TR EMERITUS

He is a not a valued elite or FT, but a typical Singapore, like all of us Like all of us, Roy is not an elite. He is neither rich nor powerful. He is not foreign talent too. He, like you and me, is a typical Singapore. We have our grouses about HDB, CPF, Minister salaries, Public Transport breakdowns and services, COEs, Cost of living, high cost of health care, the 6.9 million white paper, the indiscriminate inflow of FTs. All he did was to blog about the grievances on CPF and problems faced by us each day. To date, there is no statistical rebuttal, only a legal letter. What does that tell us about PAP? He doesn’t earn much (like us) - certainly not $2.2 million a year with bonuses up to $3.3 million Like you and me, most of us are salaried. Even the SME bosses also do not make that amount of money. PM Lee is able to make up to $5.5 million a year. Go figure how many Singaporeans (and how many FTs) are required to make that amount annually. Roy takes public transport as the main means of transport. It is not taken because of some wayang show that the transport system is working (or not!). He is patriotic unlike someone He is like you and me, a Singaporean. He doesn’t say that "Singapore is for everyone". Singapore is only for Singaporeans. Period. Respect is earned not demand As a leader, one does not go about suing your political opponents on policies and related statistic. A good leader will defend one’s policies with rebuttal and statistic, not a legal suit. Even if one wrongly accuses you, you just correct the person. There is no need to sue. Do you see President Obama or UK Prime Minister go around suing people for defamation? You want to be a respected leader, earn the respect, not demand it from a legal suit. Enough Said. Questioning the authority is a right What makes you think that authorities are always right? Do you think that your teachers are always making the right decisions? No one is perfect. In fact, learning is about questioning. What do you expect when PAP doesn’t openly answer all the questions? Question them further, right? As citizens, we have every right to question the government especially on matters relating to our affairs like the CPF issue. Freedom of Questioning and asking is your right too This is the basic right of a student and even citizen. If they tell you that you cannot question or ask, it is absolutely correct to be upset and angry. Having 300 or more questions is perfectly normal. Blogging about these questions is also perfectly acceptable. If there is no answer, it is correct to be upset and unhappy. If you are unhappy, vote pap out In fact, the suggested way to express your unhappiness is not only to vote PAP out, but also to tell your family and friends about it. In turn, tell them to vote PAP out. Why is Singaporean having so much frustrations and questions on many of the PAP policies? What do you think? PM Lee is a big bully Remember the bully in school? There is always one. He/She usually has more resources (think of the $$$ and the lawyers the PM has). Whether he/she is right or wrong, you are always wrong. Worse, when you are right, they will demand you to say you are wrong and apologize. How to fight a bully? We must unite against him. Singaporeans must gang up against the PAP by voting them out. Only then will the truth emerge. Singaporeans, please unite! GE 2016 is Singaporeans last stand. Vote PAP out! Anson Be  Read More →

