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2/05/2008
Furious with Khaw Boon Wan
Forumer Seah Leong Khai was furious with the affordable $10 pm increase in MediShield premium introduced by Boon Wan. He used to pay $160 each for himself and his wife. Now each will have to pay $280 a year. This is almost double what he used to pay. But if you look at it from a monthly basis, it is very affordable. Only $10 mah!
What irks Seah is that after collecting $297m, the CPF paid out only $119m in claims and expenses. 'It had a surplus of $178m in 2006. It now has more than $925 m in net assets in the MediShield Fund.'
Seah asked why couldn't some of these be used for the higher payouts. Now, how to explain to Seah that the surplus must be kept for rainy day and that $10 a month is affordable?
Just like the 2% GST increase, they gave you a few hundred dollars worth of rebates and tell you that this is to compensate you for the GST payments you will be making for the rest of your life. A few hundred dollars in exchange for the 2% increase in GST for the rest of your life? How can a peasant understand the rip-off.
ReplyDeletethe masses will always be the unthinking masses.
ReplyDeleteLike the recent newspapers report that SMRT spent $400,000 to add peak hours train services. "It appears" according to the report that "everyone is wondering when the costs will be passed on to the consumers". What wasnt discussed in the news of course was the almost $40,000,000 net profits the monopoly has just posted. Somewhat bias reporting if you ask me...
ReplyDeletethere is no free lunch, esp for organisations whose so reason to exist is to increase profit. there is no social responsibility, every organisation only cares about its own bottom line.
ReplyDeleteprivatisation is good. more efficiency and more profits.
Yeah, why mention the $400K at the end of the news report?
ReplyDeleteIt was like what hell are they talking. I see it as a prelude to the justifications of fare adjustments.
If the SMRT could not plan the train frequencies properly, it is damn hell not the train passenger's problem. SMRT screwed up and SMRT paid the price for it, that is all, no buts.
It is not the fault of the passengers that they are so many of them. When the government announced that they have a world class transportation system, then behave like one and don't look like a stupid guy standing on the platform, being clueless on how to handle the crowds.
Maybe, there is something that they are not telling us. Maybe, the system cannot handle higher train frequencies, due of certain limits of the design. Is this a case of the lowest possible tender?
What is the point of being profitable when you cannot move people with the trains properly? Well, as shown, SMRT serves the shareholders first and the passengers last. Oh yes, in between first and last, there are probably some other people they served too.
Yeah, why mention the $400K at the end of the news report?
ReplyDeleteIt was like what hell are they talking. I see it as a prelude to the justifications of fare adjustments.
sorry, i thought this is the way propaganda aka public education works..
like when they write about japanese station masters packing passengers onto the train, it is likely to be a prelude to something here.
so when the economy is no good, the newspapers will report abt the global causes; but once the economy turns around, you can guess who gets the credits from the newspapers.