Teng Jingwei
Watch the video of the outreach and TOC’s interview with the students below.
Sweltering heat and bustling human traffic on a Saturday afternoon did not deter six polytechnic students in their mission at Bugis.
The students were there to collect signatures for their petition on fairer public transport fares for tertiary students. This is the students’ first public outreach event for the cause since they launched the campaign on Monday. Previous petition drives took place at the canteens of various polytechnics.
Close to 200 members of the public, students and non-students alike, pledged their support at Bugis, one of the busiest districts in Singapore. Bernard Chen, a student at Temasek Polytechnic, pioneered the petition, which will be sent to the Public Transport Council eventually.
Members of the public were supportive when approached. Some of these supporters are parents concerned over the financial burden polytechnic students have to bear. Others were completely unaware of the differences in concession rates and signed the petition upon learning of the current disparity. Several secondary school students lent their support to this cause because they aspire to enter polytechnics and felt this campaign will benefit them in the future.
Bernard explained that the aim of this petition is to evoke change, and to persuade authorities to listen to “sentiments on the ground”. Bernard hopes to collect 30,000 to 100,000 signatures of support for the petition. He however has not set a time limit to achieve this.
Also pitching in to help at Bugis were sisters Lynette and Leanne Lee from Singapore Polytechnic and Yuan Ching Secondary School respectively. They got involved in the campaign through Bernard, who is a mutual friend. The two of them said students expressed “favourable support” when they went around collecting signatures in their respective schools. Mellissa Seah and Ariel Chia, both from Temasek Polytechnic, got involved through their polytechnic mate, Kamilul Ashraf Bin Kamsani, the inspiration behind the campaign. “This is a very worthy cause!” was Mellissa’s enthusiastic response when asked why she was willing to sacrifice a Saturday afternoon for this campaign. The team collected an encouraging 100 signatures in the first hour at Bugis.
Bernard said he was motivated to start this campaign by fellow student Ashraf, also from Temasek Polytechnic, who had sent out an email to 80 friends after reading Bernard’s article on The Sunday Times last week. The email, which called for action, was forwarded by friends of friends to over 1,000 people. Bernard, heartened by such enthusiastic response to the issue, decided to take on this project alongside Ashraf in a bid to “replicate Obama’s campaign for change” – referring to the newly elected President of the United States.
The students have come up with a proposal for the authorities. In it, they are calling for a “concession price bandwidth” to be introduced from which a concession fare is established, of between 0 – 60% for the various student groups.
The Facebook group set up for the cause has more than 5,000 members so far.
Read also TOC’s earlier report: Poly students want fairer transport fares.
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Video of the event: Filmed and edited by Mervin Lee.
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Pictures by Sijia. (Click on pictures to enlarge):
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WE youngs,,,JUST WANT A faiR treated to a POLY students…….MAN….
GOV…,of instead saying pap…
TAT affect us,,man,,,u r SING citizens…
hahas….DO the gov care..??
hahas….let see…
Good job.
Bernard is quite an eloquent speaker. As for the rest, please stopped using singlish lah lei loh …
Comments edited by moderator.
Fantastic job by Bernard and friends.
Proved that most of us have been wrong to assume that our students are an apathetic lot.
Great job! We’ll have to wait and see how the authorities repond to this. How the authorities respond will be remembered by these students for a long long time.
Surely the future votes of these young students carry some weight. Ignore them at your own peril.
how can you ask for fairness and not equality over this issue? Over this issue, equality would be the fair thing to do here for PTC and the transport operators.
Good effort students. Keep it up. Cheers.
You certainly shed some light on the truth. :)
god will surely bless you all and bless singaporean.
best wishes.
Damn, I was there but didn’t see anyone lol.
Good try students!
I feel that the real problem is APATHY. We need to start from things like voicing up and opinionating on small things before people would opinionate on bigger things.
Many issues affect us Directly. This I fear many are oblivious to the point where they do not believe strong enough that they need to talk about it with all the tertiary student stakeholders.
I would hope to see more activities where students can opinionate their views openly. We can start with smaller issues so that its less ‘political’.
Suggestion:
1. Why wait 15 minutes for a short distance trip to the nearby MRT and pay for it when you can cycle? Is this productive? Is it productive to commuters when buses ply a big round to collect revenue ? How should cycling system be improved? What are your views on cyclists using the pedestrian path and how this affects pedestrains and their safety. Are there enough cycle ‘parking lots’? Why Paris can do it so well?
On the Tonight on TOC : Do we expect Balji’s view to differ much from the pm’s? ha ha ha… have too many more important things to do….
