Make this the last haze with more haste

Many years back the Indonesians said they needed a satellite to help them spot the hot spots to fight haze. Of course no one was willing to buy them a satellite even if they could afford it. It was nonsensical. In the last few days the Indonesians have been wavering from wanting our help to send our aircraft to help them fight the haze to not necessary, too little to make a difference.

Yesterday they said they are willing to accept our offer of help or anyone willing to help. And what they need are bigger planes that can carry more water to douse the fire. Sounds logical, big fire needs big planes and more water.

Have they forgotten what Siti Nurbaya Bakar said, that they should tackle the haze problem from the source and prevention. Prevent the fire from starting and no one needs to go around lugging pots of water to douse the fire. Is this too difficult to understand? Oops, they may request to install CCTVs in every corner of the jungle to track down fire starters. Now how many million CCTVs would be needed on paper?

Can anyone teach them on a more efficient, effective and less costly way to prevent the fire from starting?

The momentum to take actions against fire starters has taken a first baby step. The ban and boycott of products and related products from such companies must remain in place until the next haze season and only be lifted when haze is not reappearing.  Please do not lift it next month when the sky is clear, no haze already, so no more problems. And this campaign must be expanded not only to cover more companies. Taking just APP alone is definitely not enough, it must also extend to other affected countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei and perhaps the Philippines. The ban can only be effective if there is a concerted effort to stop this menace and not just talk, talk and talk.

The haze can be stopped if serious enforcement measures are taken to prevent the fire from being lighted or to be killed at the early stages of the fire. After this haze season, all the fires will be out, and no haze, when the wet season arrives. The situation should be kept that way and close monitoring, early warning and detection system must be in place to keep a look out for fire starters in the next season.

The haze can be stopped next year, not another 3 years if there is a political will to stop it. The different countries can assist the Indonesian govt in law enforcement with equipment and financial resources to beef up the forest rangers and law enforcement officers. The satellites are there and it is only a matter of getting a dedicated team or ministry to work on it. It is all about prevention, not fighting fires.

Let there be no outbreak of fire or putting them out at earliest possible. And make the firestarters pay. Keep the ban in place on all the culprits, not just one company, until next year. The haze is not caused by just one company.

The dying of a human specie called Singaporean

The true blue Singaporeans are going to disappear from this island in a matter of time. And no, it is not that they are being ousted out by the foreigners. And it is not because they are not working hard enough, not trying hard enough. They are trying very hard to be the best, investing a lot on the young with the ‘best’ education they could buy. They forgot that education is the training of the mind, to acquire knowledge and how to use the brain to apply the knowledge acquired, or at least to think. They believed that parroting or gaming the system is good education. Get a good score, anyhow, by whatever means, is the goal of education. Mugging, go through all the standard questions, know the exam questions and know the answers, buy the results, get the tuition teachers to provide model answers and viola, straight As!

The gaming to get high rankings for tertiary institutions falls into the same pattern. University education is not the teaching and training of the minds of the undergrads, but about getting high rankings for the universities, bring in all the foreigners if necessary, the lecturers and students can all be foreigners, never mind. The goal is the high rankings.

Now where was I? Oh the extinction of the Singaporean specie, the true blue ones. Today’s first page news in the Newpaper reported how angry parents were when their children could not answer a PSLE question. What is the problem? The maths question too difficult? Not like that. The question is a commonsensical question, but not found in any model answers. The question is not taught in class or by the tuition teachers or the parents themselves. What does it mean? It simply means that the children would not know anything they is not taught. Yes, the chicken comes from the supermarket, got no feathers.

Now what is this outrageous question? Guess the weight of 6 one dollar coins. And this is multiple choice question with 3 answers provided to make a good guess, 60gm, 600gm and 6kg, which is the right answer or nearest to the right answer? The students drew a blank. The parents were furious, went mad and in a way challenged the MOE for setting a question that could not be found in any past exam questions. This question is as good as asking the students the colour of the sun with answers like black, blue and orange as possible answers. And bet you, the children will cry to their mama and papa, never heard of such question, how to answer? They would not try to figure it out. They are not taught to figure things out when in a fix and facing a new situation. Their minds will go swirling and swirling to find an answer stored in the memory. Can’t find it there means no answer, cannot answer, dunno how to answer.

Is this how we train our young, to memorise answers, memorise scripts? Anything not taught they would not know how to react? Life is about the unknowns and the surprises and the many things not in the text books.

At the way our children are taught to ace examinations by gaming, they would soon end up as biological robots, waiting for input in order to produce outputs. No input means no output. How are they going to survive in the real world? Soon they may not know how to eat, what to eat other than the hamburgers bought from MacDonald by papa and mama. Did MOE forget to teach them how to make babies? Maybe that is the reason why fertility rate is so low.

How to compete with the survivors from the rough and tough world that have to learn to live with whatever problems in their way, to overcome them by any means?

What do you think?

