Category: Politik

Osman Sulaiman: Khaw Boon Wan Can Increase Popularity By Solving Jam At Land Checkpoints

Here’s how Mr Khaw Boon Wan the Transport Minister could increase his popularity now that he has assumed the most unwanted portfolio in the government’s department.

‘Steal’ a couple of millions from the PIC Bonus Grant Scheme and channel it towards relieving Woodlands checkpoint from massive congestion.

1. Set up extra 20 booths during peak hours. With extra booth, more manpower is needed. Deploy personnel specifically for peak hours operation.

2. Widen the CIQ car lanes from the existing 2 lanes. Currently only two car lanes serving hundreds of thousands of motorist before coming to the immigration booth.

3. Hire more personnel for security checks whenever there is a need to step up security. Much much more from existing.

The 5 billion PIC Bonus Scheme has remain largely ineffective in increasing the country’s productivity level. In recent news, we were told even pimps were claiming from this scheme.

Tax payer’s monies should always be maximized and put to efficient use. Arresting the issue of congestion can actually help to increase the nation’s productivity level.

Thousands of Malaysian and Singaporean workers travel in and out of Singapore everyday. Not having enough sleep just to beat the congestion will ultimately cause their work performances to dip and thus affect productivity.

Fatigue can affect productivity too. Instead of waiting hours to clear the jam, that amount of hours wasted is opportunity lost to further increase productivity.

Heavy congestion also have slight negative impact towards the country’s economy. We read about how a Singaporean stayed in JB hotel overnight just to avoid the jam. That is money spent overseas when it could have been spent internally to contribute to the economy.

Gallons and gallons of petrol wasted during the congestion. Carbon dioxide harmful effects on the environment and humans are also a concern.

It will not do wonders to the current productivity level. But I believe it will help towards achieving a positive effect. With this venture, everyone benefits. Motorist. Transport Minister. Government.

Source: Osman Sulaiman

December 28, 2015
NUH Recalls 178 Children For TB Test

The National University Hospital (NUH) is recalling 178 paediatric patients – including 131 under the age of two years – who had been cared for by a nurse now confirmed to have tuberculosis.

They include 34 children who have received a transplanted organ. These children are on immunosuppression drugs and therefore at higher risk than normal children.

Associate Professor Daniel Goh, head of paediatrics at NUH, said the risk of any of the children contracting TB from the nurse is “very low”, especially as she had donned a mask while working.

But the hospital is not taking any chances and is recalling patients who had been in ward 47 since July.

The nurse was treated at a GP clinic for her cough in July, but despite having a chest X-ray, was not diagnosed with TB. She was given antibiotics and seemed to get better.

But the cough persisted, and last Wednesday she sought treatment again and was given a CT scan which showed a possible TB patch in her lung the size of a 50-cent coin. She told the hospital on the same day and was tested for TB. Last Friday, the results confirmed she had TB.

Fortunately, it is the normal and not multi-drug-resistant variety.

Dr Goh said his team spent the weekend trawling through the patient database to identify patients who might have had long exposure to her while warded, as well as those who are deemed at higher risk because of their age or disease.

Mr Joe Sim, NUH’s chief executive officer, said: “We fully understand the anxiety of the parents and are taking this matter seriously.”

Professor Paul Tambyah , a senior infectious disease expert at NUH, said TB transmission depends on the amount of exposure, the bacterial load of the carrier and the individual’s immune system.

He said there is a one in 10 chance of people getting the bug if a person with TB coughs at them for two hours. Of those who get the bacteria, one in 10 would get the disease in his lifetime. This doubles for those with low immunity.

The first patients were at NUH for screening on Tuesday and more will be screened over the coming weeks.

They will have a chest X-ray to check for TB, and blood tests if aged five or older, and/or skin tests to see if they have the bug latent in them.

Any child diagnosed to have caught the latent bug will be given treatment, which has a greater than 90 per cent chance of preventing TB. For those with TB, chances of a cure are very high with treatment.

Madam Crystal Lim, 28, whose two-year-old son was in ward 47 for three weeks in August, was shocked when his doctor called to ask her to bring her son back for tests.

Her son had a liver transplant in October last year, but was back in hospital for treatment for a 3cm abscess on his buttocks. The doctor had explained that because of his transplant, he was at a higher risk.

