TR EMERITUS

Written by Our Correspondent Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong has denied that the recent backtracks made by the PAP to slow the intake of foreigners was politically motivated. PAP leaders, led by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had been exhorting Singaporeans to welcome more foreigners as they are "essential" to our economy. However, they began to sing a different tune early this year, stung by rising anger among Singaporeans at the large number of foreigners living in their midst. Due to the ruling party's liberal immigration policies, foreigners now make up 36 per cent of Singapore's population, up from 14 per cent in 1990. Of the remaining 64 per cent who are citizens, an increasing proportion are born overseas. The Economic Strategies Committee recently unveiled a series of proposals to reduce Singapore's heavy dependence on foreign workers and to boost productivity to fuel economic growth. When asked by the media how seriously the government would push companies to raise productivity, Mr Gan said: "Companies that cannot raise productivity may just have to go out of business or leave Singapore. In past economic restructuring, we have also seen businesses moving out of Singapore. That process has to continue," he was quoted as saying in the Straits Times. Mr Gan chaired a sub-committee on fostering inclusive growth, which recommended that Singapore should more than double its productivity growth rate to 2 per cent to 3 per cent annually in the next decade. His group recommended raising the foreign work levy to "discourage companies from importing too many low-skilled workers." "We need to moderate the inflow of foreign workers so that companies are motivated to invest in productivity," he said. Mr Gan conceded that the 'social constraints' of importing too many foreign workers was a reason that his sub-committee recommended the shift towards better productivity, but denied that the move to slow the intake of foreigners was politically motivated, claiming that the "starting point" is driven by "productivity. Economists have been warning for years that Singapore has to boost its labor productivity and decrease the intake of cheap foreign labor, but the ruling party only bother to focus on boosting productivity now. A month ago, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong continued to emphasize that Singapore "must continue to welcome hardworking, enterprising people to our shores.": ‘We need them both to expand our talent pool and help Singapore to prosper, as well as to top up our own population and make up for our low birth rates. We need the many foreign workers who work here, to build HDB flats and MRT lines, to work in factories especially on late shifts, and to help man the IRs,” he said. His stance was repeated by MM Lee Kuan Yew in August last year: "We need immigrants to make up for the children we are not having. Between age 25 and 40, over 30% remain single and childless....If we do not have educated Malaysians, China Chinese and India Indians and others from the region, our economy will decline. Our labour force will shrink." In an interview with the National Geographic magazine published last month, the elder Lee is reported as saying that it is a "good thing" that Singapore is welcoming so many Chinese immigrants (from mainland China) as they are more "hard-driving" and "hard-striving" than locals. The abrupt reversal in their earlier stance on foreign workers and immigration is baffling. Can Singaporeans really trust them to reduce the inflow of foreigners? Singaporeans should consider their future and that of their children very carefully when they cast their vote in the next general election. If the ruling party can flip-flop now, it can easily change its policies again after winning another election with "overwhelming" mandate so long there is no strong opposition in parliament to check on it. In another few years' time, Singaporeans may end up being in the minority in their own country dominated by the PAP and its new pets from China, India, Philipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar and god knows where.  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent Singapore's famous comedian Mark Lee who has opened five Old Town White Coffee outlets in Singapore has admitted to a Chinese news portal xin.sg that most of the company's staff are mainland Chinese. It was reported by xin.sg that as most of their workers are from China, the company decided that it would be most convenient for them to receive their bonuses in cash. Mark Lee is contemplating buying a cash counting machine to pay his China workers in cash: "That is why we are going to buy a cash counting machine this year. I'm not being proud by saying this - otherwise, we really can't count the cash!" [Xin.sg, 27 January 2010] He did not reveal why his company preferred to employ mainland Chinese over Singaporeans. One likely reason is the lower cost of PRC workers. According to an insider from the F&B industry, a PRC service staff usually cost between $600 - $800 monthly. As Malaysians are demanding higher wages now, many are switching to the "cheaper" PRC workers. Few Singaporean will be keen to take up jobs at such low wages which are hardly enough to survive in Singapore. There is no minimum wage in Singapore. Employers have the complete autonomy to set the wages as they see fit and with the easy availability of cheap foreign labor, they have few incentives to employ Singaporeans who cost more. For a China worker, $600 translates to about RMB$2,900 which is far higher than what they can earn doing the same job back home. Stung by rising anger on the ground as its ill-conceived pro-foreigner labor policies, the ruling party is now trying to claw back lost support by promising to reduce Singapore's reliance on foreign workers. Based on feedback we obtain from readers, companies are still employing foreigners with some posting discriminatory job ads to scour for foreign workers of selected nationality. Since the ruling party is unwilling to do more to help Singaporeans from the lower-income group who are being squeezed out of their livelihoods by the relentless influx of cheap foreign labor, Singaporeans will have to help them ourselves.  Read More →

