Dear ASS Editors,
We need a whole new direction for our country. Saddened to hear of the SMRT accident today but it was coming. For many of you, it may be shocking but it showed that the infrastrature cannot cope with the demands of the population.
Everything, if not all our social problems stem from our low birth rate. In this case, i believe we expanded too quickly without laying the necessary groundwork for the population boom or growth needed. What we needed was a gradual increase in the economy before taking our place alongside developed countries.
The birth rate has many factors, not withstanding
-High living cost
-High housing cost
-unwillingness to marry/settle to establish career first because the living cost has become unsustainable to establish a family
-The stop at two policy among other things
Many people thus did not have or put off having babies and this led to a not so surprising drop. The population white paper in effect while providing an influx of workers to support the economic growth had negatives such as pushing up living and housing costs, which in turn starts a never ending vicious cycle as mentioned above. It is a short term fix that only covers up the symptoms. The long term problems are still there.
The infrastructure, while capable of supporting our population back in the 1980s and the 1990s to the early 2000s, have been stretched to the limit because of the white paper, compounded by the fact that age also unfortunately rears its head around the time this happens. Again, there have been short term fixes, like the cable ties for example and the replacement of sleepers, but the main problem has not been tackled yet because any long term fixes will mean a massive transport backlog in the country. The rails are not capable of supporting an immediate huge influx of people at one go, but rather, a trickle of people over time.
Everything up till now has been short term fixes and it cannot last as shown today. What we need to do is take a step back, and accept that we have to ultimately do a major surgical operation, rendering us probably bleeding and out for a while, but the overhaul will be all the better for it.
We have to reverse the mass importing of FTs or if need be, mass deport them as the first step to stop the vicious cycle. This will be vicious but strongly needed to ensure the first step to recovery.
Reducing the population will make the long term fixes to the MRT easier in essence. With a low population, this can be made easier by introducing buses to help cope with the capacity while the NSEW line have to be shut down for repairs alongside
Growth or GDP will suffer invariably but the low living cost/housing cost will offset this and allow the population to recover and focus on the long term. Short term pain, but long term gain is better than short term gain, long term pain.
Look at Germany and Europe, they are already having problems with their infrastructure due to the migrant crisis(opening of floodgates). We will have it worse because of our limited land space.
Nickzz
A.S.S. Contributor
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