Solutions to a hazy problem

We are getting a little reprieve from the full onslaught of the haze problem for the moment. Last week was frightening and if the haze did not subside yesterday, we are in for big trouble when our logistics and great contingency plans failed to react fast enough. A simple thing like 9m masks could not find their way to the people who needed them. They are probably kept in the deep silos or high security bank vaults and no one has the key to open it.

The economic cost of the haze can come into hundreds of millions, or as one analyst guessed, could even hit a billion dollars. And that is not counting the damage to the health of the people, the ecological system and the cost of medicare. And the numbers did not include the cost to our neighbours in the north. The cost to the people in Riau is their own problem and for them to take care of.

Can there be a long term solution to the haze problem? The plantation owners, big and small, are going to clear land as economic growth and making money are the end alls of life. So they will continue to burn, like an annual religious ritual. There is an almost simple and effective solution to this problem, that is to allow them to do as they pleased as it makes economic sense to the companies to do so. For the cost of a match, they could bring down thousands of hectares of vegetation. Why pay for the bull dozers and the manpower to do the hard and expensive way? The hundreds of millions or billions of losses to Singapore and Malaysia are not their concern.

It only takes the Indonesian Govt to decree that burning can only take place in the month of October after the North East monsoon has started. The haze will go to the Indian Ocean instead. How the Riau people going to live with it by being in the centre of the haze is still a problem but not ours to care.

Another way is to pay for the solution. With the damage done to Singapore and the Malaysian economies in the hundreds of millions or billions, it would be pragmatic and economically expedient to pay the companies what they need to clear the land. This could be only a few millions dollars. Why not, it makes economic sense isn’t it? It is a win win solution. The plantation owners got their land cleared and we have clear skies, and the cost is only a fraction of the damage that the plantation owners would have inflicted on us in Singapore and Malaysia.

Yes, it is like paying a ransom to the thugs to leave us alone while they feast on the loot. Isn’t this the thinking of the day, that as long as it makes economic sense, just do it. We gambled by bringing in millions of foreigners just to increase our economic numbers with not a care about the dire consequences now and into the future. We allowed our banking and finance industry to indulge in all kinds of unacceptable high risk ventures for short term profits, employing the crooks from New York, London and Mumbai to run our financial institutions to the ground. Some may not think so as it is still looking like a rosy apple from the outside while the worms are growing within.

The cost of the solution to pay the plantation owners for clean air is nothing. It only costs a few million bucks which is small change really. The pay of a top banker is enough to foot the bill with change to spare.

What do you think? Oops, I know, talk is free and talking nonsense is a good weekend escapee.

My advice to Vivian Balakrishnan

Ever since his infamous reply to Lily Neo in Parliament, ‘You want to eat in hawker centre, in food court or in restaurant’, these words have been carved in the stones of cyberspace, Vivian seems to be having a pretty rough time. These words were the beginning of his seemingly unending problems as a minister.

While as a minister of Youth and Sports, he chalked up an excess bill of several hundred millions during the YOG held here, for under budgeting or overspending. The netizens were not kind to him and would remind him of these hundreds of millions overspent for some children against the $50 requested by Lily Neo for those dependents on public assistance scheme.

Thank God, Hsien Loong quickly moved him out of the ministry into a safer ministry like Environment, now called Environment and Water Resources. Things should be quite safe in this new ministry with flooding happening only once in 50 years. It turned out not to be the case and flooding has been mischievous and hitting places most unthinkable and in the most unlikely time. But the flooding is only flooding and should not be too big a problem to mess around with.

Vivian must not have thought that dengue and chikungunya will be his new nightmares. The virus carrying mosquitoes are breeding quite freely, maybe flooding has something to do with it, and dengue has hit an epidemic level. As they said, when they breed you bleed. And yes, Vivian is the Minister of Environment and is expected to tackle this mosquito breeding problem. This ME and ER is not going to be a honeymoon posting after all.

And while struggling to contain the dengue epidemic that seems to be getting from bad to worse, our air quality is hit by a haze problem that has reached hazardous level and life threatening to some of the more vulnerable citizens. It is the worst haze problem we have seen for 50 years. And the people are expecting Vivian to tackle this as well. And poor Vivian already got his hands full with mosquitoes and now the haze is going to engulf him like smoke grenades.

He is now in Jakarta with a personal letter from Hsien Loong to Yudhoyono pleading for help. From this comments and expression seen over the news, this messenger boy role is not smooth going. And nothing is likely to come out of it.

Those who believe in fortune telling and geomancy will be saying that Vivian is hitting a bad patch. Troubles seem to be visiting him more than other ministers. The first thing I would recommend to Vivian is to go bathe in a bath tub fill with flowers. The next thing is to find a good geomancer and shift the furniture in his office and also his home. And finally, carry a lot of one dollar coins to ward off the bad feng shui following him around.