She is worried, but not angry.

“I would be angry if the hospital did not do anything and the patients started getting TB. But they are doing something,” she said.

As for the nurse, Madam Lim said: “She did not do it purposely. All the nurses look after the children very well. I hope the doctors can help her get well.”

The nurse, who is on medical leave for two weeks, will be able to resume work as being on treatment means she is not contagious. Her colleagues in the ward have all been tested and found negative.

So far this year, 1,252 new TB cases have been diagnosed in Singapore.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

December 4, 2015
Why We Shouldn’t Have 2 Houses Of Parliament

1 Parliament with 2 Houses, or bicameralism, is an idea that is most intriguing. The Mother of Parliaments has the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The world’s oldest democracy has the House of Representatives and the Senate. The world’s largest democracy has the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha. Even our neighbours across the causeway have the Dewan Rakyat and the Dewan Negara. While bicameralism may be a feature of the most well-known parliamentary systems in the world today, it would do little to further democracy and strengthen our existing institutions in Singapore.

The potential creation of an upper chamber was viewed by the Rendel Commission in the mid-1950s as the unnecessary stratification of Singapore’s political society – an upper class of the political elite in contrast to a lower class of elected representatives.

An unelected upper chamber would be symbolic of a parliamentary feature that even our former colonial masters are trying to do away with today in their own country. Reform of the unelected House of Lords in the UK has been rendered as a common-sense cause tainted with political inertia to do anything about it. As recently as 1999, the UK moved to severely limit the hereditary peerage system, where the son of a Baron or Earl could inherit not only his father’s title but also his seat in the House of Lords by right of birth.

Today, hereditary peers remain a vestigial component of the House of Lords. Nonetheless, the unelected Life Peers who replaced most of the hereditary ones may be of questionable quality themselves, in terms of what they have to offer. Why should we have a wholly or partially unelected upper chamber of people deemed to be experts on policy or some other area of public interest appointed by a committee of other politicians (or worse, bureaucrats) rather than elected by the people themselves?

What often happens is people who might ordinarily be unelectable because of other attributes get a free ticket into Parliament. For instance, renowned playwright Andrew Lloyd Webber who conceivably, being a celebrity, would not have had the interest or humility to put himself before the people in an election was given a peerage to sit as ‘the noble Lord Lloyd-Webber’ in the House of Lords and could then vote on a motion on government tax credit cuts for the poor when he had no professional expertise or experience, let alone the democratic mandate, to do so.

Establishing an upper chamber with people similar to Justices of the Peace, Presidential Advisers, NMPs and other professionals would unnecessarily create an elite upper class who do not deserve to sit in Parliament without having to fight for their seats through a public debate of their values and policy platforms in what are known as general elections.

Proponents of an upper chamber also suggest that two chambers would be useful in allowing some parliamentarians to focus on grassroots work while others can be left to focus on political advocacy. The more pertinent issue therein is whether the vote means so little in Singapore as to suggest that its usefulness in electing policy makers pales in comparison to its importance in electing constituency managers or vice versa.

MPs have always had to be competent in both policy making and the running of their town councils. In the same vein, ministers should also be experts in their own field whilst being expected to manage a constituency for they must be directly accountable to the people just as any other MP is, or arguably even more so as they are entrusted with greater responsibility than the ordinary backbencher MP. Indeed, ministers would be better off having first-hand knowledge of the experiences and grievances of their constituents.

We should also not underestimate the usefulness of the vote’s ability to lawfully depose ministers who lack the confidence of even their constituents let alone the nation.

Suppose for a second that Dr. Manmohan Singh was truly unworthy of being the Prime Minister of India such that the people of the state of Assam would never have elected him to be their representative in a hypothetically elected Rajya Sabha – the Congress Party’s senior leadership would still have been able to keep him and other ministers with seats in the unelected Rajya Sabha in power for personal reasons rather than because these ministers had won the right to govern on their own merit through securing the confidence of the people via an election.