PS. The older generations used to bring a dice to the examination hall and if they could not think of an answer, at least they would throw the dice and hoped for lady luck. They would still do something to make the best out of a bad situation. The last thing they would do is go crying to papa and mama. They grew up earlier, learning to survive in the uncertain world.

SGH hit by hepatitis C outbreak – 4 dead

It was quite normal to hear the Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew saying he was upset and disappointed with the breakdown and disruption of train services.  Education Minister Heng Swee Kiat also had to brave himself up to say the same thing after the Kota Kinabalu quake when several students and teachers died. Today, the Health Minister said the same thing in front page news.  According to Mypaper, Gan Kim Yong said, ‘I am gravely concerned and disappointed with the occurrence of the cluster of hepatitis C cases in SGH. My thoughts are with the affected patients and families.’ The CEO of SGH was also quoted to share his concern and apologized to the families and patients affected.

The medical fraternity was shocked. It has never happened before in our world class hospitals staffed by the best medical professionals and with the most modern facilities and equipment. Hepatitis C is rare in Singapore and can only be transmitted by intravenous blood transfusion. It is not easy to get transmitted though the hospital had reported an increase in infection rate from 2 to 4 a year.  In SGH, there were 22 cases within 3 months and leading to 4 deaths.  And with the long incubation period, there could be more walking out there.

This is a very serious outbreak that should not happen in a first world country but it happened. The 3^rd World must be having a good laugh. The hospital is doing a thorough investigation to uncover the lapses if any and is reviewing its procedures all over to make sure that it would not happen again. Let’s hope it would not be like the Transport Minister repeating it over and over again when the trains kept breaking down.  Someone must be turning in his grave for this to happen in a country that is ranked very high in medical standard and services.

Where to go from here? Best facilities, best medical professionals, best equipment, best procedures, where is the weak link? The patients? Cannot be, hepatitis is rare in Singapore.

Education – Govt sending strong signal

Can anyone remember the comment that university education is no good if one cannot get a job, the piece of paper cannot be eaten? Can anyone remember that being crane drivers or hawkers are better than a university graduate with their strings of degrees but jobless? Or going further back, can anyone remember that education is the biggest leveler, to give everyone a chance to succeed in life? Or did anyone advocate that he would encourage the bright young people to take a scholarship from the govt to get a good degree?

We have confusing and perplexing signals about the goodness of education, some say good and important, some say not necessary. Today, according to the two new education ministers, the govt is sending yet another signal, that education is very important, so important that the ministry now needs two ministers and among them one could be a PM of the fourth generation.

Two ministers helming a ministry must be a good sign that the ministry is important, or education is really important after all. Or is there another reason, that the job of an education minister is now so big because our population is now so big with so many universities, that one minister cannot cope?

Whatever, let’s hope the education minister could put it right this time, that the products from our education system is marketable, have the right skill sets to be employable, or at least be better than graduates from village universities in the 3^rd World. Or at the very worst, the paper can be eaten. There is no point in a holistic education to develop the whole individual when he is unemployable right?

Just wondering what was happening in the past that we need two ministers today to want to put things right again. Two ministers is a strong signal definitely. Can we have two NEA ministers too, so that we can put an end to the haze problem, or at least to send a strong signal on our resolve to want to solve the haze hazard?

Is Singapore really interested in solving haze problem?

The govt has taken legal actions against 5 companies suspected of being among the culprits causing this environmental and health hazard. The Singapore Environment Council, SEC, is also calling up local companies to sign an agreement to declare they did not source from possible haze culprits. One suspected company involved in the haze problem has been named as APP. 10 companies have signed but another 7 have yet to sign. What can the govt do if they don’t sign?

One firm that did not sign said they have stopped getting supplies from APP and would clear their APP stocks before signing. Fair enough. What about those that refused to do anything? Seah Kian Peng of NTUC Fairprice said the company is investigating and also yet to sign the declaration. It was reported that that 20% of the company’s paper products came from APP.

‘Case President Lim Biow Chuan urged consumers to stop supporting companies who have not pledged to be socially responsible. “This will send a strong signal to the errant companies that consumers’ goodwill should not be taken for granted,” he said.’

Would he be having a word with his colleague in NTUC Fairprice about this? Can APP and other culprits take NTUC Fairprice for granted? What is the point of asking the consumers to boycott the paper product suppliers when one of the biggest companies continues to buy from APP?  Is the govt serious in tackling haze culprits or just another wayang , one hand say this and the other doing something else? Oh, forgot, no coordinating minister in charge of haze, trade and SMEs.

And there was a comment by Sinkie Ah Q, a Singapore version, who said what is the point, Singapore is a small market, if his company does not buy from APP, APP can sell to the rest of the world. This kind of attitude is quite understandable from daft Sinkies.

By the way, is APP the only company whose products are sold here? What about Indonesian companies whose products are sold here? Or is it a case of it happens, nothing can be done, let’s move on?

PS: Why are we paying these companies to smoke us?