TR EMERITUS

Received this WhatsApp message that is very timely. Shocking that the PAP government would have allowed MRT services to be reduced when they are preaching social distancing, and fining people for not following the guidelines. “Yes, trains are much more crowded now, people are less than 1 metre apart on the trains when they are forced to take up alternate seats. If we were to follow the seat markings, people are only seated 0.5m apart, how is it possible to practice social distancing on trains when the train frequency is lesser? Nice way to put essential workers at risk. What a way to prioritize corporate profits over health and common sense in the midst of a plague. You want to make money or you want to seriously contain the virus? You can only choose one. You cannot have your cake and eat it. Anyway you have made enough in the past. It is now time to sincerely provide transportation as a service to the public. It’s not about making money but serving the public as it was meant to be. Not everything should be privatised. Money has made us lose our way. Civid-19 is a wake-up call to return to the right path of service to the public”.   Lim Tean      Read More →

I spent several hours trying to read and understand the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act 2020 and several sets of hurriedly framed Regulations made under it. Regrettably, despite my legal training, I am not able to comprehend this law and all the Regulations. Not being a parliamentarian, I also do not know if the Regulations, especially the three Control Orders (Subsidiary Legislations 261, 262 and 273 of 2020) which the government claims enable enforcement officers to impose composition fines of $300, $1000 and additional punishments in the form of revocation of work passes on migrant workers have been presented to parliament as required by the law. See S34(4) “A control order and any amendment thereof must be presented to Parliament as soon as possible after publication in the Gazette”. The law also requires the minister to publish “every control order, and any amendment thereof, so as to bring it to the notice of all persons who may be affected by the control order”. See section 34(6) of the Act. I know for a fact that S273 has just been uploaded online (16 April) even though it is allegedly published on 15 April. The government may claim that to publish is merely to publish on its gazette i.e. online. But to be fair to us, to publish should mean more than that. It should be made known to us by means other than the gazette because only a miniscule of us know how to read the gazette. COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act 2020 was passed with three readings on 7 April 2020. The President assented to the bill on the same day. There are three commencement dates in the law: Date of Commencement: 27 March 2020 Part 4 Date of Commencement: 7 April 2020 Section 2, Part 5 and section 34(1) and (2) Date of Commencement: 8 April 2020 Section 34(3) to (9) and 35 It is unclear if retrospective legislation is legal but I will refrain from commenting on this. Part 4 commences retrospectively on 27 March 2020, more than a week before the law was actually passed. What I am really bothered is the excessive punishments already meted out to many people and the extraordinary punishments meted out to our migrant workers. Composition fines of $300 and $1000 have been inflicted on countless number of people and companies for their failure to observe social distancing rules. Our migrant workers who are already under severe stress with infection racing like wild fires in their dormitories suffer even more severe punishments. Work passes of some 24 workers have been revoked. Where in the COVID-19 law allows the government to impose this additional punishment of revoking their work passes? I do not know if any of the “offenders” have refused to pay the composition fines. If I am issued a summons, I will definitely challenge the matter in court. A breach of the COVID-19 Regulations is not the same as a trivial parking or speeding offence. A driver will usually be grateful to pay a composition fine rather than be compelled to attend court if he is guilty of the offence. All drivers know the law because it has been around for many, many years. But this COVID-19 law is only a week old. It was enacted on 7 April and a set of tedious regulations, COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations (S254/2020) were signed by the minister on the same day. To aggravate matters, the government amended the Regulations three times in a week – S261, 262 and 273. Just look at the history: S261/2020 COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) (Amendment) Regulations 2020 (9 April) S262/20202 COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2020 (10 April) S273/2020 COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) (Amendment No. 3) Regulations 2020 (15 April) How does the government expect us and poor migrant workers to understand and obey the law when they don’t even know what the law is? I give you two examples. Not so long ago, the wearing of masks was not necessary. Then the rules changed and wearing of masks was encouraged. Two days ago, mask wearing outside our homes became compulsory. The same goes with social distancing which our government calls it safe distancing. This was non-existent a month ago. Then suddenly, one metre distance became the law and shops have to demarcate such distances on chairs, benches and tables. Now all tables are wrapped up in plastic. How can the government expect us and migrant workers to know and appreciate the law? The saddest characteristic about our government is that it does not know how to govern using methods other than the carrot and the stick. It usually uses the stick more than the carrot. The COVID-19 law allows the courts to impose fines of up to $10,000 or 6 months imprisonment or both for first offenders. For repeat offenders, the fines can be $20,000 or 12 months imprisonment or both. Like driving offences, this law allows composition fines without having to attend court. But unlike driving offences, this law is not about our deliberate flouting of established rules. COVID-19 laws are just a week old. All of us, including and especially migrant workers and visitors are worried and concerned about being infected with COVID-19. We want to do our best to comply with all necessary measures the government deem helpful to contain the disease. We don’t want to die of the disease and we don’t want to spread the disease to others. But our government must be fair to us. If we do not know the law, how can we be expected to obey it? If the government keeps changing the rules, how can we understand and abide by it? The government should be considerate and fair to all. Three hundred dollars is not a small sum when people are unemployed. One thousand dollars is not a small sum when shop owners are struggling to survive. For migrant workers who have their work passes revoked, it means a loss of livelihood and inability to pay their debts back home. Our migrant workers build Singapore. They come here to work and not to create problems. They have been neglected for decades and COVID-19 has exposed to the world how badly we, as a first world nation have treated them. Do we want to tarnish our name even more? They have suffered more than any person in this pandemic. I urge our ministers to re-examine all the cases that have been dealt with by our enforcement officers. COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis. People need to adjust to this sudden imposition of a circuit breaker or lock down. Like the government, we make mistakes. There is no need to treat us like little children. We can learn and adjust to this new regime because we all want to be well. Our migrant workers too want to live and return home safely one day.   Teo Soh Lung      Read More →

There was a report that several patients visiting clinics were tested at random for covid-19 and a certain number was found to be positive. This suggested that the community spread was more widespread than thought previously. I was not surprised by this finding. It would be more helpful if the ministry of health disclosed the number that were tested and the number that were found to be positive and the proportion that were asymptomatic. I believed all along that the virus had already been spread through the community, but it did not cause any serious problem for most people. In many cases, the infections were mild or the virus was not even noticed. I had said, on several occasions, that the containment measures under code Orange were ineffective. The recent increase in infected cases probably proved my point. If these measures were effective, it would not have caused the widespread infection that has been discovered by the shocking number of tests found to be positive in recent days. I suspect that if more testing were carried out in the general population, the reported cases would also increase sharply. My guess is that already 6% of the population has been infected. For a population of 5.5 million, this meant that 330,000 had been infected already. I obtained the 6% by looking at the number of reported cases in Singapore as a proportion of the total tests carried out. If I use the figures for America, the proportion would increase to 20%.This would mean that 1.1 million people in Singapore would already have been infected. If 6% had been infected, does it mean that there is the risk of the virus being spread to the remaining 94% of the population? I do not think so. Quite likely, it suggest that a large proportion of the 94% had already been exposed but somehow they are immune to the virus. Of course, I might be wrong. But in the absence of convincing data, I like to rely on my common sense and gut feel. I am not worried about the large number of reported cases. I consider that it is the related to the number of tests that are carried out. If more people are tested, more would be discovered to be infected. I also speculate that the majority of these cases would be found to be mild. I pay more attention to the death rate from the coronavirus. The statistics from the website of the World Health Organization showed that the death rate from this virus is 2 per million in Singapore. It is 100 per million in America and higher in some European countries. Why is the death rate in Singapore so low? Could it be due to the high standard of medical facilities in Singapore? I would only attribute a small portion to this factor. The death rate in Germany is 52 per million and their health care standard must be comparable to Singapore. I guess that the main factor is the warm climate in Singapore. The coronavirus may spread in Singapore, but it will not result in many deaths, unlike the countries with cold climates. To back up this reasoning, I saw that the death rate in Malaysia is only 3 per million. They have a significant rural sector with poorer access to medical facilities. They also have a low death rate. I assume that the warm climate plays a part. I state again that I may be wrong. I do not have enough data to prove my point. But my reasoning is made with all the data that is publicly available. I look at reports and data from all over the world, and especially in Singapore. If my reasoning is correct, then I must criticize the ministerial task force for wasting so much resources in carrying out the wrong strategy. a) The containment measures under code Orange is a big waste of resources. b) The circuit breaker is unnecessary and is too costly to the economy and to the livelihood of the people. c) The costly quarantine measures might also be unnecessary. I even wonder if Singapore is an example of the herd immunity strategy. If a large proportion of the population has already been exposed to the virus and most people do not become sick, we might have already achieved the goal of herd immunity. Let me take a look at the number of people that are in critical conditions to see if we should be worried about it. We do not need to worry about the health system being overwhelmed, because we have the time to prepare for it. We should increase the number of beds, ventilators and medical professionals. It will cost much less than the budget of $40 billion that is spent on the relief measures. This does not count the losses incurred by the people and businesses at large, that are not adequately compensated by the relief measures. We can also take special measures to protect the elderly sick from being infected. It may require them to be isolated and taken care of by care screened givers. This is better than locking down the entire population. We can expect our death rate to increase from 2 per million, but so long as it is below 10 per million, we need not be alarmed. I am aware that I might be missing some critical information that could change my reasoning. If there are relevant information, I will analyze them and see if I need to change my conclusion. If I were in the task force, would I make decisions based on my assumption? The answer is - I would get the relevant information to verify the credibility of my assumption. If there is a high degree of probably, I would act on my assumption and remove the 'circuit breaker' early. But I would certainly ask for information to verify my assumption first.   Tan Kin Lian        Read More →