TR EMERITUS

What’s the big deal, some say? It’ll only be used by the police for criminal investigations. Nothing to fuss about if you’re not anywhere near the underworld. Perhaps. But there’s also POFMA. Remember all the hand-wringing when the PAP told us something had to be done about deliberate online falsehoods? Post-legislation, the Act was used by the government even to insist that it’s interpretation of statistical data is the true and correct one, leaving the “offending” party to seek redress through the courts if it disputes the state’s assertion – a process that is thoroughly onerous in terms of funds and time. Then there’s the complete shutdown of space for political dissent – and even for not-so-political actions. Name me one other government that prosecutes a lone activist carrying a placard with Mr Smiley on it. But like the TT matter, you say, what’s the big deal if you’re not into posting anything that might be remotely of public interest or that you’ll just stay clear of carrying any placards. But here’s why it matters – and matters to you and your family. The use of TT other than exclusively for Covid19 matters, the constriction of online space, the throttling of even the most benign of political dissent, the employment of defamation laws, the castigation of academics, just to cite a few examples, cast a long and pernicious shadow on Singaporeans’ psyche. When people know they are being watched and sanctioned, self-censorship becomes the norm. It becomes baked into society’s culture. And here’s when it gets really dangerous: We think and behave as if such censorship, whether state- or self-imposed, is not just normal but necessary. Generations of citizens have been told that without such officially proscribed and prescribed views, we become ungovernable. Such control ensures unity lest society degenerates into disrepair and chaos. Besides, we are Asian and so value community over self – government-speak for the notion that people need to be lorded over. Through decades of such inculcation, thinking among the people has become limited and stunted. Anyone and everyone who colours outside the lines becomes a subject for censure and punishment. Let me be clear: For a modern society to function, there must be law and order. But I repeat, the rule of law and the respect for order need not result in the kind of censorship that we have here in Singapore. The freedom to think and express ourselves, to peacefully assemble and to form associations are not niceties to have. They are rights indelibly written into our Constitution. They are, obviously, not absolute but they may also not be expurgated just because the ruling party finds it politically advantageous to do so. Not only are these rights constitutionally mandated, they are freedoms crucial to our continued progress as a nation. The dismal state of our nation today did not come about by accident. It is the result of decades of control imposed by a powerful few within one political party, control that has resulted in our collective mind-rot. This has produced worryingly deficient outcomes. Whether it is economic performance, mental health, suicide rate, birth rate, emigration rate, outlook of our youths, labour productivity, wage levels – national indicators hardly signal a future of hope and confidence. On the future of our economy in particular, I’ve said it elsewhere and I’ll repeat it here: political rights and economic development occupy two sides of the same coin. You can’t have the latter without the former, especially not at this juncture of our nation’s development given the exponential rise of technology. With widespread and deep-seated censorship, we cannot compete in the world of innovation where the clash of ideas and challenge of orthodoxies are the norm. Whether it is in commerce, scientific inquiry or the arts, freedom of expression is to progress what flour is to bread. Conformist thinking, on the other hand, is a one-way ticket to irrelevance and obscurity. Censorship and progress, if it needs to be said, are mortal enemies. We are on the last legs of an unsustainable, rentier economy propped up by an ossified political system long past its expiry date. No matter how many foreigners we bring in and regardless of the number of them we convert to citizens, with a society and political culture that threatens rather than inspires and stymies rather than motivates, this country is on a gradual but inexorable decline. When our society was young, we were talked to like children. But as society grows up, we must discard our childish ways of thinking and behave in a manner befitting an intelligent and mature people. The sooner we realise that this autocratic system robs us of our future, the sooner we can start building a quality life for our nation, our loved ones and ourselves. If society is going to imagine a vibrant future, if our younger generations are going to be among the leaders of the world, and if our citizens aspire to live fulfilled lives, then we need to embark on the urgent road of reform. Pushing back against the TT U-turns, the POFMAs, the criminalisation of political action – that is, standing up to the autocrats – are a good and necessary start. But more, much more, needs to be done.   *Facebook post by Dr. Chee Soon Juan.        Read More →

