Gap in skills or too many graduates?

Just a couple of days back Chuan Jin was quoted to have said that the reason why Sinkies are losing out on jobs is due to ‘gap in skills’ or Sinkies do not have the required skills for the jobs. And 3rd World talents have all the skills needed to work in a 1st world metropolis. How could a 1st World education system failed to produce the right skills for its economy while 3rd World education systems could do so and with all the experience needed in a 1st World economy is a big puzzle. Should we send a team of educationists to learn from the 3rd World on how to produce talents for 1st World economy? Looks like they are much smarter than out super talents in training their graduates for our economy and we did not have a clue what is going on.
 
In today’s paper, Chuan Jin is again quoted that we are producing too many graduates who could not find jobs and creating a new problem. We have already a pool of experienced graduates that are no longer good enough for employment and are driving taxis. Now we are producing new graduates, or over producing graduates that could not find jobs.
 
Why are these new graduates unable to find jobs when jobs are aplenty, when the whole world is queuing up outside our gate to apply for jobs? What is the truth? Didn’t our economy provide a million jobs with many very well paying to foreigners? Why is there a problem providing jobs for a few thousand new graduates? Oh, skill gaps, and lack of experience working in 3rd World economies that are more sophisticated than our 1st World economy.
 
And we are still so short of talents that we are recruiting all over the world except that we don’t have enough jobs for our local graduates. So?
 
The solution is not to train too many local graduates. Then they can become crane drivers and hawkers and cooks. And the talents we need can come from the rest of the world, and the best talents are those from the 3rd World.
 
The more I write, the more confused I become. Maybe only the super talents can understand what is happening. We are producing too many local graduates that are unfit for employment and we need to take in more foreign talents that are very fit for employment even if the CVs and degrees are suspect.

Kopi Level - Yellow

Bigger, better heart centre

A new $266m heart centre to accommodate twice as many patients as the present one will open for business on Monday.  The 12 storey building can house 38 outpatient clinic rooms and a capacity to see 1000 patients daily or 200,000 patients a year.

Wow, this is a great improvement. It is quite surprising that so many Sinkies have bad hearts and needed such a big facility. And the good news is that many will have their bad hearts treated and go on living with a good heart, or a new heart.

It must be the affluence and too much money and too good a life that result in Sinkies having bad hearts, or it is the other way? Sinkies with bad hearts need not fear anymore and can live fearlessly.

Pioneer Generation (PG) versus Inheritance Generation (IG)

I was choosing between Inheritance Generation (IG) or New Generation(NG) to describe the generation of leaders we have today. I finally decided on IG instead of NG as NG is often used to mean No Good. Historically every dynasty or empire had their PG or the founding fathers, the people who fought to own what they had. The leaders and the people of PG were not only dynamic but also doers. They just did what they had to do as everything was virgin territory. They wanted a country they had to fight for it.

Our first batch of PG fought for self rule or self govt. Today we took that for granted and no longer cherished it as it came too easily, inherited. We are happily giving it away to foreigners to take over and rule us if we are not careful. We became independent through a twist of events, hardly called fighting for it. But subsequently building the country was everything from scratch. We build our industrial estates to form our industrial base, our economy. We built homes that we did not have or to replace the wooden huts. We built an army to defend our island. We created jobs when we had few. We educated and trained our young to be the new talented workforce that built this modern city.

The PG just did it. We built a modern city when others continued to live in 3^rd World environments as they were inept, not talented or organised enough to develop their countries. Today these unorganised and untalented people are swarming over here as talented, with fake certificates or certificates from third rate universities to replace us and no one questions the silliness of it all. The mindset of our PG was to do it by all means, to overcome all difficulties with our own talents. There is nothing that we could not do. Our IG only think of bringing in the unknowns but with papers to show they are talents and believe they are talents and more talented than our own. We don’t even trust our own people and talents. Who built this modern city? The foreign workers and foreign talents?

In a way we can understand the exasperation of Tee Tua Bah on the slow response to the Little India Riot. He came from a generation of doers. ‘There is a problem, deal with it and get it done.’ This was the mantra of those days. I am not saying that his way would be right and the result would be better in this riot, but that was how the PG worked. And they worked for very demanding and tough task masters of the early days that gave authority to those in charge and expected them to solve problems and not to talk about problems or bring problems to them.

