PMEs must apply to SG Jobs Bank

The SG Jobs Bank is now in service with 50,000 jobs available for Singaporeans and PRs. These jobs are technically on offer for 14 days before the employer could turn around and claim they have tried but failed to get a local and now can go and get their men/women from wherever they liked. How serious are these companies looking for locals to fill the vacancies or how few locals are qualified for the jobs would soon be known when the statistics are available in the coming months.
 
It is very important that Singaporeans apply to these positions quickly as it is like they are being given the first right of refusal by these companies through the Jobs Bank. There would of course be some companies just going through the motion with no intent to hire Singaporeans and would do whatever that are necessary to get their desired candidates other than Singaporeans.
 
There are two things that are important here. First, Singaporean PMEs must respond vigorously to these job advertisements. And two, the MOM must keep a close watch at how the recruiting process is being carried out seriously and not a farce just to appease MOM’s requirements. Hopefully MOM has procedures to collect the data and to monitor and assess how things are being done professionally and not have companies pulling wools over their eyes. It is good that MOM has set up a Fair Consideration Department (FCD) to support the FCF and the Jobs Bank.
 
Gilbert Goh may want to provide a parallel monitoring channel for PMEs who applied and failed to secure a job despite the 50,000 jobs available. Keep track of what is happening to make sure the employers do not turn this Jobs Bank into a circus. With some of the comments posted in TRE, and if they are an indication of the intent of some of the employers, some monkeys would not treat the Jobs Bank seriously. The threatening remarks that MNCs would move out are hogwash. If they can find another paradise with an English speaking workforce, an environment that is so friendly for businesses and for leisure, no fear of personal safety, please go. And the arrogance of some claiming that they could not find local talents is a sign that they did not intend to find local talents and are bent on hiring their own kind.
 
MOM would have a lot of work cut out for them to haul up the rascals for a whipping. The Jobs Bank is only a start and now it is the details and the realities on the ground that matter. The FCD needs more manpower to police the processes. Singaporean PMEs must make an effort to reclaim their rights to decent jobs from this portal. All those professionals driving taxis, under employed, unemployed, please submit your applications quickly and best, give Gilbert Goh a feeler of your applications and the results for analysis.
 
Let’s hope this is real and the employers are serious. Any rejections have to be critically checked by the FCD to make sure they are valid and reasonable. They need to start by checking the CVs and qualifications of the imports from overseas and punish the culprits severely to make a point. The FCD/MOM must have the means to deal with the recalcitrants and not just having kopi and nice talks with them. Everyone must watch how this game is being played henceforth and Singaporean PMEs are not convenient rubbish to be dumped into the waste paper bins.

Kopi Level - Green

10m population snippets

Many nice things have been said about having a 10m population. Some even encouraged the planners to be braver and go for 20m or more. Some were thinking seriously on how to accommodate 20m. One suggestion is to build 40 storey flats and nothing less going forward. This is not only cheaper than building 40 storeys down into the ground.
 
The advantage is that when there is an emergency, you can jump out of the window of 40 storey high flats. If you are 40 storeys down under, you cannot jump out.
 
Some were suggesting that all the low rise landed properties in Bukit Timah, Holland and Tanglin be acquired by the govt to make way for 40 storey high rise flats. And the owners would be happy if paid market price for their land, x 40 of course. $1m becomes $40m, $10m becomes $400m. Win win for all.
 
Old low rise HDB flats can go for SERS and owners get a free new flat when new blocks are all 40 storeys and above. No need to worry about 99 year lease ending. Get a new 99 year lease for free.
 
What do you think?

Kopi Level - Green

First generation PRs no need to serve NS, but second generation…

Many people have raised the issue of first generation PRs not serving NS. Some even deliberately opt to become citizens after a certain age to avoid NS. But if I am not mistaken, the often repeated defence to this policy is that the second generation of PRs or citizens would have to serve NS. This took away some of the vehemence of NSmen for the time being. Finally their children would have to serve NS.
 
This is what I have believed, rightly or wrongly. Now there is an article in TRE that told a different story. Maybe I have been mistaken all the time. According to this article, ‘PRs who fail to serve NS face serious consequences’, the children of PRs can opt not to be PRs and stay here under student passes. I swear this is new to me. Blame me for being ignorant. I quote an elaboration of what this means in the same article.
‘Foreign expats’ sons go for Student Pass instead
 
Due to the stringent tightening of NS policy especially after the PAP Govt suffered a GRC loss in the last election, foreign expats will now tend not to apply PR for their sons. Their sons are put on student pass so as to avoid NS and work or study issues later.
 
A good example is former Indian national and now new Singaporean citizen, Raj. During an interview with TOC [Link], Raj revealed that only he in the family has converted to Singaporean citizenship. His wife and daughter remain as PRs and his son is on a student pass.
 
Raj said that if his son was a PR, he would need to serve NS. He preferred to “let his son decide if he wanted to put his roots down in Singapore or go back to India when he turns 21″.
 
The benefit of having his son on a student pass is that his son can always work in Singapore later as a “foreign talent” and eventually become a PR himself. He will not be considered a second-generation PR since he was not sponsored by his parents in the first place. A second-generation PR who gives up his PR is barred from working or studying in Singapore.
 
Raj said, “We have friends who are from India as well as Singapore. My kids must grow up knowing their roots and our Indian culture, so we purposely go out of the way to stay connected with our friends from India, especially those from our own hometown.”
 
“Living and adjusting to so many different races of people is a very big challenge,” he added.
Raj chose to let his children study in the Global Indian International School instead of a local school.’
 
