Chiam fulfils walkway promise made at 2006 polls

From the Straits Times

May 31, 2008

Chiam fulfils walkway promise made at 2006 polls

THE completion of a covered walkway in Potong Pasir marks the fulfillment of a promise Mr Chiam See Tong made during the 2006 General Election.

On Saturday, the opposition MP ‘opened’ the walkway which links the MRT station to the town centre, amid a shower of colourful confetti and a rousing lion dance.

Hailing the walkway as proof that the opposition ‘will fulfill whatever we promise’, he told reporters: ‘At the last election, I said I will build this covered linkway, and now this task has been completed. We have done our job.’ Read more

‘Guest Workers’ or Modern Slavery?

From Worldpress.org:

Jobless, desperate, homeless, and hungry, some of them tried to work illegally and were arrested, jailed, and flogged. Corporal punishment, like the death penalty, still remains a feature of modern Singapore law.

To cap it off, some of these men are not allowed to leave Singapore because the labor ministry—which administers the approximately 900,800 transient migrant workers that comprise more that 40 percent of the island state’s total labor force—requires them to stay to appear as witnesses in a string of court cases.

“They find themselves in a debt trap, having borrowed money to pay agency fees and plane tickets; many continue to borrow money to pay for basic necessities now,” explains Sha Najak from Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), a small charity which is helping feed the men and championing the cases.

Read the full article here.

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The courtroom as theatre

Farquhar

The real loser from the Lees’ defamation case isn’t Chee Soon Juan

In the climax of Frank Capra’s “Mr Smith Goes to Washington” (1939), the virtuous Senator Jefferson Smith faces off against a vile political establishment in one of America’s highest court of public opinion - the Senate. Naturally, he prevails against the odds by shaming his chief nemesis, a corrupt Senator, into confessing his misdeeds.

Some of these elements - most crucially, the happy ending - are missing from the case of Lee Kuan Yew and Lee Hsien Loong vs Chee Soon Juan and the Singapore Democratic Party, a defamation suit brought on by the Lees for an allegedly defamatory article published in SDP’s publication The New Democrat in April 2006. Read more

Sayoni Queer Women Survey

From the Sayoni website:

This survey is intended to collect essential information about queer, lesbian, bisexual and transgender women living in Singapore. Women of all ages, races and nationalities are welcome to take this survey, as long as your permanent residence is Singapore.

We encourage you to take this survey even if you have taken it in previous years. The collective results of this survey will be used for research purposes only, and will in no way be traced back to the individual user. We thank you for the great service you are doing for the community, in spending time to do this.

It should take approximately five minutes to do this survey.

This survey is brought to you by Sayoni.

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Help make a girl’s dream come true

You may, or may not, have heard about the Pick-Me-Up Book , which was first launched in January this year. The book is a collection of true stories of how people managed to overcome their dire circumstances and strife to turn their dreams into reality despite facing long odds. Aptly, the Make-A-Wish Foundation is the beneficiary to this good cause.

The highlight of this edition is the story by Charmaine Tan, a 13-year-old wish-child from Make-A-Wish Foundation who is suffering from end-stage kidney failure, on top of a congenital eye disease which has led to her being visually-impaired today. Her wish is to become a published author. (Read more about Charmaine here.) Read more

China man bashed for ‘talking too loudly’ on bus

From The New Paper.

May 29, 2008.

Mr Liu, a China national working as a waiter at the Beng Thin Hoon Kee Restaurant in OCBC Centre, had made the call to his mother in Jilin, China, after he finished work on Sunday night.

Said Mr Liu, 22, in Mandarin: ‘I was talking to my mum when I boarded bus number 145 from Boat Quay.’

He said the bus had about 20 people in it.

Soon after he sat down, he claimed that a man sitting some rows behind him told him aggressively to keep his voice down.

‘I was still talking to my mother. So I lowered my voice. She kept asking me what was happening. I didn’t want to worry her, so I told her it was all right,’ he said.

After he finished the conversation with his mother, he turned to look at the man.

‘He was still scolding me, gesturing with his hands and feet. He made his hand into the shape of a gun and pointed at me. Then he kicked his legs about, in a threatening manner,’ said Mr Liu.

He claimed the man then rushed over and started beating him up.

‘He just came at me, held my neck and rained blows down the right side of my face,’ he said.

Read the full article here.

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Civil servants’ inflation bonus

From the Straits Times, May 29, 2008 Thursday:

SOME 60,000 civil servants in Singapore will get a half-month mid-year bonus in July and an inflation bonus of between $100 and $300.

Officers in the lower divisions - Division III and IV - will receive $250 and $300 respectively, while those in Division I and II will get $100.

The additional payment is in line with the National Wages Council’s recommendation this month for a one-off special payment, with a larger amount going to low-wage workers, to help them cope with the rising cost of living.

NTUC deputy secretary-general Halimah Yacob hopes the private sector will make a similar one-off payment to lower-paid workers.

Please share your views. What do you think of this “inflation bonus”?

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Why NS didn’t make me patriotic

Eddie Choo

Why? Because in NS, it really goes like this: I pretend to be a soldier, and you pretend to treat me like a soldier. NS has become so ritualised that serving the nation has lost its meaning.

When something becomes a ritual, it loses its meaning, and whatever passion there was is lost, and what you get are the tired faces and the bad-ass attitudes that are commonplace among the guys serving.

Unless and until the question of purpose and service can be answered, Singaporean men (and some women) will find themselves losing passion for the country they’ve been asked to serve, longing for greener pastures always. Read more

M’sian govt to engage bloggers

Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on engaging bloggers:

“Therefore, instead of just criticising them (the new media) or running them down, the best thing to do is to engage them. Hopefully they will understand our perspective.”

Najib said this during a question and answer session at the Asia Media Summit 2008 here yesterday.

In an immediate response, blogger Ahirudin Attan (Rocky Bru) welcomed Najib’s announcement that the Government would respond to allegations, saying:

“This is really good. It’s better late than never and it’s something for the blogging community to rejoice because blogging is about interacting with each other.”

Read the full article in The Star Online.

Please share your views on whether the S’pore government should do the same.

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A compassionate “fine” system

Tan Kin Lian

Someone once said that Singapore is a “fine” city. We have a fine for littering, a fine for jay-walking, a fine for late payment of taxes, a fine for traffic offences and a fine for paying a fine late.

It is all right to have fines to impose discipline on the people. This is how Singapore gets the reputation of being a clean, orderly and safe city. It has its advantages.

However, in their zeal, the authorities may forget that their manner of imposing the fine can cause additional unintended hardship. Read more

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