By Wong Chun Han
Singapore’s Budget 2010 fails to address concerns of lower-income Singaporeans, while cultural and societal attitudes need to be adjusted for the productivity drive to work, Nominated Member of Parliament Viswa Sadasivan said Tuesday.
“The budget did not go far enough in meeting the objective of being more inclusive and ensuring we don’t end up leaving fellow Singaporeans behind,” the 50-year-old public relations consultancy chief executive told lawmakers during the budget debate in Parliament.
The government also needs to address problems with workplace culture and attitudes to help boost productivity, he added, before concluding his speech in support of the budget proposals.
Despite the Economic Strategies Committee’s desire to provide “inclusive growth and a broad-based increase in the incomes of citizens”, the budget proposals fail to do so with regards to Singaporeans in lower income households, such as low-skill unemployed, plus the elderly, disabled, chronically ill, and their caregivers, he said.
Citing the Department of Statistics’ most recent Household Expenditure Survey, Sadasivan said that from 2002/3 to 2007/8 lower-income households have had to reduce their monthly spending, while devoting a larger proportion of their expenses towards healthcare for the elderly.
In this period, their incomes grew by a much smaller percentage than high-income households.
He suggested that more direct forms of assistance should be provided to lower-income households.
Such assistance could take the form of rental rebates, cash grants for meeting healthcare, water and electricity costs, and coupons for food, transportation and other necessities.
“This assistance should not be restricted by one’s ability to get employed or own a home,” Sadasivan said.
In order to deliver inclusive growth, the government also needs to supplement its productivity drive by fostering a favourable workplace culture – such as independent creative thinking and a willingness to take the initiative.
“We need to be wary of the temptation to deploy technical solutions and gain a false sense of accomplishment, when the problem is attitudinal in nature,” he said.
“The truth is we need both – technical measures as well as ways to shift attitude and culture.”
Sadasivan noted that countries Britain, Finland, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States have outperformed Singapore in productivity from 2006 to 2008 despite their lack of structured productivity initiatives and their investing of less resources per capita than Singapore for productivity growth.
This suggests a problem with Singaporean workplace attitudes which may be holding workers back from attaining their productivity potential.
“The workplace culture does not quite celebrate the spirit of ‘taking charge’ when not anointed,” he said. “There is not much incentive to take initiative and do more than your fair share at work.”
Instead of the existing “modest, self-effacing” culture, new attitudes that “encourage ownership, risk taking, and a genuine desire to improve oneself” must be put in place.
“For our economy to grow and our society to ride through the challenges and come out stronger and flourish, we need more bricklayers feeling they are building cathedrals, not just walls,” he said.
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Read NMP Viswa Sidasivan’s speech in full
See Channel NewsAsia’s Budget 2010 debate video highlights
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“…change workplace culture to boost productivity…”
That is easy to say but i am afraid to change culture would be nearly impossible if not take 50 years to achieve that. Then is this bloke asking the low wage citizens to wait a long long long time to get income increment?
Prove to us what you say is possible. Talk is easier than successful implementation of an idea where anyone can come up a nice idea eg. World Peace. hahaha
“we need more bricklayers feeling they are building cathedrals”.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average weekly wage for construction sector in Nov 2009 was A$1,269/week.
The average weekly wage for those in water & waste services was A$1,375/week.
These weekly wages are for normal working hours, excluding OT pay and bonuses.
While the salaries may be skewed by high income earners in their respective industries, because the income-gap is not that bad in Australia, the above weekly salaries should be quite representative of the typical worker in construction or in water & waste services.
With these kinds of salaries, I would be more than willing to be a builder of cathedrals or cleaner of palaces. More importantly, it shows the whole country’s culture putting money where its mouth is, not just talk cock sing song. And it gives its people pride in their work, real dignity for quality life, a stake in the country no matter how blue-collar they are, and assurance of a future for themselves and their children.
with no legislation to set a minimum wages for locals for specialised skill, employer will still be setting their salary, onus will be on them and with the availability of aliens coming all over, employer does not have to worry! what has the governement do??? welcome aliens again and increase levy, no difference as it will only make them richer!!
There’s the best piece of report i readed .
Too bad non of the white pricks in parliment have the intelligence or guts to mention it.
angry reservist, those incompetent fools only know how to cover each other backside and booklicking one another. I already lost all hope on them.
What a joke. The sucky workplace culture was already found in Singapore for very long no wonder productivity dropped. Follow the western countries. Implement min wages and worl life balance policies
I felt the Budget was not ambitious enough (in setting out what it wants to do and its limits). Yes, I think it’s high time we have a work-culture revolution, which we need more than monetary initiatives to solve our problems.
“…..Citing the Department of Statistics’ most recent Household Expenditure Survey, Sadasivan said that from 2002/3 to 2007/8 lower-income households have had to reduce their monthly spendingCiting the Department of Statistics’ most recent Household Expenditure Survey, Sadasivan said that from 2002/3 to 2007/8 lower-income households have had to reduce their monthly spending…”
Err, wasn’t this the period which saw our ministers pay ballooning to the highest in the world?
“…The truth is we need both – technical measures as well as ways to shift attitude and culture…”
The fact remains we have not been able to achieve BOTH for the last maybe 20+ years. Look at the centerpiece of the budget debate — foreign worker levy. How does that directly bring about either? We are simply paying idiots millions just to state the obvious.
The shocking thing is that the leaders of the GIC, Temasek and, top level executives and admin staff are still with the company and the heavy losses.
I believe that Lee KY, Tony Tan, Dhanabala, Ho Ching are still with these companies. They should make public how much we have and the losses, then resign from these companies and get real experts to run them.
Why not get George Sorrows or Warren Buffet to help out?