There are two points to this quote. One, PRs indeed had the option for their children not to serve NS. Another point is that they do not think our policies of having the four major races learning their own languages and roots are good enough to retain their own culture and need to go back to absorb their own culture in their mother land. Also, they are not going to sink roots here as their children would not be one of us.
 
Does this not defeat the objective of having immigrants to be one of us, to be rooted here? We would end up with transient families and more old folks problems if their children would not want to be citizens.
Why like that one?

Kopi Level - Green

PRC woman lets her son defecate at Chinatown MRT

‘Today I saw a PRC woman allowing her son to shi.t publicly into a drain right beside Chinatown MRT station. This is very disturbing to me and I told her to bring her son to the toilet instead. However, she told me that I shouldn’t tell her what to do and she say that there is nothing wrong for letting her son shi.t publicly into a drain.
She then started scolding me and saying about how Singaporeans think that they are very classy and always think that they are better than the PRCs. She say that PRCs are also human and that they also need to shi.t….’
 
The above article is being shared all over the internet and receiving a lot of attention. You can read the whole article and other similar articles in the TRE. Let me look at it from the integration perspective. By the way, 50 years ago we were no better. The behavior was quire prevalent then. It took us at least two generations to change. We have educated ourselves to a higher standard of hygiene, social behavior and conduct that are different from peasants and villagers. Our convenience has changed with the availability of toilets and washrooms everywhere. The act of children defecating in the public is no longer acceptable to us.
 
We have moved on and not looking back, we do not want to go back to those days when we were like that. As I have said many times, once we get out of the longkangs, to be clean, why would we want to go trampling in the longkangs to dirty ourselves, to be smelly again?
 
We are 1st World, we brought in millions of 3rd World people to live with us. We want them to be like us, to integrate with us, to live our way of life. The integration must be one way, not a matter of arrogance or conceitedness. Our hygiene standard is very high and desirable. I am not saying that everything from the 3rd World is bad, but from the material comfort, hygiene, cleanliness and health point of view, this is what we want.
 
From the replies and retorts by the woman encountered, it is clear that it is not easy to integrate them to be like us. She is angry that we are imposing on her. She would want us to be like her, to accept her ways. It may take time, but some may not, or would take a very long time.
 
Our overall quality of life like cleanliness and social behavior would be affected as long as the 3rd World living with us would not want to be like us or taking too long to be like us. Our clean city images have been tainted, and some Singaporeans have also joined them to add to the littering. We have gone backwards and have to live with more untidiness and more littering and rubbish everywhere. Please don’t blame it on all Singaporeans. Nearly half the population here is 3rd World. It is lucky that we have not become 3rd World with reversed integration, instead of them becoming more like us, we becoming more like them.
 
Is this what we want? To bear with them for the sake of cheap labour and economic growth?

Kopi Level - Green

Japan’s White Lie

Today’s ST carried an article by Kwan Weng Kin and Hau Boon Lai with a title, ‘China’s move to set up defence zone profoundly dangerous: Japan’. The article dealt with an annual defence White Paper that was approved by the Japanese cabinet to criticize China’s Air Defence Identification Zone as profoundly dangerous. Such accusation is often accepted at face value by the innocent and unthinking masses who flipped through the pages within giving it a second thought. ADIZ China, dangerous. Japan said so.
 
What is an ADIZ? Simply it an airspace of a country for identifying aircraft flying into it to know if they are friendly or hostile. It is an identification zone for defensive purposes. Why is it dangerous? Why is it that the Japanese ADIZ is not dangerous? The ignoramous did not know that the Japanese have a similar ADIZ set up several decades ago and extended to the Chinese coast.
 
Again, why is it that the Japanese can set up an ADIZ and is not deemed dangerous but the Chinese ADIZ is dangerous? As mentioned earlier, an ADIZ is just an identification zone of a country, an airspace that hostile aircraft could fly in to attack the country. How can it be dangerous when it is defensive in nature, an identification zone?
 
According to the Japanese, it upsets the status quo. What is the status quo? The status quo is that the Japanese can have an ADIZ up to the Chinese coast and China did not have one. The status quo is that the Japanese can fly their fighter aircraft to intercept aircraft in the ADIZ but the Chinese cannot do so. The status quo said that the Japanese have full military control of the airspace adjoining the two countries up to the coast of China. Is this militarily acceptable, fair, equitable?
 
Why is it that the Japanese have the right to control part of the Chinese airspace and China cannot control its own air space and part of the overlapping airspace? Is the status quo reasonable? It is as good as your neighbor having the right to control and check on all visitors in your garden across the road but you cannot do that to his. And if you want a similar right, your neighbor is going to cry foul to the whole neighbourhood that you are dangerous.
 
Then look at what the Japanese have been doing that is not considered profoundly dangerous. The Japanese have reinterpreted their pacificist constitution so that they can now conduct wars and engage in wars not only in the defence of Japan but in other regions and countries, just like they did before in WW2. Is this not profoundly dangerous? The Americans are pretending they did not know.
 
The Japanese are now saying that they are free to conduct wars like their defeated Empire, and if they are like their barbaric forefathers, would commit the same kind of atrocities overseas. Is this not dangerous, not profoundly dangerous? How does this compare to China’s ADIZ, an identification zone to check and identify unknown aircraft flying into the country?
 
The Japanese White Paper is synonymous to a Japanese White Lie. China’s defensive act to protect its territory is claimed to be profoundly dangerous, but an act to commit wars overseas is not profoundly dangerous? And with their historical records and propensities to conduct wars of aggression, they got the cheek to call China’s ADIZ dangerous when all China did was to protect itself against possible Japanese military aggression.
 
How many fools swallowed the Japanese White Lie totally, hook, line and sinkers?

Kopi Level - Green