In other words, elections have real value in establishing the merit of a politician by means of a popular vote; the will of the people should never be underestimated in a democracy to the extent that we begin to assume that technocrats must surely know best. Hence, an upper chamber might pose unseen threats to our democracy borne out of the whims of technocrats who cannot in any way be lawfully kicked out of power by the people for doing a bad job. This goes against the grain of the meritocratic pedestal that Singapore has been built on.

Moreover, in view of the reality that exists in the Parliament of Singapore today, an upper chamber would be practically unnecessary.

One of the argued merits of an upper chamber is that its members would be able to scrutinise bills more thoroughly. To this end, upper chambers like the US Senate and the House of Lords, whether elected or not, do provide a greater scope and more time for debate on each bill that passes through these chambers.

However, is there a need for this additional avenue of legislative scrutiny in Singapore when our Parliament already does so little to scrutinise bills? The Parliament of Singapore has certainly not exhausted its own means of scrutiny as far as bills are concerned and has a long way to go in improving its procedures to do so.

It is extremely rare for a bill to be committed to an ad-hoc Select Committee of MPs for further deliberation, even though such calls for this to happen have been made before. Amendment motions on bills are unheard of. We have come to point where Parliament does not even need to sit as often as the UK’s House of Commons upon which it was based because bills in Singapore are rushed through the House.

This is partially due to nature of the PAP supermajority as there is little political impetus for PAP MPs to publicly scrutinise Government bills in Select Committees or to seek to amend these bills even if they feel they cannot completely agree with pieces of legislation introduced by ministers while the few Opposition MPs lack the power or resources to do so.

Hence, so long as the current Parliament of Singapore does not do all that it technically can to improve scrutiny, extend debates and raise more issues in the House, an upper chamber would be unneeded and would instead add nothing more than additional financial burden on the public purse with respect to its hypothetical members’ remuneration.

I recall a random afternoon in my secondary school library when I chanced upon a book on the 1953 Rendel Commission and its report which paved the way for the establishment of the Legislative Assembly of Singapore. (The Assembly would later be reconstituted to Parliament after Independence in 1965.) The book outlined the Commission’s reasons for recommending a single chamber in a unicameral system rather than two chambers in a bicameral system which included the fear of political class stratification and the overall lack of any practical need for two chambers.

The truth that Singapore’s politics lacks the space for an upper chamber remains as evident today as it was back then, during the time our forefathers were on the brink of self-government.

Source: https://mappedmusings.wordpress.com

December 3, 2015
PAP Looking For Suitable Candidates In Preparation For Next Elections

The People’s Action Party has started preparing for the next general election, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said.

Mr Lee told past and present PAP MPs at a dinner in Parliament House on Tuesday night that he has asked Health Minister Gan Kim Yong to take charge of the process of identifying new candidates.

And Mr Gan, who takes over the task from Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen, has already started work to prepare for GE2021.

He told reporters that the first tea session with potential candidates is likely to take place by the end of this month.

PM Lee and Mr Gan were at a dinner to thank retired PAP MPs for their contributions to the party over the years.

Mr Lee said he was glad the PAP secured a clear mandate from Singaporeans across the board at the Sept 11 general election.

And while national factors like the SG50 celebrations and Government policies like the Pioneer Generation Package played a part, the hard work MPs had put in was crucial to the strong result, he added.

The PAP won 83 out of 89 seats and nearly 70 per cent of the popular vote at GE2015.

Mr Lee also said a key contribution retiring MPs had made was to help their successors settle in on the ground.

And the PAP was helped by the fact that after GE2011, it identified and deployed potential new candidates early.

“This gave them time to learn and settle in, and gave the public time to size them up and warm to them,” Mr Lee said.

“It’s certainly something we want to do again next time,” he added.

The PAP has also improved the process of candidate selection, and included seasoned activists, senior backbenchers as well as members with private sector experience who were practised in assessing candidates for posts.

This gave the party a diversity of perspectives, and helped it make sharper and more reliable assessments of potential candidates, Mr Lee added.

Mr Lee also thanked the 15 retired MPs, who collectively served almost 250 years in Parliament, for improving community life in their wards and speaking up on a wide range of national issues.

They include former Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng, who entered politics with PM Lee in 1984, and former minister Mah Bow Tan, who first stood in 1984 and was elected in 1988.

