning to “normal” and that “work-from-home” systems that had been in place, would no longer be the “default” mode. I guess people are happy to return to normal. After all, working home and going into endless Zoom meetings did give people stress. In China, the birthplace of the virus and the concept of lockdowns, there was surge in divorce cases as couples couldn’t take the stress of being with each other 24/7. I guess, to many, returning to the office had a feel of returning to that safe and familiar life. However, for me, the broken train system coinciding with the return to “normal” of going back to the office, made me realise one thing – our “normal” pre-covid economic model was pretty much like the train system – still functioning but increasingly faulty and instead of trying to fix the fundamental problem, the powers running the economic model were behaving like the train operators arranging for emergency buses – slapping on a band aid instead of fixing the fundamental problem. Like our train system, the economy looks good on the outside and still hums along nicely when compared to quite a few other places. However, like the MRT system, a large part of the economy was built for a different era and there have been notable breakdowns in the economy in the same manner that there have been notable breakdowns on the MRT. Our economic managers have behaved in the same way as the MRT managers rushing emergency buses to the stations – slapping on band aids instead of looking for fundamental problems and fixing them. As a small nation, Singapore cannot afford to rest on “The system is still better than elsewhere.” This thinking is a recipe for future problems. The problem with the MRT is simple. The original system was built back in 1987 when our population was a shade under three million (2,775,000) and it grew to around 3,047,000 in 1990, which is an increase of 272,000 people in three years. This is roughly 90,000 a year or less than a percent a year. In 2004, when a new Prime Minister came into power, our population was 4,167,000 and in 2007, our population reached 4,589,000 or 422,000 in three years. Our population grown between 2004 and 2007 was steeper than Hong Kong (which has an influx of migrants from China, which is a stone’s throw away) and Kuala Lumpur. [LINK] The majority of the population growth came from migration. The logic behind opening the doors to migration was simple – economic growth. Logic was simple, with more people, there would be more money. More people would give local businesses more customers and a larger labour force and so on and so on. While the logic works on paper, the MRT system was built to withstand the influx of people and instead of choosing engineers to fix the basic rail system, successive SMRT CEO’s were given a mandate to make more from the retail operations, which benefited the shareholders (the largest shareholder at the time being Temasek Holdings, which has since bought SMRT). Call it a coincidence but how is it such that there were no breakdowns when Covid restrictions were in place and less people used the system, then it breaks down when the restrictions are lifted and people rush back to use the system. Something similar could be said about the economy. Our economy was built on being the centre of everything. First it was manufacturing, where the key was to attract multinationals to build big factories. Then it was finance, where multinationals were encouraged to set up huge, gleaming offices to be regional headquarters. This model did provide lots of jobs for a while. It gave Singapore plenty of shiny buildings and made vast fortunes for Singapore’s landlords (the largest being the government, Far East Organisation and Hong Leong Group). However, just as our MRT system was not prepared for an influx of customers, the economy never factored the rise of cheaper manufacturing centres in the region like China and increasingly Vietnam as well as rival financial centres. The economic solution has consistently been the same – tax breaks and credits for investors willing to set up shop to build big factories and/or to rent expensive properties. Unfortunately, there are limits to this. Covid-19 forced businesses to work differently. Remote working had to become a fact of life and suddenly, there was no need to house people in expensive offices. Entrepreneurs found that they could work without interruption. Small time start-ups, who are the backbone to any economy had a way of doing things without having to take on the crippling cost of criminally high rentals to unproductive organisations. Instead of encouraging this movement to develop, the government remained focus on the glamorous parts of the economy that centred around big offices. Sure, I can understand that there was a need to help businesses get through the early stages of covid-19. However, instead of trying to encourage the return of normal, more could have been done to create an economic model that worked for Singapore and as many as her residents as possible. Missing that opportunity to create something new is a pity.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.        Read More →

Here's an article about Uighurs which is very different from what you have been reading in other media sources. A friend of mine living in Canada has given this to me, based on his personal studies and experience. And- as to the many countries who have on US provocation and encouragement / or insistence expressed their views on the suppression of its Uighurs people who are citizens of China, I should share with this with you. After my first retirement when I assisted a friend who runs a large landholding and property development firm here, Edmonton. One of my office mates was a Uighur girl from Urumqi, Xinjiang Province, China. At first I could not tell she was Uighur, she looked so Chinese. It was over lunch one day when she casually said that she came from a family of 9 children. I then asked how this was possible during the One Child policy? It was then that she told me that this one child policy law NEVER included China's Ethnic minorities and only then did I know she was Uighur. There are about 66 minority groups in China. If the CPC (Communist Party of China) was onto Genocide of its over 60 ethnic minorities - why would these minorities have been excluded from the One Child Policy during Mao's era? She then told us that parents could not speak or read & write Chinese, they were born abt the time when Mao reunited China (1948 or soon after). Her parents were unable to get jobs bec. they were totally illiterate in Chinese. Xinjiang in 1949, was then still a very remote and very under-developed and among the poorest, if not the poorest of all of the Provinces and China itself was then among the poorest countries in the world and still suffering from the ravages of the war against the Japanese, WW2, and the Chinese Civil War. Her parents were poor and had a tough time raising the family of 9 kids. She remembers that her parents were assisted in the 70's or 80's (Deng's time) and given some land and a home and Chinese lessons for free. But her parents put all their kids into the Chinese School system, and there the kids had a chance to better themselves. She (Cathy) also learnt English as well and later married a Han Chinese and they now live in Vancouver. She is an Accountant. Remember also that Mao's China was literally bankrupt when Mao declared China a Republic on Oct 1 1949. The KMT under Chiang Kai Shek had emptied the entire Chinese treasury and reserves of gold and silver and also many, many historical art works, antiques and other valuables and taken these to Taiwan as the KMT retreated to Taiwan The Colonialists had raped China of its resources and the wars against them, the Japanese and the long Civil War had also cost China dearly in lives and treasure. This is a big reason why Mao did not immediately proceed to 'liberate' Taiwan and chose instead to consolidate his gains on the mainland. The Taiwan issue can be attended to later.   To be continue...   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →