TR EMERITUS

Translated from Lianhe Wanbao To save a couple of cents, Ah Gong and Ah Ma were forced to eat outside the public toilet everyday. This elderly couple is in charge of collecting entrance fees for a public toilet. They work 12 hours a day from 9am to 9pm, collecting ten cents from every person who enters the toilet. However, just for this ten cent, they have to put up with scoldings from people, some just walk in without people while others even steal the coins on the table and hence they dare not leave and have to have lunch at the toilet entrance. 81 year old Lin Chen Shu told the reporter that he found a few cents missing on leaving the entrance for a while. I saw a few foreign workers behaving sheepishly in the vicinity but have no evidence if they were the culprits. Hence, he decided to have breakfast and lunch outside the toilet. "The security guard will help me buy the food and if I need to go to the toilet, I will keep the money first and return immediately." When asked about unreasonable customers, he said in a mixture of Hokkien and Cantonese "Some will scold why they need to pay for using the toilet and why a few pieces of toilet paper cost so much !" Mr Lin and his wife receive a monthly salary of six to seven hundred dollars and get to rest one day every fortnightly for their work. Though he starts work officially at 8am in the morning, he has to start sweeping the floor from 7am and needs to spend one hour to wash the basins, toilet bowls and floor. "Actually we need not sleep so much. Every night I knocked off at 8pm, I took bus number 12 to Simei, bathe and wake up 5am the next day."  Read More →

Translated from Lianhe Wanbao by Cheng Siew Peng When a 73 year old man passed away in hospital, he had only eight dollars on his body. The old man's brother has no money to pay for his funeral and called Mr Zheng Hai Chuan to ask for his assistance. The boss of Singapore Funeral Services Mr Zheng Hai Chuan (63 years old) recalled he received the call for help at 2am in the morning. An anxious voice was heard over at the other end of the line: "Roland, my 73 year old brother just passed away in hospital and he had only eight dollars on his body, I am broke and do not have a single cent, can you help him manage his funeral and let him leave peacefully ?" Zheng Hai Chuan answered without any hesitation: "Yes, let me handle" and asked for the deceased surname and NRIC number and asked the caller to pass him his brother's IC. In the next day morning, he went personally to the hospital to receive the deceased's NRIC and his eight dollars before beginning the funeral preparations. He did not receive a single cent from collecting the body, setting up the altar and cremating the body. Source: Lianhe Wanbao EDITORS' NOTE: How many elderly Singaporeans out there will die without a single penny in their pockets and have no money to even buy a decent coffin ?? Where are our hard earned coffin money ?? Why are there such poor and destitute old folks in a country with billions of dollars in their reserves ? According to this article here published today by a Thai Daily - The Nation, GIC has lost an estimated sum of S$200 billion dollars of its investment porfolio after the eruption of the financial crisis which is equivalent to 200 per cent of Singapore's gross domestic product !!! If this were to happen in Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan or South Korea, a million people will take to the streets the next day to demand resignation of the entire cabinet ! Here in Singapore, we have an old man who dares to tell Singaporeans that we will recoup that loss in 20 to 30 years time !! Where is the accountability in this country ?? Since NTUC has already brought over Singapore Casket, will they consider sponsoring free coffins and funerals for Singaporeans who died with not a single penny in their pockets like the old man above ?  Read More →

By Fang Zhi Yuan Judging from recent remarks made by PAP MPs in Parliament and veiled warnings given by the police through the media, it appears that the establishment is feeling riled and uncomfortable by the apparent rising anti-establishment sentiment on the internet. Internet chatter lampooning and ridiculing government leaders and officials is nothing new in Singapore's vibrant online community which has been the norm ever since the existence of the world wide web. The government used to ignore such anonymous postings and preferred to communicate to ordinary citizens via official channels like feedback sessions, Straits Times Forum and their online portal, REACH. For the first time, a senior government leader had gone off the record to give a public admonishment of netizens in Parliament. Will this herald an impending crackdown of dissent in cyberspace soon ? The authorities can easily arrest a few bloggers to silence the rest into submission, but for a short while only. In doing so, they will alienate even more netizens from Generation Y thereby sowing the seeds for their own demise in the future. Political dissent can only be managed through effective communication and not quashed completely by adopting a hard-ball approach which will cause the relationship between the government and blogosphere to become more sour and adversarial. The rather unkind response from some netizens over the unwarranted fire attack on Mr Seng Han Thong is a manifestation of the undercurrents of discontent Singaporeans have long harbored against the government. The authorities should treat the cause of the disease and not the symptoms. To be fair, I do not think these netizens have any personal grievance against Mr Seng. Had Mr Seng been an ordinary man in the street, the response will be much less caustic. Their real target is the PAP, of which Mr Seng belonged to and not the man himself. PAP leaders should admit and recognize that the diatribes were directed at their party and there is some real unhappiness on the ground towards the way they have governed the country. Disgrunted Singaporeans need an outlet to vent their pent-up tensions, frustrations and anger and the internet has become the most convenient tool for them to let off steam. The mainstream media is pretty much controlled by the government. It is almost impossible to read anything there which represents the voice of the people. Our civil rights are curbed and save for Hong Lim Park, we are unable to gather anywhere else on the island to express our unhappiness against the government. Whether the authorities like it or not, the New Media is there to stay and they will not be able to control or regulate it. How is one going to moderate every single post made by thousands of netizens and bloggers daily ? Can the police arrest and charge every netizen who cross the OB marker ? How much resources can it afford to police the net ? It will be more productive for the government to engage netizens directly on their own turfs instead of antagonizing them further with unhelpful remarks like those made by Rear-Admiral Lui Tuck Yew.  Read More →