TR EMERITUS

Written by our Correspondent An irate Australian tourist from Brisbane by the name of Lilian Reutens had written to the Straits Times Forum to complain about PRC service industry workers who cannot speak proper English! Ms Lilian was sharing her experience of encountering service staff who were unable to communicate in English: "I have found the inability of current service industry workers to speak English unacceptable. I understand these new workers are Chinese nationals. The fact that they do not or will not speak English but simply shake their heads and continue speaking in Mandarin and ignore you with a 'take it or leave it' attitude does not reflect well as they are on the front line of service, serving many tourists and foreigners as well," she wrote. Mr Lilian did not specify where the unhappy incident took place, but PRC workers have become ubiquitous in Singapore's service industry due to their easy availability and low labor cost. Despite the efforts of the Singapore government to promote Singapore as an attractive tourist destination, Ms Lilian is one tourist who will probably not return to Singapore again. She minced no words when she wrote a veiled criticism directing at the Singapore authorities: "Foreign workers who are employed to serve the public should be taught basic English so they will not shame the image of Singaporeans who are all taught basic English in school. After all, tourists probably cannot tell Chinese nationals from Chinese Singaporeans." Most Singaporeans are bilingual while the newcomers from China often receive only rudimentary training in the English language, if any at all. In other countries like Australia and Canada, foreign workers have to pass a basic English proficiency test before they are allowed to work there. In contrast, the Singapore government has opened its doors indiscriminately to foreigners, especially those from China who are hugely "prized" for their uncanny ability and willingness to work for long hours with a low pay. In response to the rising number of complaints on the ground, the Singapore government has set up a $10 million Community Integration Fund to help the newcomers "integrate" which includes free language courses for them. Senior leaders from the government has been urging Singaporeans to accept foreigners of late, claiming that Singapore needs them to work in industries shunned by locals such as construction. MM Lee Kuan Yew implored Singaporeans to "bear" with the tide of foreigners which has now grown to become a "flood". Jobs in the service industry where command of the English language is essential can be filled easily by locals instead of Chinese Nationals who are preferred now because they cost much less to employ. // < ![CDATA[ nuffnang_bid = "197ccc2fcf15082b02b9056643ea4a8d"; // ]]> For cost-conscious employers, they care more about their profit margin than the image of Singapore. The situation is exacerbated by the liberal and flexible labor laws introduced by the government to keep business costs to a minimum. The Singapore Tourism Board spends millions of dollars each year to promote Singapore as a "cosmopolitan" city overseas. It is a shame that tourists like Ms Lilian have walked away thinking that Singapore is a "province" of mainland China. Not that the ruling party will care much anyway. New citizens will usually vote for the government and increasing their numbers surely help to entrench their power in the next fifty years or so. As for true blue Singaporeans, they have no choice but to content with a future where they will soon belong to the minority of the population if the current influx of foreigners remains unabated.  Read More →

By Tan Keng Leng MCYS Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan recently told a university student point blank that if Singapore does not take in large numbers of foreigners, then in 20 years time locals will have to pay significantly higher taxes to support an ageing population. With all due respect to Dr. Balakrishnan, since when did the Singapore government ever provide an extensive social security blanket for its people anyway?! We are always being told that social welfare would breed a crutch mentality in the recipients, and yet at the same time the government is always exhorting us to donate more to private charities. Mr. Prime Minister, do the recipients of such donations really care whether the money they receive came from private or government sources as long as they can receive them? If providing charitable assistance to the needy really breeds a crutch mentality in them, then why doesn’t the government outlaw private charities on the grounds that they undermine the government’s efforts to promote self-reliance among the needy instead of encouraging more donations towards them as exemplified by the annual President’s Star Charity Show and others? Instead of spending $10,000,000/- to integrate the foreigners into the country, shouldn’t the money be better spent on providing poverty alleviation programs for needy locals? After all, the foreigners chose to come here of their own free will; the onus is therefore upon them to integrate with locals and for them to adapt to our