Try it and pray for all you can. This is better than just talking and do nothing.

Don’t worry, the haze will go away

This I can assure you, while I look out of the window and see a condition very much worse than yesterday. And I heard in the news that the Indonesians have declared emergency in the Riau Archipelago. And we can keep talking, and talk the haze away. It will go away, one week, one month or three months, when the burning stops, the haze will stop coming. In the meantime keep talking.

Some quarters have spoken that this is a domestic issue and got nothing to do with us. We can’t tell our neighbours what not to do. And our neighbours also think so.

Really? Allow me to remind people on the basics of human rights or individual rights. Everyone has the freedom to do as he pleases…as long as it does not affect others. The freedom stops when others are affected by it. When an act of freedom invades into the privacy of anther person or causing harm to another person, it is no longer an act of freedom. J S Mills called this ‘others regarding action’. Your freedom to act goes as far as the next person you are going to hurt.

If the Indonesians can contain the pollutants within their borders, who cares? They can burn for all they like. But the problems it is causing to the neighbouring countries have made this bush burning an ‘others regarding action’ and is no longer a private domestic affair. Be responsible and do something about it.

This be responsible and do something about it have been spoken for many years and I assure you every year this time Singapore and Malaysia will be telling the Indonesians the same old thing. And come next year or the years after, this time of the year, we will be scrambling as to what should be done, and all equally lost, forever lost about how to handle this annual haze migration problem. Did we have a department monitoring on the haze situation? Didn’t we have sophisticated instruments and satellites in space watching over the hot spots? Did we see it coming?

But don’t worry, keep talking and the haze will go away. It may go away before the masks we ordered arrived. It may go away before we have the chance to distribute the masks to those who needed them. It will go away for sure and talking is good enough for this problem. I am one hundred per cent confident that in a few more days or weeks there will be no more haze around.

No need to do anything. We can talk the haze away.

Silent protest against haze invasion at Hong Lim

Dear Fellow Singaporeans,

There will be a short silent protest against the worst haze invasion by our neighbor Indonesia at Hong Lim Green tomorrow at 5 pm.

We need to stand up as a people and send a clear signal to Indonesia that we will not tolerate this harmful incursion to our health and economy.

This is also to demonstrate our solidarity with our government which is trying its best to bring pressure on the Indonesian government to stop the forest burning.

As haze condition is getting hazardous please just pop by wear black, wear mask and bring some water for the short duration you are there....

This is a called by Patrick Low posted in TRE.

Banking malpractices

It took so long for the ST editorial to come out with an article to chastise the wrongs of the robbers in the banking and finance industry. While the noose is tightening in the West to rein in the wild and reckless behavior of the bankers and their fraudulent ways, nothing of such nature is happening in Asia. Many Asian countries are still gulping in all the toxic products and practices of the West and think, like one western bankers stationed in Hongkong said, ‘If it is ok for London it must be ok for us.’

How many Asian bankers and govts really scrutinized the faulty and dangerous products and instruments coming out from the west, from derivatives and deregulations to computers plugging into the exchange system and hi speed computer trading, and dare to say no them? Or how many really bother to assess the suitability or the unacceptable risks that these instruments and products will cause to their financial markets?

The regulators of stock exchanges have a basic and fundamental principle to uphold, of providing a level playing field and fair practices for all investors big and small. By allowing the big funds to plug their computers to their exchange system and allowing them to gain advantage in speed and information is a clear violation of this principle. The use of hi speed computers, something that many decent finance experts and lawmakers in the West have acknowledged as cheating, is blindly being accepted by Asian govts and stock market regulators, likely believing the same, that if London and New York allowed it, then it is ok to accept them.

Asians will always be condemned as foolish if they continue in their silly ways to accept all the rubbish and snake oils from the West without questions asked and risk destroying their financial markets and the savings of their investors. It is not only illegal, it is irresponsible and immoral.

Are there any Asian experts or thinking persons in the Asian finance industry, strong and with the conviction to keep their financial system clean, fair, and healthy and not be corrupted by the wild Western ways out there?

The little piece of editorial in today’s ST titled ‘Checking banking malpractices’ is just too little and too flimsy to mean anything. More serious work needs to be done to keep check on the wayward and reckless ways of the western bankers before it is too late.

Hi speed computer trading is so foul, giving big funds and their hi speed computers to much unfair advantage over the innocent small investors that it is unbelieveable for it to get a green light to create havoc in the stock markets of Asia. No one can see anything wrong with hi speed trading? If they are so dumb, so speak to the experts in the West of their concerns and misgivings. No need to work too hard to sweat the small stuff. The amount of work and research done to tell how unacceptable hi speed trading is are all out there for all who wants to know, who needs to know.

We need to bring back the likes of Koh Beng Seng.