TR EMERITUS

In the ongoing debate on CPF, what DPM Tharman said is worthy of some consideration. But much remains in the dark until his boss PM Lee talks about it at the National Day Rally and only then would we know how the government is going to ”strengthen the system”. But in the meanwhile as a member of the “paimiah generation” it is our duty to recount our experience with the system and call a spade a spade and not to order “mee siam with hum.” Yes indeed an entire generation of Singaporeans has benefitted from the compulsory saving scheme notwithstanding the real lack of transparency when the funds go to GIC and MAS. We were fortunate because housing prices were reasonable, creating some surplus for our autumn years. We could even put aside a little cash to supplement our retirement fund. But this is not so with our children’s generation who are very good with their sums. It does not take much for them to realise that by the end of their day they, unlike their parents’ generation, wouldn’t have much to look forward to despite their university education, less than one or no kid, HDB flat and soaring social mobility. The current debate and uproar over CPF did not start with Roy Ngerng or the social media. It started with a government not wanting to shoulder it’s responsibility of providing socialised health care for the people. They insisted that the CPF must do a million and one things including paying for the much vaunted “Medishield Life” from the cradle to the grave. But how much can we expect the CPF cow to be milked? Until the teats run dry and the milk turns sour? The Medisave Scheme was never a part of the original CPF covenant and neither was the CPFIS which led to hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans losing their precious CPF funds to insurance companies, SingTel and other financial institutions under the very nose of the MAS. For that we have to thank the tall man Mr Goh Chok Tong who introduced Medisave, Edusave and also promised us the Swiss standard of living. But being emeritus, semi-retired and soon to be retired permanently we will leave him alone. But should he wish to take a stab at the Executive Presidency in 2017 then we would expect him to use the second key to open the reserves to keep his promise of delivering that elusive Swiss standard of living that he talked about so long ago. But let us be kind and not blame Mr. Goh alone. The fiasco is the work of an entire government which allowed the greedy inflation of land and public housing to spiral 10- to 15-fold thus engendering the bleak house and future which the younger generation balks at these days. Out of the 5 C’s which they hunger for, most of them are questionable, unreachable or gone: C (car) is gone, C (cash) is not much, C (club) has no value anymore and C (credit card) and C (condo) are both heavily mortgaged! And now the C (CPF) adds to their latest list of woes. So is it any wonder that young Singaporeans like Roy Ngerng would begin to raise fundamental questions about what’s it all about in one of the “wealthiest” societies in the world? Is it any surprise that the Men in White lost 1 GRC in Aljunied in 2011 and the Punggol East by-election to the WP in 2013? And what more in 2015/16 if the chestnut is not frisked out of the fire? The Minimum Sum Scheme could be the government’s backdoor way of putting in place the Howe Yoon Chong Report to increase the CPF withdrawal age from 55 to 60. This was clearly rejected by the people, for in the 1984 GE the PAP lost heavily to Mr. Chiam See Tong’s party which suddenly won 4 seats. Long suffering Singaporeans are by nature very forgiving and compliant for as long as the government knows the limits and understands their threshold for pain. For a while when the Minimum Sum remained minimal they could bear with it but when it bloomed to $148,000 they began to smell a rat and started to wonder whether they would ever be getting their money back. They also began to wonder whether the 2.5% is ever going to be enough to keep up with inflation never mind DPM Tharman’s assurance that it is assured. In the people’s mind now is the question: surely this talented and well-rewarded government can do better with our money which it salts away for 3 to 4 decades and some cannot see it even 'when death do us part'. Surely we have the right to ask for our money back. Even the Ah Long San tells us “Owe $, Pay $” in their nasty way. For the CPF to continue to be "a robust and sustainable system” (Sunday Times, June 22), DPM Tharman, whom a lot of Singaporeans look up to with respect and affability, must not merely defend the system. He must use his vast financial and policy expertise to think out of the box. He must look at best practices around the world like in Scandinavia. His is still the sweet voice of reason but if he allows himself to be the hostage of the sacred cows and hard truths, he cannot succeed as our next PM. This is because the government that he serves will not be robust and sustainable anymore. Patrick Low *  Submitted by TRE reader.    Read More →

