Singaporeans, is this what you want? To drive investments away and together with it, the jobs as well?

Singaporeans, is this what you want? To drive investments away and together with it, the jobs as well?

Your noise will be heard far and wide.

The Government has to strike a balance. In striking this balance, they take into account 3 factors:

1. The needs of our industries and enterprises.

2. The needs of our workers of this generation.

3. The opportunities for our children in the next generations.

When you send the wrong signal and turn investors away, not only your jobs will be impacted, the good jobs the government wants to create for the young who are still in schools, and those yet to be born will be impacted as well.

There are Singaporeans with valid concerns to be addressed but there are far more people with a political agenda who, on a daily basis, are on social media to stir the negative sentiments such as pointing out the number of errant companies flagged for discriminatory hiring practices.

Tell you what, the fact that you even get to know that such discriminatory practices exist means that there is monitoring of the situation by the authorities. And yes, the process can be refined and that is being looked into.

Those who continue to stir the negative sentiments against foreigners are not doing Singaporeans any favour. Their agenda is political.

A business hub means being cosmopolitan

A business or regional hub that does not welcome foreign talents? Is it even logical?

Back in the early 2000s, then Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew told students in NTU this:

"If we do not attract, welcome and make talent feel comfortable in Singapore, we will not be a global city, and if we are not a global city, we will not count for much.

With modern transportation and communications, you either play in the big league or you're not a player."

Singapore needs access to global markets to earn our living

International trade is our lifeline. Our trade to GDP ratio is around 319%, one of the highest globally. This is how important international trade is to our economy, and therefore to Singaporeans. This is also why our FTAs are so crucial to us.

PM Lee said in a Facebook post :

Singapore needs access to global markets to earn our living, and Free Trade Agreements play a crucial role in letting us do so.

Our network of FTAs has benefited us enormously. They create investments and opportunities for our businesses, and jobs for our people. They have helped make us a leading global hub.

The misrepresentation of the effects of the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) with India has caused much unnecessary public concern.

Singaporeans are anxious about jobs, foreign competition, as well as the impact of the large number of foreigners working and living here. These are valid concerns which we will address. But if we put the blame on CECA, that will not solve our problem but instead make it worse.

It's meritocracy, not Chinese privilege!

 

𝐓𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐓𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐥'𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭! 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝟐𝟒 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬!

Our friend shares this story:

I pass by this place every day on my way to work. One day I noticed a rusty manhole cover, likely corroded by seawater from the aquarium next to it. I snapped a photo of it and sent it to Mr Baey Yam Keng 马炎庆, the MP to alert him to it.

The response of Mr Baey and the Tampines Town Council was speedy and impressive. I reported the cover on a Saturday evening. It was changed on Sunday evening and on Monday, I noticed the change. Mr Baey also took the trouble to inform me of the change a few days after it was replaced.

Tampines Town Council also faces the challenge of manpower. There are also inconsiderate residents who do not discard of their rubbish in a proper manner. Mr Baey has also highlighted this in a Facebook post. But in Tampines, the carelessly discarded rubbish is not allowed to pile up despite the manpower challenge. They get cleared. And by the way, Tampines also had a change of cleaning contractor not so long ago and there isn't any transition problem. In fact, the estate became cleaner with the new contractor.

Sarah Bagharib's PA saga: Was it racist or blown out of proportion?

Was it racist or blown out of proportion? Devadas Krishnadas shares his thoughts in a Linkedin post.

The MP apologised. The PA apologised.The vendor apologised. I am from an ethnic minority even smaller than that of this lady and even I think she has and continues to blow this matter way out of proportion.

I agree with the PA that a meeting would serve no purpose as this lady clearly has an agenda to push a general accusation against the ethnic majority population that they are racist and that the PA is also racist. I do not share either accusation.

While I have said that there is casual racial chauvinism I have rejected the insinuation that the people of Singapore are racist.

If anything, her repeated attempts to whip up emotions online are tantamount to herself being racist and having an overblown sense of entitlement.

In a heterogenous society, social cohesion is vital to maintain. That means being sensitive, which both the PA and the Vendor, have acceded that they were not in the first instance. But they have since made amends with their quick and public apology and corrected the situation by removing the standee.

But social cohesion also means having a sense of proportion about instances of insensitivity or even individual acts of racism as in the case of the lecturer from Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

These pin point instances should not be used as opportunities to generalise loosely or to appeal or rally minority groups into some coalition of resistance against something which is not there - I believe that the majority of my fellow Singaporeans are not racists. I do not believe that the PA is racist. Indeed, I do not even think this singular incident, while insensitive, was rooted in racism.

Let us not make volcanoes out of the occasional mole hill. It is playing with fire and dangerous. Using fancy language such as used by this lady in her social media posts cannot hide, indeed underscore, that she has her own agenda to propogate.

And I concur with the PA that it is purposeless to give her a platform to promote that unpremised agenda. Doing so would only lend legitmacy to her claims and I have little doubt that the meeting will not satisfy her and be framed as another episode of endemic racism. Better to leave her to stew in her own acidic juices. She has gotten her pound of flesh and that should be that. Let us not give oxygen to those with axes to grind and unsubstantiated broad 'firecracker' accusations to make.

Time to move on.

Lesson from the Sarah Bagharib's PA saga

Indeed, the lesson we learn from this episode is that we do not know enough of each other's culture. Let us resolve to learn more of each other's culture.

It is not helpful to label cultural ignorance as racism. It makes people unwilling to venture beyond their own familiar comfort zone for fear of being labelled a racist if he/she gets the culture of another ethnic group wrong. That's not the way to build an inclusive society.

Seek to learn from each other. Mistakes are part of the learning process. Turn every mistake into a learning moment, not a divisive moment.