PM Lee Last week during the Parliament debate on the President's address, PM Lee pledged that housing will remain affordable for Singaporeans. He then gave a recap of the progress made on that hot-button issue since 2011. In the last three years, 52,000 flats have been built, the equivalent of two Clementi new towns, he said. The amount of subsidies given out for flats has almost doubled. "And the situation is now under control, as many MPs have acknowledged," he said. He also praised the good job done by National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan, to the applause from the House. But Singaporeans are still focused on housing, PM Lee noted. On May Day, he met some unionists from the pioneer generation, who reminisced about buying three-room flats for just $6,800 on a salary of $300. That is, these 3-room flats were bought at about 1.9 times of the household's annual salary. The children of the pioneer generation are still worried about housing prices. "So I explained what I have explained so many times before - how we are keeping flats affordable for their children's generation as well," PM Lee tried to assure. Home ownership is not just about providing shelter, but giving everyone a stake in the country and boosting the assets of lower-income Singaporeans, he said. He also talked about the government providing "generous grants" for households to buy HDB flats. "Where for $1,000 income, you can start to buy an HDB flat and have a substantial nest egg for your retirement, with the help of this Government?" PM Lee asked. Khaw’s promises So, what is the current definition of "affordable housing" by the government? In Parliament March 2013 [Link], Minister Khaw said more would be done to reduce BTO flat prices relative to income, and to reduce the financial burden of housing on the young: We have stopped BTO prices from rising by delinking them from resale prices. We can now pause and see what else we can do to bring BTO prices in non-mature estates to, say, around 4 years of (annual) salary as it was before the current property cycle started. One thing is clear. We are committed to restoring and maintaining the affordability of new HDB flats to the vast majority of first-timer Singaporean households. Their Singapore Dream of owning their own flats, like their parents’, is safe. We will make sure of that. Note that Mr Khaw used the term “restoring” the affordability of new HDB flats and note that he avoided talking about resale flat prices and preferred to focus on new BTO HDB flats. TRE then examined the latest BTO launches [Link] to see if the government has fulfilled its promise of restoring BTO prices in non-mature estates to around 4 years of annual salary ('Latest HDB BTO still not affordable as promised'). In the latest May BTO launches in Marsiling, for example, we see: Typical 2-room (I) @ Marsiling Greenview: Nett selling price less grants = $35,000 Applicants’ median monthly household income = $1,700 Price to annual household income = 1.7 Typical 2-room (II) @ Marsiling Greenview: Nett selling price less grants = $55,000 Applicants’ median monthly household income = $1,700 Price to annual household income = 2.7 Typical 3-room @ Marsiling Greenview: Nett selling price less grants = $125,000 Applicants’ median monthly household income = $2,600 Price to annual household income = 4.0 Typical 4-room @ Marsiling Greenview: Nett selling price less grants = $240,000 Applicants’ median monthly household income = $4,400 Price to annual household income = 4.5 Typical 5-room @ Marsiling Greenview: Nett selling price less grants = $350,000 Applicants’ median monthly household income = $5,800 Price to annual household income = 5.0 Typical 3Gen @ Marsiling Greenview: Nett selling price less grants = $355,000 Applicants’ median monthly household income = $5,800 Price to annual household income = 5.1 From the above calculations, except for 2-room and 3-room flats, the BTO prices for 4-room and above in these launches are still way above 4 years of annual salary. One can only conclude that the government has yet to fulfill its pledge to bring down ALL the BTO prices in non-mature estates to around 4 years of annual salary, especially for first-timer Singaporean households. The middle-income group is especially hard-hit.    Read More →

According to MOM statistics released last month, only 62% of degree holders are able to find a new job within 12 months of losing their job last year [Link]. That means, 38% of them can't find a job within 1 year after they are laid off. This is compared to the next lowest rate of 65% for workers with polytechnic diplomas and professional qualifications, and the highest of 71% for those with secondary qualifications. Degree holders have had the lowest rate of finding new job after being laid off, since 2011. Also since 2011, degree holders being made redundant was also disproportionately higher than other qualification groups. Last year, degree holders made up 39% of workers who were laid off. Experts suggested three reasons for this: jobs lost in restructuring tending to be held by graduates greater demand for non-academic skills, and substitution by "skilled foreign labour" IT project manager Sylvia Tan, 51, lost her job of 29 years when her business unit was cut earlier this year due to restructuring. "If I had been able to pick up new skills like cloud computing and analytics, maybe they would have retained me," the computer science graduate said. "But they probably prefer to pay a younger person with less experience and newer skills." She found a similar role at a new company within a month, but only because she took a pay cut of 43%. Many affected Singaporean workers are blaming the over-liberal "foreign talent" policy instituted by the government. In fact, with more "skilled foreign labour" being hired, it exacerbates the problem because the "skilled foreign labour" will tend to hire other "skilled foreign labour", discriminating the Singaporean workers further. A survey conducted by recruitment firm eFinancialCareers last year confirmed that a large number of companies in the finance industry are discriminating against Singaporean hires. According to the survey, a majority or 52% of the respondents said their companies had favored foreigners for some job openings ('Survey confirms rampant job discrimination against SGs'). In fact, the situation was so bad that 2 Cabinet Ministers had to have a “friendly talk” with senior members of the financial industry. Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin told Parliament in March last year that he and Finance Minister Tharman met senior members of the financial industry to urge them to develop a local talent pipeline. Mr Tan said, without going into specifics, that there had been complaints of foreign managers preferring to hire their own countrymen and his ministry was investigating the matter. In view of complaints made by Singaporeans, MOM will be putting in place the Fair Consideration Framework (FCF) for getting the companies to consider hiring Singaporean workers first. The FCF which will come into effect this August, requires that all positions paying less than $12,000 a month be advertised on a WDA jobs bank for 2 weeks before a foreign candidate can be hired. The US, Britain and Australia all have similar skilled foreign workforce policies in place to prevent discrimination against their locals. It remains to be seen how effective the FCF will be since there is no guarantee that a company will hire a Singaporean even after advertising on the WDA jobs bank. The company can easily discard all the Singaporean resumes after 2 weeks citing unsuitability and continue to hire the "preferred" foreign candidate.    Read More →