ways, and not for us to adapt to their ways. We are an independent nation state, not a colony of these foreigners’ homelands. This contradiction becomes even more glaring when compared to the GeBiz tenders listed above. Is this what the government really wants, PRC scholars with crutch mentalities holding key positions in the country instead of self-reliant locals? That is something that we definitely do not want. There are some very important questions we want answered: with more than a million foreigners residing in the country remitting out hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of the country every month, exactly how much money is the country losing through capital outflow every month? And what is being done to arrest this monetary loss the country is incurring as a result of this? Did any of the elite scholars in the Finance and Manpower Ministries even taken this into account when they decided to throw the country’s doors open to any and every foreign Tom, Dick or Harry who wants to come here? And if they had, what plans do they have to attract money back into the country to compensate for the capital outflow? For the foreigners, if things should go bad here, they can and will always return back to their own country; we locals have no such luxury. It is not enough to say that the foreigners contribute to greater GDP growth, or that the rich have become richer as reported in the press. Two of the things we are very concerned about are the falling standards of living among ordinary people, and the rapidly widening income gap between the haves and have-nots. Experiences in other countries have shown that these issues left unresolved would eventually sow the seeds of social strife and instability; that is one thing that we do not want to see happening in this country, so shouldn’t something be done to improve the livelihoods of ordinary locals to ensure that it never happens here? A question that needs to be answered is this: what is the Ministry of National Development doing to ensure affordable public housing for the people? It is easy for MND Mah to claim that a $400,000/- HDB flat is affordable; anyone one earning more than $1,000,000/- a year like he does would find that cheap. For a family of gross take-home income of $4,000/- or less per month, it would mean slogging for 30 to 40 years to pay off the mortgage loan; add to that the need to support their families, including saving up money for their children’s tertiary education, and the burden becomes something that may even drive these families to destitution. Another comment Mr. Mah made was that locals are picky and only want housing in good locations. Considering how much these homes cost, why shouldn’t anyone prefer a mature estate where everything is nearby? An ordinary family’s members need to take public transport to work and school; can anyone imagine what it would be like for a child living in Punggol to have to go to school in Bukit Panjang, and her father to have to go to work in Tuas? On the other hand, foreigners usually leave their families behind, so why shouldn’t they be the ones to have to live in remote locations or to buy private property at market value instead of driving up property prices for locals by buying resale flats? Something that that disadvantage local men vis-à-vis foreigners is the need to serve NS. Between local men who need to be absent for up to 40 days a year serving NS and foreigners who don’t, naturally employers will prefer foreigners whose employment won’t cause work disruptions. We would much rather not need to have to serve NS after our 2-year tour of duty is over, but we know that this would never be granted. So, if abolishing the need to serve NS until the age of 40 is impossible, then the government should level the playing field for locals in other ways. For example, foreign males aged 40 and below should be required to perform community service such as cleaning public toilets and looking after the low income elderly for up to 40 days a year. While local men serving NS will be paid by the government, in this case, the foreigners’ employers should continue to pay their salaries as part of a mandatory corporate social responsibility program. This will also encourage social interaction and community bonding between the foreigners and the locals without taxpayers having to foot the bill for them. It will also level the playing field for local men, since currently employers always favor foreigners who have no NS commitments over locals who always have to serve for up to 4 weeks of every year. Another advantage that foreigners have over locals is their much lower CPF contribution, 5% vs. 20% for locals. Given that they have a much higher take-home pay compared to locals, and most of them leave their families behind as they are here only for the short-term, of course they can afford a lower salary. If they had to support their entire families here where the cost of living is extremely high instead of only themselves here and their families back home where the cost of living is much lower, they would demand a much higher salary, especially if their CPF contribution is 20% too. So with immediate effect, we want