Yeah Lee Ching recalls when a lady walked into her pawnshop in Singapore and pledged a $10,000 diamond-studded gold Rolex watch to bankroll casino spending. She never came back for her jewelry. Pawnbrokers are proliferating across Singapore as gamblers seeking short-term loans add to demand for quick cash from people struggling to make ends meet in the world’s most expensive city. The number of pawnshops in the city-state surged to 214 this year from 114 in 2008, according to a report by DMG & Partners Securities Pte. Loans disbursed by the industry jumped to S$5.5 billion ($4.4 billion) in 2013 from S$1.6 billion in 2007, government data show. “Pawnshops are the most-frequent automated teller machines for regular gamblers,” Ivan Ho, president of Singapore Pawnbrokers’ Association, said in an interview this month. “They need capital and pawnshops offer them loans that are reasonably priced.” Since Singapore’s two casinos opened in 2010, about 20 percent of the increase in pawnbroking activity is driven by clients raising money for gambling, said Ho, who’s also the owner of Heng Seng Pawnshop Co. The rest comes from business owners and low-income individuals who need quick cash to pay hospital bills and other unexpected costs. “I pawn my jewelry when the need arises,” said Vikki, a businessman who runs his own security agency and asked to only be identified by his first name. “The biggest loan I got was S$70,000 to cover salaries of my staff when payments from customers got delayed.” He was speaking last week outside the ValueMax Group Ltd. pawnshop in Little India, just across the street from competitor Maxi-Cash (MCFS) Financial Services Corp. Shares of ValueMax, Maxi-Cash and MoneyMax Financial Services Ltd. (MMFS) were all unchanged as of 12:08 p.m. in Singapore, while the benchmark Straits Times Index gained 0.2 percent.   Read more:     http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-17/rolex-for-casino-cash-fuels-singapore-pawnshop-growth.html    Read More →

Once upon a time we used to have 2 presenters for our AM Singapore morning breakfast program run by CNA. Suzanne Jung & Steven Chia (AM Live - MediaCorp) There was the pleasant Korean lady who did a good job, sweet and intelligent, speaks clearly and presents an Asian image for Singapore. She usually has a male co-host who also projects for us a Singapore/Asian image. But of late the format changed to 3 presenters. I wonder to myself why so many? Why does it take 3 interviewers to chat with 1 or 2 studio guests when usually only one does the talking while the other 2 either sit idly by or inject a remark/question from time to time? Last week I watched the program again when one of the lady presenters did most of the talking with her 2 guests on craft beer while her other colleagues sat idly by. It struck me as rather odd because we do have a national productivity campaign to cut cost and do everything cheaper, better and faster but obviously this does not apply to Media Corp. If so then something is wrong for it is setting a very bad public example to the rest of Singapore trying to achieve productivity gains. The other grouse which I harbour is: why do all these presenters speak like eating “gantang” (like angmo)? Obviously not being native Singaporeans they speak with rather strange accents rolling their r’s and swallowing their words rendering them incoherent. At first I thought it was my sense of hearing going “kaput” but on checking with a friend I found that she too has a similar grouse. This brings us to the question: why is Media Corp not hiring more of our own native speakers to join the talent pool? Why hire PR”s when locals can do the job just as well? I understand that AM Singapore is a challenging program because you have to get up pretty early to start the show at 6.30 AM. But shouldn’t the corporation have a Singaporean first policy and only when Singaporeans are found wanting then and only then they can proceed to employ foreign talents to do the job. But ultimately for a station called ChannelNewsAsia to live up to its Asian image you must have a well balanced mix of both national and international English speakers otherwise we might as well call it ChannelNews Europe or ChannelNews Melbourne. If so then I will stop the grousing.   Patrick Low *  Submitted by TRE reader.  Read More →