TR EMERITUS

I will be blunt with my comments. Koh Poh Koon disclosed in Parliament that about 32,000 workers take home less than $1300 each month, a minimum wage (MW) sum lower than what was proposed by WP's Pritam Singh. So, what does that tell us? It told me a few things. One, setting our proposed MW at $1300 is too conservative. Singapore under the pap government has raced to become the most expensive county in the world to live in and many among those 32,000 workers have families to look after. How could any better off fellow citizens with an iota of conscience look the other way or adopt a couldn't be bothered attitude? Two, 32,000 workers is a very big number of workers and an even bigger tight slap to the pap government's cheek. I say shame on you to pap ministars such as Josephine Teo, Koh PK, shame to Ng Chee Meng, shame to NTUC and their tripartite bulls etc. I challenge all of them and all others who are against paying MW to our most vulnerable workers to try and survive on $1300/ monthly for 6 months and then we can perhaps have more meaningful discussions after that about having or not having MW in Singapore. Thirdly, to me, Koh's arguments were indeed masterpiece strawman. All the concerns that he raised, be it handicapped workers or others, although they were valid concerns but they are not insurmountable challenges. It must prick the conscience of every right thinking citizens knowing that the pap ministers know how to pay themselves minimum wage at the top but deny those weakest and the most vulnerable workers among us their little survival breads. I propose that we start off our MW with $1400/monthly and do it with urgency. I further suggest that we indexed the MW to our inflation rate in order to preserve it purchasing power. Last but not least, I strongly suggest that our unions, their employers and MOM hand hold every single one of those workers, guide them, train and upskill them in real and tangible ways, take the challenge upon themselves to monitor their career progression regularly and show them the way forward to earn better wages because any more talks in Parliament without any real concrete actions on the ground to help them are a waste of everybody's time, energy and resources. What more talks will achieve is only to make pap MPs and ministers look good and fattens their pockets along the way. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