to see the employee CPF contribution for foreigners raised to 20%; likewise, if employers are currently paying a lower CPF contribution for them, then it should be raised to 14.5%, same as for locals with immediate effect. Only when locals and foreigners are competing on a level playing field can anyone truly judge who is more productive. There’s another issue about salaries that we wish to bring up. The government is always saying that Singapore cannot afford to set a minimum wage level as it would adversely affect our competitiveness. If that is the case, then why are foreign professionals given a minimum wage of $2,500/- per month when local professionals may be paid as low as $1,500 per month? Shouldn’t locals also be paid the same minimum wage since they are doing the same job at the same level? And for that matter, why should the salaries of top officials be pegged to the top echelons of the private sector because of the fear that they may leave for the private sector? Isn’t this itself a form of minimum wage? If that is the case, then shouldn’t they also be subjected to the same conditions as the private sector, namely if they make a serious blunder they are forced to resign immediately instead of simply “moving on because it was unintentional”? And since the government always says that foreigners help to keep Singapore competitive, shouldn’t we replace all our top elite scholars with foreigners who are willing to do the same job for far lower pay? After all, wouldn’t this result in substantial financial savings for the government that can either be channeled back into poverty alleviation programs for needy locals or tax cuts that would boost the economy through increased consumer spending and business expansions? Other parts in the series: >> Part 2: Foreign scholars >> Part 1: Introduction  Read More →

Written by our Correspondent Former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed has poured scorn on the oratory skills of Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in a documentary - "Mahathir" shown on the Starhub History Channel last Sunday at 8pm. The two-part documentary relates the tumultuous political career of Dr Mahathir who lost his parliamentary seat in the 1969 election and was sacked from his party UMNO before making a stunning comeback as Education Minister in 1974. Dr Mahathir was to become Malaysia's fourth Prime Minister in 1981. He is credited with modernizing Malaysia which was largely an agricultural country back then. The elder statesman was no fan of Lee and had several heated arguments with him in the Dewan Rakyat when Singapore was part of Malaysia in the period 1963 - 65. In the documentary, Dr Mahathir criticized Lee for his propensity to give long speeches. He claimed that Lee became flustered after he interjected his speech repeatedly with sharp questions which he could not answer. Both parties almost come to blows with each other in a heated exchange on 25 September 1964 when Dr Mahathir (then MP for Alor Star) made the following stinging remark towards Lee in the Dewan Rakyat: "They (Singaporean Chinese) have never known Malay rule and cannot bear the idea that the people they have so long kept under their heels should now be in a position to rule them." Lee Kuan Yew shot back: "Of course there are Chinese millionaires in big cars and big houses. Is it the answer to make a few Malay millionaires with big cars and big houses? ... If we delude people into believing that they are poor because there are no Malay rights or because opposition members oppose Malay rights, where are we going to end up?" Relationships between Singapore and Malaysia were prickly during Mahathir's reign as Prime Minister and were frequently strained over unresolved bilateral issues like the sale of water to Singapore from the southern state of Johor. Lee did not visit Dr Mahathir during his recent visit to Malaysia in June which drew a sarcastic remark from the latter than he was not a important figure. True to his combative nature, Dr Mahathir wrote an acerbic article on his blog chedet lampooning Lee as a "little emperor": "During Lee Kuan Yew's triumphant visit to Malaysia he made it known to the Malaysian supplicants that Singapore regards the lands within 6000 miles radius of Singapore as its hinterland. This includes Beijing and Tokyo and of course Malaysia........All those who met the great man from the little country were lectured on how Malaysia should be run. We should not have anymore problems now. We have been told the direction to take......I have a lot more to say about this little Emperor but I will reserve it for later." Surprisingly, the litigious Lee has never sued Dr Mahathir for defamation in court despite the latter's obvious contempt for him. In fact, Lee was forced to issue a rather humiliating public apology to the Malaysian government led by Dr Mahathir in 1997 when he made disparaging remarks about Johor being an unsafe place "notorious for shootings, robberies and car-jacking" in an affidavit filed against WP candidate Tang Liang Hong for defamation. The second part of the documentary will be shown this Sunday at 8pm on History Channel (Starhub Channel 9).  Read More →