Dear Editor,
I refer to the ongoing wayang before the Bt Batok B.E. in parliament today by
minister lim swee say on his ministry's 'fine-tuning' of the workpass
application process for EP under the guise of protecting Singaporean and PR
PMET.
Firstly, PRs ARE NOT LOCALS but what was most disappointing is, MOM
conveniently leaving out the low wage workers in the service and F&B
industries where S-passes and WPs continue to be liberally distributed in
abundance with the backtracking of electoral promises to curb them and raise
levies!
Countless F&B outlets and new hotels that sprung up in Lavender, Balestier,
Jurong East etc. as well as Shopping Centers are overwhelmingly helm by a
foreign workforce with very minimal or no Singaporean at all. When I
patronized the expat Great World City today, I was astonished to find an all
foreign staff at Subway who do not even command basic standards of English
and have great difficulties comprehending simple requests.
These extremely cheap and readily available foreign workforce from Vietnam,
Philippine and China are causing a great of undue stress to the lower
educated segments of our society who are made to perform jobs in the service
line with significantly suppressed wages out of little or no choice at all
like the 'noble' recommendation of PAP MP Amrin Amin to his resident.
In my opinion, even if the PAP wishes to "transform" the employment landscape
as claimed, it is in actual fact, too late now as the over reliance on
foreigners to artificially raise profits all over the industries that benefit
PAP MPs who are many of their stakeholders have sunk in too deep. The time to
prevent this scenario from occurring today was actually a decade back in 2006
but daft Sinkies then believed the lies of the PAP and allowed for what is
unfolding currently just like it happened in the health and transportation
breakdowns and rising house prices.
My Malay neighbor has had 5% of her down payment confiscated by HDB, in
addition to sucking the stamp and conveyancing fees from her (even though no
transaction took place) and imposing a 1 year debarment for future smaller
flat application on her. The HDB had earlier approved her BTO application
following their own calculations but now turned around to blame her for her
own misfortune of being retrenched and unable to afford the levies of the
HDB.
We can now only adopt a wait and see approach at upcoming B.E. which will
seal the fate of many things to come including the treatment of
Aljunied-Hougang TC, the fulfillment of promises made at G.E. 2015 and the
arrogance levels of the PAP leadership. East Coast, Fengshan and Marine
Parade residents have already failed us and I hope the same mistake will not
be repeated by Bt Batok.
#Its Now Or Never
Yasmin
A.S.S. Contributor
Editor's Note:
Do you have a story to share? Please use our submission form or email us at editorial@allsingaporestuff.com. If not, why not give us a 'Like'?