In TRE there is this article on the hiring of foreign PMETs. And I quote: ‘In Parliament on Friday (7 Mar), Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin told the House that at least 50 companies have been found to have recruited too many foreigners since MOM started began investigating such firms at the start of 2014.
These firms have been found to be filling PMET positions with too many non-Singaporeans, Mr Tan said.’
If Chuan Jin were to tell LKY this, the reply would be ‘So’, meaning what are you going to do about it. If he would to tell Goh Keng Swee about it, he is going to feel very sorry. Keng Swee would have told him off, ‘get it done young man’. The last thing any officer would want to do was to bring a problem to a minister or permanent secretary without a solution. They better not think that the minister or permanent secretary was going to solve the problems for them unless it was not within their authority to do so.
The following statement was more ridiculous. ‘Mr Tan said however that the issue for some companies was not unfair hiring practices. Rather, they faced difficulties employing Singaporeans because of a “gap in skills” in the local workforce.’  So unfair hiring practices are not a problem anymore? Did Chuan Jin believe that our world class and world best education system could not produce the workers needed but the cheapo 3^rd World education systems could and the employers have to look to these 3^rd World countries for their talents? If these 3^rd World disorganised countries are so good, their people would not be begging at our doors for jobs. They messed up their economies and we expect them to come here to replace our talents to improve on what we have done? And obviously the minister is not thinking about fake certificates and CVs.
How could these 3^rd World misfits be better than our local talents, even if they have genuine certificates from their unrated universities. Or is anyone trying to confirm that the high rankings of our universities are fakes and are no better than those unranked universities from 3^rd World countries? Our graduates are not worth the papers they received from our universities?

You tell me what is wrong with this kind of situation.

Kopi Level - Yellow

Singapore the most expensive city? So?

What is the fuzz all about that Singapore is the most expensive city in the world? To me everything is fine and nothing changes, really. I still have my breakfast and whatever, dining in whatever chic joints that I fancied. My Lamborghini is still running fine and attracting all the attention that I need. If it feels jaded, I can always jump into my Ferrari for a change. So, what’s the big deal?

The cars are so cheap that I could buy a new one with my salary every month. The landed properties too are affordable, really, only a year or two years income will be enough to pay for one, with spare change.

The only thing that I am complaining is that the roads are too congested. They should raise the ERP charges to $20 a pass or even $50. And for those wannabes who cannot afford to buy a decent car, they should take public transport and stop hogging the roads by limping around at 90 kph on the expressway. They are real irritants and always seem to be blocking my right of way. Shitty drivers who think their little cheap sedans are a status symbol to show off on the roads.

Everything is so affordable here and nothing is expensive. I am very comfortable with my level of contentment without being complacent and lazy. Life is a bliss and for enjoyment, and this city just is about everything that I need. Oh, I am no big entrepreneur taking high risk with my investments. I am just an ordinary employee with a decent income to boot.

Now who is complaining? 

Kopi Level - Greeen

PS: I need to clarify here that this is a satire or else stupid people cannot understand and think that I am talking about myself earning million dollar salary. Then the daft will think he is smarter to call me daft.

COI – The Altar of Sacrifice

The COI is set up to investigate the causes of the Little India Riot and probably with recommendations to prevent such an incident from happening again. And if it does, this time the police will be in a better position to deal with the mob. And the possible causes could be things like alcohol consumption, too many people concentrated in a small area, congestion, (didn’t they said 4 is illegal assembly?), narrow roads, rude bus attendant or bad bus driver or something like that.

What has happened over the last few sessions has turned into a grilling of the men in blue. It is looking more like an Altar of Sacrifice and a sacrificial lamb would be presented eventually to satisfy the gods. Now who is going to be the culprit or rogue of the Little India Riot? Would it be the rioters, the policemen or would it be the govt, definitely not the COI?

At the moment it looks like it is the police that is on trial. Or is it? Who else is also on trial? Looking from outside the fishbowl, it looks like everyone is a possible candidate on trial, from the right side to the left side, from those in front of the bench and those behind the bench, and those outside the bench.
This is truly a contest to prove who is the cleverest of them all on the basis of if? And which lamb will be offered on the Altar of Sacrifice? It is nice drama pitting the wits of the witnesses with those of the committee with accusations of all kinds thrown up in the air. Some say it is amusing, some capricious, some say it is conceit and egos and bundled into one.

What do you think?