What a splendid programme. a new one year course for Polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) graduates to be a professional hawker. I really admire the brilliant brains of Singapore Inc to come up with this course. So I googled to check if other countries have something similar. We are indeed unique. Being the only country to conduct such a course, perhaps we should start taking in foreign enrollments. Some new scholarships for foreign students would be encouraging, plus an incentive for auto-PR to operate a food stall here after graduation. Our demographics have shifted dramatically. I estimate 2 out of every 5 persons in Singapore are foreigners. The government fudges the statistics by embedding foreigners with PR status together with local residents. The actual figures of foreigners are thus not transparent. A lax barrier to entry of foreign workers (and their dependents), especially CECA (the FTA with India) caused a flood of foreign workers into the market. The frustrations and anger of Singaporeans at having their jobs stolen has been brewing for a decade. All over the world, advanced countries have to grapple with the problem of filling the lower level jobs that locals do not want. Singapore is no exception. So for years, we relied heavily on the good people in our region to fill up the low and unskilled jobs. In the last decade, something changed. The jobs being taken over by foreigners now are PMETs. Even the C-suites are now gone. There is now a glaring anomaly. Singapore has excellent institutions of learning, and a well-educated, disciplined workforce. These are factors which played a critical role in the roaring success of the Lion City in the past. But this same workforce is now shunned in deference to imported labour from countries that are rated generally much lower than Singapore by all measures of quality metrics. The rational is pretty straight forward. The government pursues GDP cold-bloodedly on the backs of cheaper foreign labour at the expense of the locals. As we crossed over into the higher value economy, we have hit the diminishing returns on productivity. All businesses big and small, resort to cheaper imported labour to maintain their bottom lines. This is the cold reality. Our skilled work force is a casualty of the neoclassical economics as we see a tectonic shift of PMETs forced into the gig sector, taking up jobs as Grab driving, food delivery, hawkers, tutoring, freelancing, etc. Ministers who once spoke of the vital importance of human resources given Singapore's lack of natural resources, now see no urgency in the national pool of talent gone to waste. Left unaddressed, this  trajectory will lead to a serious problem of a hollowing out of our own local talent pool. A sociopolitical timebomb is in the works. Singaporeans have been pushed into the cul de sac, a place where Lee Kuan Yew was well aware, people carry hatchets there. It's a powder keg but the ruling party, with the confidence of a police state, fears no 'stop-the-steal' scenario. With votes guaranteed by calibrated naturalisation of foreign workers, no serious change in imported labour policies is on the horizon. Where are the voices from our industry leaders? ABSOLUTE SILENCE. Is there any who has voiced concerns? Any suggestions? Anyone that said the unemployment situation is bad so I'm going to keep the jobs for Singaporeans? None of these. As corporate animals, they all want record bottom lines to satiate the bank balances of the most important stakeholders, the top executives. Why should they pay top dollars for a Singaporean manager when a 30 year old MBA from India can fill the post at half the cost, does'nt matter the quality of the certificate. The Singapore elites have abandoned the ordinary Singaporeans. Corporate greed over jobs for Singaporeans. The government dumbs down on Singaporeans with Explainer #1 - foreign talents are critical for the new economy skills our country lacks.  Singaporeans are cosmopolitan enough to appreciate that foreign talents are useful and top talents are headhunted by corporations all over the world. These would be the top tier talents in the latest and emerging technologies, the deal makers, the marketers with international connectedness, the level 1 executives of industry sector that Singapore wants to develop. The core of Singaporean push back of foreign PMETs are those executives in general management such as HR, Administration, Facility Management, Operations, Purchasing, Customer Services, Public Relation, Promotion, Advertising, Accounting, Finance, Treasury, IT systems development, etc.These foreign PMETs take away Singaporean jobs, they are not here to create jobs. Do we need hundreds of thousands of them here? The government is afraid, very afraid, to provide the real data of what type of foreign talents are really here. It will out their lies. The Government rubs it in with Explainer #2 - foreigners help to create jobs for locals.The foreign talents that come here and create jobs are the investors and entrepreneurs. and there can't be 1 million of them here. Admission of failure is implicit in Explainer # 1. The Ministry of Education failed to plan for the market requirements of the new economy. Back in the 1980s, when Singapore decided to shift away from labour intensive industries to high value