Photo: theweek.in New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Ms. Jacinda Ardern has just won a landslide in New Zealand’s latest election. Ms. Ardern won some 49.1 percent of the votes cast and has 64 seats in the 120-seat parliament. It is, as the BBC reported, one of the rare occasions when a New Zealand Government has an outright majority. What makes Ms. Ardern’s victory so incredible is the fact that, on the scale of things, a “newbie” politician who had not held any ministerial posts prior to her elevation to the premiership. Ms. Ardern had been a researcher prior to being elected as a Member of Parliament on the Party List in 2008 and only faced her first election in 2017, when she became a Member of Parliament for the Mount Albert Constituency in 2017, the year she became Leader of the Opposition and then Prime Minister. Within three years of taking the top job in politics, Ms. Ardern has gone from a relative unknown leader of a small country tucked at the edge of the world to being a global figure that has defined an ideal of leadership. How did Ms. Ardern do it? The first part of the answer is what former British Prime Minister, Harold McMillian called “events.” Mr. McMillian argued that careers in politics were defined by events. Winston Churchill for example, was defined by World War II. How a politician reacted to a significant enough event would have the ability to define his or her legacy. In Ms. Ardern’s case, history decided to give her not one but two major events, namely the March 2019 Christchurch Mosque shooting and the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic. Both these events defined Ms. Ardern as someone that could be relied when the proverbial crap hit the fan. The second part of the answer as to what turned her into an international superstar is the fact that she simply did her job as a leader. She showed she had the ability to communicate clearly and to provide real information when it was needed. She showed that she could be tough and empathetic at the same time and more importantly, she had the ability to get things done during the down times. In the Christchurch mosque incident, Ms. Ardern was quick to done a headscarf [upper right] to show solidarity with the victimized community and refused to speak the name of the gunman, thus denying a terrorist publicity he hopped to gain. New Zealanders stayed united by the tragedy as the following Maori Hakka by a biker gang showed: LINK More importantly, Ms. Ardern used thus momentum to get gun control legislation passed through parliament. If the Christchurch Shooting put Ms. Ardern on the world map, her handling on the Covid-19 pandemic further enhanced her status as an icon of great leadership. New Zealand does have the advantage of being relatively small and geographically isolated but this should not detract from the fact that Ms. Ardern once again provided text book leadership. New Zealand went into lockdown mode early and Ms. Ardern was quick to communicate to New Zealanders that they would face economic hardship but it was necessary to get the pandemic under control. The results speak for themselves. At the time of writing, New Zealand has less than 2,000 cases. The most important part of her leadership was the fact that she showed that she was willing to enforce the rules with no exceptions. She demoted her health minister, Dr. David Clark who took his family on a beach vacation during the first week of the lockdown. The message was clear, nobody was above the rules. New Zealand has come as close as has been possible to beating the virus. It did have certain advantages like geographical isolation. Yet, that alone would not have been enough to make New Zealand one of the key success stories in the Covid-19 pandemic. Ms. Ardern’s leadership shown that it’s not so much a case of size but what you do with it that counts. Let’s start with the obvious. Ms. Ardern has recognized the seriousness of the situation and communicated facts quickly, clearly and most importantly factually. Unlike her American counterpart, she’s avoided “downplaying” the virus and unlike her Brazilian counterpart understood that the virus is serious. Ms. Ardern has led by example and stayed healthy and not turned the seat of government into a hotbed of infection. Unlike her Indian counterpart, she’s also done things that have been possible to execute and hence you don’t have the congestion of infrastructure that was seen in India as people were forced to stagger back to far away villages at the last minute. Ms. Ardern has also done what her Singapore counterpart could not do, which was to remember ALL New Zealanders. While Singapore has a similar death rate from Covid-19 to New Zealand (and similar population), its case load was significantly higher. Why was that? The answer is simple – Ms. Ardern focused on doing her job at hand and remembered ALL living in New Zealand. While Singapore’s statistics remain comparatively good on the global scale, it was too focused on headlines that it forgot about a certain segment of society that was living in conditions designed to spread the virus. Her insistence that her ministers followed the same rules as everyone else also made it easier for ordinary New Zealanders to go through the economic hardship caused by the lockdown. She turned down a salary increase and ensured that the ordinary person understood that the rules were for everyone for a reason. Covid-19 has been tough on everyone. However, like all good crisis, it has helped to show up real leaders that the world needs and thanks to Ms. Ardern, New Zealand has shown that a small nation can show the rest of the world how things are done by doing her job.   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 →

Many people may not realize that the Trace Together token and probably the Trace Together app uses a technology that is quite different from the Safe Entry app. Trace Together uses Bluetooth to find out if two people have been in close contact with each other (i.e. within a certain distance) for a certain length of time. It stores the ID of the other person in the device. Suppose a person is found to be infected with the coronavirus. The people who have been in close contact within the relevant period are extracted device of this infected person. These contacted persons will be traced by the Ministry of Health. They are then asked tested for the virus and asked to be in isolation. The technology used by Trace Together is better than the data captured in the Safe Entry. Even if several people are traced to be close to each other on the Safe Entry data, they may not be in close contact for a duration to be infected. It is better to popularize Trace Together and remove the Safe Entry operation. I suggest that following approach: a) People who use the Trace Together token or mobile app are exempted from the Safe Entry requirement. b) If any person is asked to be in home quarantine due the contact tracing, they will be compensated with a allowance of $50 for each day of quarantine. If they are paid by the employer during the quarantine, the allowance will be transferred to the employer. As the number of people that are placed on quarantine is low, the cost of paying the allowance for quarantine would be modest. The payment of this allowance will encourage more people to participate in the Trace Together program. Most people will be willing to download the Trace Together app into their mobile phone. Others may prefer to use the token. I suggest that the government should move to the Trace Together app/token, as it is likely to be more useful and effective, compared to Safe Entry. Agree or not?   Tan Kin Lian      Read More →