TR EMERITUS

Public transport operator SBS Transit Ltd has appointed Davinder Singh LLC to defend itself against the law suit filed by five of its bus drivers following a wage dispute. Carson Law Chambers, the law firm representing the SBS Transit bus drivers, confirmed the matter in a Facebook post today (1 Oct). “SBS Transit Ltd has appointed Davinder Singh Chambers LLC to defend the claims brought against it by 5 SBS drivers whom we are representing,” according to the firm, adding that the company has 14 days to file its defence. Davinder Singh is also currently the acting solicitor for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in the latter’s ongoing defamation suits against veteran blogger Leong Sze Hian and The Online Citizen‘s editor-in-chief Terry Xu. Previously on 23 Sep, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications at SBS Transit Tammy Tan told TOC in response to queries that the company has received the writs of summons served by Carson Law Chambers on behalf of five of its bus captains. “We are in discussion with our lawyers. We intend to defend against the allegations rigorously,” added Ms Tan. SBS “breached the term of the contract on overtime pay and have underpaid” its bus drivers: Plaintiffs’ acting solicitor M Ravi In a writ of summons filed by lawyer M Ravi on 20 Sep and seen by TOC on 23 Sep, the bus drivers, who have been working for SBS Transit between three years to a decade, alleged that the company has “breached the term of the contract on overtime pay and have underpaid the clients”. The above claim was made based on the discrepancy between the drivers’ working hour records and the monthly pay slips they had received from SBS Transit, which were below the Ministry of Manpower (MOM)’s regulated pay rate, the document read. A statement of claim stressed that four of the bus drivers had already “commenced similar suits” against SBS Transit in the Magistrates Court previously, but were told to “wait for the decision” regarding their claim and report against the company. “However, both the claim and report were ignored despite attending two (2) meetings with the National Transport Workers’ Union (“NTWU”) and ComfortDelGro respectively,” the document read, noting that the meetings took place in Jul and Aug. The particular plaintiff in the statement of claim had “officially lodged a report to Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM)”, which was then referred to the National Trades Congress Union (NTUC). However, he did not receive any “conclusive answers” after the meetings and decided to request “an official letter” from SBS Transit detailing the breakdown of his monthly pay in order “to better understand where the Defendants were coming from”. While SBS Transit purportedly agreed to send such a letter within two days of the bus driver’s request, he did not receive any response from the company, following which he “sent out four (4) chaser emails” to the company. SBS Transit allegedly replied by “restating their position which is in breach of the contract”, according to the statement of claim. Among the alleged breaches included, but were not limited to, the following: Expecting the plaintiff to work for “7 consecutive days prior to getting an off day”, which the plaintiff claimed was not what both he and SBS Transit had agreed upon in the Letter of Appointment – thus possibly breaching Section 36 of the Employment Act where an employee should be given a rest day per week, or a rest day after a continuous period of 30 hours if on shift; and Putting the plaintiff in a position where he had worked “beyond 44 hours in a week”, which possibly contravenes Sections 38(1)(a) and 38(1)(b) of the Employment Act whereby an employee should not be required to work either more than 6 consecutive hours without a period of leisure, or more than 8 hours in a day, or more than 44 hours in a week.   * Editorial by The Online Citizen.      Read More →

I was delighted to read an online summary a few days ago - both countries agreed to an extension of the RTS rail link, without penalty. Wow! This is a change in attitude. Maybe it will lead to a climate of cooperation and friendship between the Singapore and Malaysia. Although the news report euphemistically said that it was an agreement on both sides, it was clear to me (I am not stupid, you know), that the delay was requested by the Malaysia and the Singapore side agreed to the extension, "without penalty". I wanted to write a message of congratulations to minister Khaw. After all the criticism that I had levied on him, you know "stupid XXX", it would only be appropriate that I give recognition when it was due. I decided to check the facts. Oh! the delay was for only one month. I wondered - Will they be able to resolve the issue in 1 month? Are they on the verge of a breakthrough? Will the Malaysian side be able to decide within this extended period? I asked a friend, who is active in the political scene and hope to win a seat in the next general election under a non PAP party, for his views. His reply was rather rude - Are you as stupid as the minister that you have been criticizing regularly? It is all about money. Oh! Does it mean that we have to apply some grease to some ministers? I thought that that practice had gone after the new Harapan government took power in Malaysia. No! The Malaysian government finds the Rapid Transit rail link to be too costly. They preferred a cheaper option. Surely, you can see that they have been working very hard to build a pedestrian walkway at the causeway? They don't want the RTS link for the near future. Yeah! It seemed that I am as stupid as the "Stupid XXX" who could not see the obvious signs. In that case, it looks like we will have another round of protracted negotiations over the size of the penalty in one month's time. I prefer the pedestrian walkway as it will cost less than 10% of the RTS rail link and will be ready sooner. It might solve the problem, although not as well as the RTS. However, knowing Lee HL, he will probably be uninterested in any project costing less than a few billion SGD. He likes to spend big money, and to raise GST to support it. Tan Kin Lian      Read More →