added economy, we underwent a wholistic structural change. That included educational curricular refocus for learning institutions to churn out the technically and professionally relevant graduates. In contrast to Iskandar Technology Corridor of Malaysia, Johore in the 1990s. Malaysia made no change in school curriculum to produce the technicians. When industries moved into Iskandar, there was a big problem of lack of the right labour skills. If our government now says we lack the skills for the new economy, its another way of saying, like Iskandar then, MOE did'nt plan the educational system well this time. The nouveau business trend is 'hubbing'. Basically, the MNCs are reshapping their business models into regional hubs where regional HQs control a geographical sphere of operations. Singapore has a significant share of the action for various reasons such as political stability, good infrastructures, skilled labour force (and now lower cost and readily sourced from India and elsewhere), strong financial market, pro-business government, clear legislation. sufficient pool of professional support in various spheres of business, etc. A concentration of HQs on the island means big corporate decisions are made here, such as regards maintenance of supply chain, distribution, telecommunication, commodity sourcing, etc. In order to support these big corporate decisions, our financial markets, risk mitigation markets, the commodity exchanges, international law professionals, etc, have developed in tandem. The overall picture is a rosy one. But the never-mentioned part is MNCs site their operating units in the region, such as Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia etc. The issue with this is HQs in Singapore generate no tax revenue to the government. The point then is, tremendous economic activity is created around this hubbing model, but we don't have any metrics to understand the net impact given the influx of foreign workers.  Has the benefit trickled down to Singaporeans or foreign workers? The government constantly defends CECA by dumbing down on the lack of skills of Singaporeans in emerging technologies. Whilst it is of course true there are always some top of the heap skills that not just Singaporeans, but every other country. do not have, the rationale has been totally quoted out of proportion. It's got to a point Singaporeans are having a crisis of self-doubts. A depressive mood has replaced the confidence we once had under the 1st gen leadership. I like to pooh-pooh this crap mentality with a real life story of a young Singaporean I know well. Let's call him Lowian. He worked in the Singapore office of one of the world's biggest FMCG corporation. Their data analytics was outsourced to a specialist big data company. About 3 years ago the company decided to set up their own big data capability. Lowian was sent to Vietnam to set up the company. One year later, the company was in operation and Lowian is the head honcho there. Lowian is no scientist nor electronic engineer. He is just a young Singaporean with some humble IT background. The company is now running big data analytics with 100% Vietnamese employees. There are no Indian IT experts. With a population of 3.5m true Singaporeans, and having built an economy and infrastructure and services for 6.9m, Singapore is in a situation similar to United Arab Emirate. We have painted ourselves into a corner. The policy of dependence on foreign workers cannot be reversed without causing a collapse of the property market and wrecking the whole economy.  And so the government does lip service with band aid regulatory changes designed to constraint employers' predatory recruitment practices that disadvantage Singaporeans. Most of these have been seen to be ineffective. The government also funds several palliative skills upgrading courses. One really wonders what additional skills can managers in HR, admin, facility maintenance, finance, procurement, sales, etc add on to help them retain their jobs. And so this new hawkerpreneuralship course is yet one more brilliant idea of the government. Dressed up beautifully for the public but addresses not the real problem of stolen jobs. But who really cares. MP Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State, has her sight set on many ribbon cutting events for new food stall openings. There is no more need for her to cut ribbons for new bus stops and garbage bins. At least for her, there is an upgrade of sorts.   Chempost * The author blogs at Going down the rabbit hole.      Read More →

Ten years ago, I saw many videos about ghost cities all over China. At that time, I said that it is a matter of time for these ghost cities to be occupied. Furthermore, these cities were built using spare idle resources in a global economic recession following the global financial crisis. Why keep people idle when a government could offer them useful and productive jobs. China was being criticized in the western media as creating white elephants and being wasteful. What happened to these ghost cities? I saw a recent video quoting an example of a ghost city that is now being well occupied. However, I am not sure if this is reflective of the other ghost cities. I shall find out more about these cities.   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →