TR EMERITUS

After writing " SERS: No longer a "sure thing", just like HDB "asset enhancement"?" (Jun 12) - one of the affected residents contacted me. Please see the HDB document below (picture), which shows a shortfall of $187,766, given by the HDB to a resident. I understand that the estimated valuation that the residents can expect for their existing 4-room HDB flat is around $396K to $468K. The estimated new price at Ang Mo Kio Drive for a 4-room flat, is from $438K to $563K. There is an estimated shortfall of $40K to $90K to take a replacement unit which is slightly smaller in size compared to their current HDB. Quote from a resident: The bulk of residents staying here are elderly and most are in their 50s, 60s, 70s.. many are retired or semi- retired. This is the first home for many of these older residents. Most of the older folks have already fully paid for their loans and are retired. They did not expect SERS to happen to them and many thought that they could live out the rest of their lives in their existing HDB surrounded with good neighbors and familiar environment. Most of them did not expect to be worrying about finance and putting more financial burden to family members. A HDB officer has suggested to some of these older folks to downgrade to a smaller unit, if they do not have the financial means. In the financial guide prepared by HDB, there are 2 pages. Page 1 shows that my estimated compensation is $450K for 4rm flat and the estimated purchase price for replacement flat for 90 SQM is $545K and including stamp duty and optional component scheme the replacement unit will be $564K. My total shortfall after deducting all my entire CPF and adding my existing bank loan works out to be $187,766.   Leong Sze Hian      Read More →

I am proud that our country, Singapore, has once again successfully hosted the Shangri-la dialogue. This is a testament that we, a small country, can contribute in meaningful and tangible ways toward regional and global exchanges and understanding and hopefully to help reduce suspicions, tensions, misunderstandings, miscalculations and military adventurism and very importantly, in our part of the world. It is impossible to please every country. At the end of the day, each and every country will have their own national interests and agendas to pursue and to protect. Still, that doesn't mean that smaller countries cannot collectively do more. Apart from the raging war in Ukraine, the principal focus must be the eventuality of China invasion of Taiwan if ROC ever declares independence. To me, such forums are useful but it will be missing the bull's eyes really if smaller countries shy away from telling the main actor of provocations, of instigations, of promoting its national interests at the expense of others etc and merely 'wayanging' at the fringes to make up for the numbers. The United States is stroking tensions in the South China Sea and selling billions of dollars in arms to Taiwan and laughing all the way to the bank. The reasons for the formation of AUKUS is, in my view, weak. Furthermore, the QUAD alliance is prejudicial, provocative even, to say the least. To take a leaf from Ng Eng Hen's 'learn the right lessons from Ukraine', we must never allow ourselves to be a willing US pawn in their bigger scheme of things otherwise when push comes to shove, we will be sacrificed. I maybe dreaming but I believe that I am not alone. If enough smaller countries have sufficient serious and strong enough leaders, together they can and should tell the Americans in no uncertain terms to be less involved militarily in our part of the world using all kinds of reasons, some valid but mostly not. The US is a power in decline and retreat. It's debts are humongous and it has simply too many domestic challenges to contend with too. It is unlikely to sustain its world's policeman role satisfactorily like in the past. Generally speaking, choose peace choose China and choose war choose the US. First and foremost, ease the military tensions which were mostly initiated by the US following which, all other discussions will have a higher chance of success. That will be the bull's eye for a start. Think.   Simon Lim      Read More →

I’ve just come back from a night out with a colleague who had just come back from a trip in India. We decided to celebrate the evening as the “only boys” in the company and ended up at Hooters in Clark Quay to enjoy a few beers (buy two get one free). While Hooters is best known for its very politically incorrect uniform for waitresses (the place is called Hooters for a reason), what struck me about tonight’s evening was the fact that the restaurant is suffering from one of the most acute issues facing businesses today – a shortage of labour. The situation was such that they had to close their indoor section and for the first time in my life, I saw this sign on the door (pic right): While Hooters in Singapore is clearly an extreme case, its not the only place. The problem of finding staff is not limited to the blue-collar sector. I had to hold in the vomit when my current employer asked me to put documents in a file today because, well, even white-collar professional businesses are finding it a challenge to find labour. This is strange in as much as one would imagine that current conditions favour employers. Covid restrictions have loosened and along with it, borders have reopened. Prices have started rising and “leaders” around the world have been talking about a looming recession. Geopolitical tensions like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and wider economic conflict between Russia and the Western powers have made people wonder if a recession will be the mildest of our worries. So, you would imagine that with so much going on, sensible people will hang onto the jobs available for dear life (bad job being better than no job) and unemployed people would be rushing to the available jobs. However, this isn’t happening and instead of complaining about employees being spoilt and choosy, we need to ask why aren’t people choosing to work when market indicators point to a situation where people should be clinging onto whatever work they have. While I am not an economist, I believe that the answer is fairly simple. The “normal” of the pre-Covid world was not actually working. However, instead of focusing on ways of building a more sustainable, less toxic system better suited for the 21st century, everyone rushed to “return to normal.” Since my primary income comes from a white-collar professional firm, I will start with the “professional” sector of the economy. In this way, this should have been the sector to lead a revolution in creating a new normal. The information age has done for white-collar work what the industrial age did for the manufacturing sector. Things that required various departments can now be done with software and if you think about it, work can be done anywhere as long as there’s a working internet connection. Some people would call be strange but I enjoyed life as a freelance media consultant, far away from the hustle and bustle of being in an agency. Worked of the lap top at home or in cybercafes. If I needed to bash out a press release when I was out and about, I’d just go into an internet café, pay a few dollars and bash it out within an hour or so (nothing like paying a few dollars for that hour to make you focus on using that hour or two productively). I could write emails to clients and reporters, chase for money, invoice and so on as long as I had computer access. These days, life is actually simpler. I have a smart phone, which allows me to check whatever I need to check on line and the lap top is only necessary whenever I need to sit down and write something at length. I don’t need to be sitting in front of a desk staring at a screen and the only movement I get is from one cubicle to another. Sure, there may be cases where you need certain documents but the truth is, these days documents can be accessed digitally and remotely. I do get that there are times when you need to meet face-to-face but let’s be honest, how many face-to-face meetings are anything more than a session for ego maniacs to jack off over their self-importance. When you’re freed from the need to be stuck to one place for a third of your life, you also have greater choice on who you interact with. The old hierarchical model of “me employer and you employee” will change. Rather than paying someone a set wage for set hours in a day in which you are obliged to do whatever your employer ask of you, the employee and employer relationship will be more like a buyer-seller relationship. For example, an employer will pay so much for certain task, which the employee will deliver. Outside those tasks, the employee would be free to look for other people willing to pay for those said task. By freeing people from their desk, you can move the employer-employee relationship to being more like a buyer-seller relationship rather than a marriage. This is healthier for both sides. If you’re happy you stay, if not, you move on. When the relationship between employer and employee is like a marriage, you risk a situation where sides choose not to show each other love but then when it reaches the obvious conclusion, they have like jealous lovers, which is not healthy for the individuals or the organisation. This hasn’t happened. Throughout the pandemic we got bombarded with all sorts of articles about the benefits of being a certain location for a set number of hours. You get organisations that think it’s a sign of intelligence to insist that people only have lunch from 12 to two. So, we’re back to traffic congestion, pointless meetings that are akin to masturbation sessions and unless you count greater pollution, stress, gossip, petty power plays and obvious limitations of the public transport system as positive, very little actually gets done. Instead of more productivity, you get more people masturbating over their self-importance. How is this beneficial to anyone? Things are a little different in the blue-collar sector. Unlike the professionals, you actually need to be present to do the job on hand. Technology has not reached the stage where rubbish collection cannot be done remotely. However, we’ve also failed to move beyond our “normal” thinking of shoving the people who do these jobs into a dark hole and then complaining about how ungrateful they are when they complain about getting diseases as the reactions to the following story from the Financial Times indicates: [LINK] If the dorms are so safe – why does the Minister of Manpower feel obliged to be in a hazmat suite when visiting? If the people running the white-collar section of the economy are too fond of masturbating over their self-importance, the people running the blue-collar sector have lost their ability to feel human urges and thus their humanity. Let’s look at the constant debate on the minimum wage. Singapore, a nation which thinks nothing of paying its ministers more than their global counterparts, has a problem even considering looking at what is the minimum a worker needs in order to survive. Apparently, there’s a fear that this will scare away foreign investors and cause inflation, which would negate the benefits of such a consideration. The government, instead, prefers to point to the occasional hand out as being beneficial to the poor (which they usually give just before raising taxes that have the largest impact on the poor). The answer to the problem in this sector is twofold. The first point and the one most likely never to be implemented would be to limit the number of parties benefiting from the system of labour supply in the blue-collar sector. It’s unlikely because the government has a stake here in the shape of foreign levy, which is in theory meant to disincentivise discriminating against the locals (as one MD of a shipping company says – “foreign workers are not cheap”) but is in practice a protection racket collected by the government on those that need to hire foreign workers. The system, as it stands, ensures that the cost of the employers is high and the wages actually received by the workers are low. While employer and employee get screwed, a host of other parties like dormitory owners (a business that members of the ruling party do enter) benefit. The second point would be to give workers greater freedom to change employer. As things stand, permission to stay in Singapore is tied to the employer, which means the worker is at the mercy of the employer. The problem is most visible in a liquidation scenario where the employer goes bankrupt and can’t pay the wages. However, the non-payment of wages has usually started six months prior. Unlike the professional employees who can move to a new employer the moment the current employer starts defaulting on wages, the foreign worker cannot. I’ve been involved in a liquidation of a construction company, which had left equipment on the site until plants were growing on the equipment, left the workers on a site with no running water, barely enough fuel for a generator, no wages and no food, while the directors sat in a private clubhouse drinking cognac on a daily basis. Normal was not normal and the opportunity to restructure that was provided by Covid was wasted. Going back to normal will only lead to stagnation on an economic and social front. It’s too bad the pandemic didn’t bite harder.   Tang Li *Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.      Read More →