Click to enlarge At the National Day Rally in 1977, as reported in the Straits Times, then Prime minister Lee Kuan Yew stated, “we must lower our birth rate to absorb foreign workers on a permanent basis”. One must wonder given what we are seeing today is this same thinking still at the core of PAP Planning? That statement was made when Singapore’s population was only 2.35 million with less than 5% foreigners, but the government was already embarking on a process of bringing in more foreign workers and was planting the seeds in the public’s mind. The PAP had determined to itself that foreigners were hungrier and more hardworking and accepting of lower wages than locals (several contemporary documents reference this), which was exactly what they wanted to remain competitive and keep high growth during a then challenging economic time for them. During the 1970s, in further support of this thinking, the government had put in place several active eugenics programs to shrink the local-born population. It had enacted the Voluntary Sterilisation Act (1974), which was primarily targeted at low income and lesser-educated members of the population (evidenced by things like mothers staying in Class B or Class C wards had their childbirth fees waived if either the father or mother underwent sterilization within six months of the baby’s delivery and women without O-Level qualifications, deemed low-income and lowly educated, were offered by the government seven days' paid sick leave and $10,000 SGD in cash incentives to voluntarily undergo the procedure) and it also had the infamous 2 child policy (which ran from 1972 to 1985) where a mixture of propaganda and financial penalties were also used to drive down birth rates. Both were very successful but alarmingly for the government the financial penalties also hit the higher educated as well and so we had things like the Graduate Mothers Scheme created and the Social Development Unit set up, both in 1984, to encourage the educated to get married and have more children with accompanying financial benefits and propaganda. In time the public was not very happy with these openly professed and enacted eugenics ideas heavily focused on education and wealth and so the more negative policies quietly died off from public view and from 1987, when then prime minister Goh Chok Tong announced a new slogan “Have Three or More (if you can afford it)”, a new rhetoric was propagated and we have heard about the need to raise the birth rate ever since. Note however the proviso “if you can afford it”. I have mentioned before the ideas of “Educational Apartheid” and “Economic Eugenics” where I stated that the policy landscape we have lived under for decades, and especially the results we have felt, look and feel that way. I say this for the way our society has been set up it looks like only the wealthy, which is highly tied to a rationed educational achievement (re Wikileaks, MOE Cheryl Chan revelation), can afford to have children and get ahead and so now indirectly the lower educated and less well-off are targeted and are slowly disappearing and little has been done to address this. Now in the 2014 report POPULATION OUTCOMES: SINGAPORE 2050, Yap Mui Teng and Christopher Gee of the Institute of Policy Studies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy state: - “Singapore’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has been below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman for more than three decades, with an “ultra-low” level of less than 1.3 births per woman since 2003.” That 227-page report that was created after a 7-year study then goes on to make many recommendations to deal with the problem however I see little evidence any of those recommendations being taken up in today’s policy landscape. What is even more worrying is since then the birth rate has continued to decline (Now 1.14), the influx of foreigners has accelerated beyond the reports predictions and, as was reported on 25th September by our national media, Singapore’s population has grown to 5.7 million but with almost 40% of them being non-citizens and of the Singapore Citizen component of the growth fully 1/3rd of that, or approx. 20,000 per year is made up of new citizenships and not local births. From that evidence, the policy report and other studies, it appears that lack of knowledge or even recommended solutions is not the problem so the fact that this situation remains and continues to get worse really leaves us with only one of two conclusions: it is either by design or by incompetence. Now given the level of competence the government claims for itself that really means to me that regardless of all the rhetoric we hear the true underlying nature of the policy plan IS exactly the same as it was in the ’70s or worse (i.e. to let the ordinary Singaporean go extinct while only the “selected” remain). I feel this is not too far-fetched given the previously mentioned statements and the history. If, however, I am wrong then that only leaves incompetence because given the trajectory we are seeing and the fact that after 54 years in power it is only getting worse then that does not bode well for us either. So whichever way you look at it, whether by design or by incompetence, it seems that the Ordinary Singaporean is going extinct only to be replaced by foreigners to serve an increasingly small “Elite”. That really means that the next election is not just about good governance but is more an existential moment that may decide the future, if any, for the Ordinary Singaporean. A change is definitely in order for everyone to have a chance at a good life in our country for otherwise, regardless of their underlying motives, if we continue under the current PAP Rule we look certain to end up as something akin to the Dubai of Asia with a only 15% Elite population remaining and owning and running everything with foreigners doing the rest. Is this really the future you want?   Brad Bowyer        Read More →