Hi, just wonder if it’s a must to have Signatures? I recall tat one of the methods to support the Petition is to SMS in. Thus if we can employ the Networking Method, wont it create more awareness also?
I’ve already forward the petition to my frenz though whether they support or not, i do not noe.
PS: I’m not saying the above method is wrong, i just feel tat we should try and ulitize the technology to maximise the efforts.
+U
Let us know if its legal. Like the idea. Maybe could seek advise from Chia Ti Lik ?
Philipines used it.
TW used it.
MY used it.
USA used it.
Remember, No matter what government is this, They must hear ALL. As a Poly Student myself from Singapore Polytechnic, I’ll do anything, Anything, even something drastic, if it need be.
9) Stop the price Hikes!
I agree that we need to do the small things to wake this nation of apathetic people up. For all you know, we may be mistaken that apathy is the cause of their slumber.
Since the ST has already labeled us a ‘Petition Nation’ then so be it. If by drawing up petitions is the way to wake the people up, so be it. The end result is going to be very positive in this sense.
It might also be good, because the Govt cannot then ignore us. There is nothing wrong or dirty with petitions. It is peaceful, civilised and most of all it brings across the case of the people to the govt of the day.
So, let’s get on with more petitions that covers every issues that affects us. Let’s get more students involve too. This will ensure a brighter future for Singapore.
Agree with Gemami.
We need to start nurturing no-comment singaporeans to learn to opinionate starting with small issues like
1. bus fares
2. safety of foods imported into singapore.
3. ERP
4. Salary & Foreign influx
5. Traffic light timings and effect on congestion
once they learn that in life, every human is different and unique and has different views, they would grow to understand why people can have a reason to disagree. That even loving couples can disagree on issues. They need to learn that discussions lead to better solutions and understanding. That Questioning is the key to discovering and understanding more.
#15) anus (i believed that’s what you want to call yourself? :P)
“We need to start nurturing no-comment singaporeans to learn to opinionate starting with small issues like …..”
There is no need for nurturing Singaporeans to be opinionated.
Singaporeans are well known for having a comment for everything under the sun.
Just asked any foreigners who stayed here long enough and they will tell you Singaporeans like to COMPLAIN.
But now..it becomes WORSE.. they are starting to complain in mass. Before, they were complaining to themselves at home or with friends.
isa, isa, very naughty isa.
you’re actually quite right in the ‘mass complaing part’.
before the internet age…………. we all thought we were loonies, complaining to ourselves.
with the advent of the internet age,………..we found out that we are not loonies because everyone else is also complaing.
what we have now is freedom and with it comes mass complaining!
maybe we are trying to get into the guiness book of records?
I think Jingwei, Mervin and the rest of the TOC team have been great in supporting this cause. It is heartening to see Bernard and his team having the initiative to lobby for their beliefs.
I see that we have a lot of support in this petition! We’re talking about Tens of Thousands even Hundreds Of Thousand Poly Students affected. Our Money is at stake!
In the Name of Lord UDeep and of Singapore Polytechnic, WE WILL RISE TO MAKE THIS SUCCESSFUL! Let’s make this FAIR so everyone is happy!
For Singapore Poly! FTW!
#17) gem,
Guiness Book of Records again? *roll eyes*
We are already the unofficial guiness book of records holder for “the nation with the most number of stupid senseless mass orgy events in the world”..
Alot of senseless records that can only be forgotten in a second and I only remember a lot of clowns trying to participate to break the records.
Can you clowns try to break some records that people will come to remember you for like saving the most number of endangered species (and no.. you clowns are not one of them..there are plenty around..sorry)…. Or nation providing the most donations/assistance to the charitable organisations who need your help.
hmmm… i’m beginning to like the idea . . . largest gathering of complaining clowns…;)
btw, glad you decided to drop the r.
#21) …
ah… a rose by any other name just does not sound as sweet as your own ..right.., gemami
Read now Annuities for Singaporeans, pension for ministers?
and all you citizens will now wake up shocking never did we know that all these self created elites are pumping out so much of our tax payers monies just to keep them going strong in torturing the citizens. All we thought was that the “pension scheme” in singapore is no more in practise all these years but never did we realise its still effective to these legalised robbers, and the already suffering citizens still have to continue feeding all these useless elites till they go to their graves, my god! I thought thaksin is bad enough but didn’t realise we are many more times worse than him. Singaporeans are still kept in the dark till these days.
This is LUDeep again! Not so much news yet, eh? Hope we do something fast. I won’t give up so easily on this.
wow, the english of poly student these days are quite, how do i put it, “OK LA, SO SO ONLY MAH!”