By Wakka Kong and Simeon Ang  EDITOR"S NOTE: This article was emailed to us for publication yesterday. Unfortunately, the writers did not inform us that they have emailed it to another site for publication as well. We advise all our guest columnists to email their articles to only one site for publication in th future. According to Minister Mentor Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the high salary remunerated to Singaporean ministers helps ensure a clean and honest government as well as to attract and retain local talents. Pegged to a percentage of some of the top earners in our country as well as economic growth, our ministers’ salaries top the world, with our Prime Minister Mr Lee Hsien Loong being the highest paid head of government, more than 5 times the remuneration of Mr Barack Obama, President of the United States of America. We have compiled a table of various data to compare between our leader and other countries’ to answer the mind boggling question of “whether the Singaporean government is worth its weight in gold?” Country Position Name Salary(US$) Corruption Ranking (a) Democracy Ranking (b) Quality of Life Ranking (c) GDP per capita (Int.$) Denmark Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen ~$210,036 2 1 16 36,725 New Zealand Prime Minister John Key ~$253,746 1 3 5 26,625 United States President Barack Obama ~$400,000 16 15 7 46,443 Sweden Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt ~$236,000 3 2 30 35,934 Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsian Loong ~$2,856,930 4 71 70 49,433 * Salaries are from various sources. * (a&b) Corruption & democracy ranking - http://www.worldaudit.org/corruption.htm * (c) Quality of life ranking - http://www1.internationalliving.com/qofl2010/ * GDP per capita from International Monetary Fund - http://imf.org/ At first glance, our PM is drawing up to 12 times more than the other first world countries’ PM salary. What is even more surprising is that the anti-corruption rankings of these said countries are better than Singapore. We can see plainly that while Singapore has done relatively well in one area, the country is obviously lagging in other terms. In addition, their rankings in both democracy and quality of life are significantly better than Singapore – one can therefore safely conclude at this juncture, that an effective and efficient government does not require astronomical salaries to counter corruption and/or attract and retain talents who can be sound policy makers. There is a need however to realize that it takes superior logic and foresight, such as those displayed by our Minister Mentor Mr Lee Kuan Yew in the pre and post independence era of the 60s to 70s – minus Operation Coldstore (which is an outrage in my humble opinion). There is sufficient evidence to claim that the initial management of local housing and education by the first Lee administration provided an impetus for the growth of our country. This allowed the country to be propelled from third world status to that of the first world. However, there seems to be a downturn of sorts in the character and “spur” of the government at this moment. A very recent incident involving the Minister of National Development, Mr Mah Bow Tan who tried to address concern about the housing needs of local Singaporeans by admitting that he was “caught off guard”. It would seem that the million dollar salary he is earning has not compensated him enough to be prudent for the needs of local Singaporeans. If such a said gaffe was isolated and sporadic, it would certainly pass the attention of the citizenry. However, as we all know, our million dollar paid ministers have recently been prone to many a faux pas. A small little bright spot might be evident in the table we have shared above. This comes in the form of the high GDP per capita data. However, if we were to dissect the data provided we can attribute the high GDP per capita to a few reasons. One of the main reasons for the high GDP per capita in recent years may be attributed to our lax immigration policy as some analysts suggests. The influx of cheaper immigrant workforce artificially inflated the GDP. However, this in turn strained Singapore’s infrastructure, pushed housing prices through the roof, lowered overall productivity, depressed local’s wages, contributing to the widening of the income gap which is one of the highest, if not the highest among developed countries. Ultimately, the people who reap the most from it are the rich. What many Singaporeans do not realize is that this translates to higher ministers’ salary as their remuneration is pegged to a percentage of the average income of the top 4 earners of 6 different sectors in the country. Singapore’s ranking on the quality of life study further reinforces the views of many Singaporeans that life in Singapore is far from being a bed of roses, this, as compared to other first world countries. Furthermore, a 2009 study showed that average Singaporeans work much longer hours per year as compared to most other first world country citizens living in their capital. The table below collates some of the average work hours of the above mentioned countries. Country/City Avg. Work Hours/Year Avg. Holidays/Year Domestic Purchasing Power (annual net) NZ – Auckland 1884 21 68.9 US – New York 1955 12 100 SG – Singapore 2088 11 39.9 Denmark – Copenhagen 1658 24 73.1 Sweden – Stockholm 1777 25 73.5 * Figures from “Prices and Earnings”, UBS The huge disparity in Work hours and domestic purchasing power speaks volumes about the man on Main Street. As opposed to what the government would have its citizens think, Singaporeans are a hardworking bunch. The average work hour of a Singaporean far exceeds that of the other countries in our analysis. And yet what do Singaporeans have at the end of the day? Well, Singaporeans take home the lowest domestic purchasing power of all 5 countries. To add further insult to injury, the government has even called on Singaporeans to be “cheaper, faster and better”. Contrast this phenomenon with that of ministerial salary, we can see the evidence for the brand of a local drink, Heaven and Earth. For some time now, the Americans have been criticizing about the excesses of Wall Street and the resulting use of Main Street to shore up the country’s economy. Putting this in context with the Singaporean society, it is time for the excesses of the government to be checked with the man on Main Street. It is time the government of Singapore realizes that they are only in power on the premise that they govern for the people and not for themselves. As George H. W Bush himself was quoted as saying, “A government that remembers that the people are its master is a good and needed thing.”  Read More →