Others who retired include four who were elected in 1997: Mr Hawazi Daipi, Mr Inderjit Singh, Mr Seng Han Thong and Mr Yeo Guat Kwang.

“Some spoke forcefully and vigorously in Parliament, while others made your points firmly but in your own quiet and equally effective way,” he said.

For example, Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, a four-term MP who was redeployed to Aljunied GRC at the last election, raised a rare private member’s bill to improve laws related to animal welfare last year, which Mr Lee called a “considerable undertaking”.

He also highlighted the five former officeholders who retired from politics at the GE – Mr Hawazi Daipi, Mr Mah Bow Tan, Mr Raymond Lim, Mr Lui Tuck Yew and Mr Wong Kan Seng – for their valuable contributions in their portfolios.

He singled out former Cabinet ministers Mr Mah, Mr Lim and Mr Wong, for staying on another term as backbenchers and “taking good care of their ground while nurturing able successors”.

Culture, Community and Youth Minister Grace Fu, who is Leader of the House, also paid tribute to the retired MPs, especially former Deputy Prime Minister Mr Wong Kan Seng and Senior Parliamentary Secretary Mr Hawazi Daipi, for coaching the new candidates selflessly and generously.

She also thanked the spouses of the newly retired MPs by quoting recently-retired MP Hri Kumar Nair who had said: “When an MP is elected, his entire family serves.”

“When an MP is out serving the residents, a father or mother, a husband or wife, a son or daughter is out there serving. The spouse, parents or older children have had to step in to look after the home front,” she added.

Source: http://news.asiaone.com

December 2, 2015
AHPETC Banded Red In Two Categories In MND Report

The Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council (AHPETC) has been banded “red” again in two areas in the latest Town Council Management report, the Ministry of National Development (MND) said on Tuesday (Dec 1).

The annual Town Council Management Report assesses the town councils on five indicators – estate cleanliness, estate maintenance, lift performance, service and conservancy charges (S&CC) arrears management and corporate governance. The town councils’ performance is rated in three bands – green, amber or red.

In the latest report, MND said most town councils performed well last year, although some “could do better” in the area of estate maintenance, S&CC arrears management and corporate governance.

Ten town councils scored “amber” in the estate maintenance category. The obstruction of common areas was the topmost observation, accounting for 36 per cent of total estate maintenance observations, the report said. Such obstructions are fire hazards and can hamper evacuation efforts during emergencies.

AHPETC BANDED “RED” IN TWO CATEGORIES

This is the third successive report that the Workers’ Party-led Town Council has been banded “red” for corporate governance, and the fourth successive report it has been banded “red” for S&CC arrears management.

AHPETC was banded “red” under S&CC arrears management for failing to submit its monthly S&CC arrears report for the assessment period, “even though it was reminded to do so and extensions of deadline were granted”, MND said, adding that most of the Town Council’s S&CC arrears reports since May 2013 are still outstanding.

Under corporate governance, the Town Council was banded “red” due to three legal and regulatory contraventions as indicated by its own auditor’s findings and its self-declared corporate governance checklist, the report said.

In the FY2013 report, the Town Council was banded “red” as it had not shown that it had rectified the various legal and regulatory contraventions for FY2011 and FY2012, and had not submitted its FY2013 audited financial statements, auditor’s report, auditor’s management letter and self-declared corporate governance checklist.

It subsequently made the required submissions for FY2013 on Jun 30 this year, which showed four regulatory contraventions. AHPETC would still have been banded “red” in the FY2013 report if it had submitted the required documents on time and therefore no revision of this rating was needed, the ministry said.

Chua Chu Kang Town Council and Potong Pasir Town Council were also banded “amber” for S&CC arrears management.

Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council received an “amber” rating for corporate governance on a “technicality”, the report said. The Town Council had incorrectly classified its residential rooftop antenna Temporary Occupation License income under its commercial property fund for FY2014, due to a data migration error when it moved to a new computer system. It has since made the necessary rectifications.

TOWN COUNCIL WORKING TO ADDRESS ISSUES: PRITAM SINGH

Responding to the report, chairman of the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council Pritam Singh said in a press release on Tuesday that the “red bandings for S&CC arrears management and corporate governance are issues that the Town Council has been working to address”.

Mr Singh added that a new Town Council management software system has been approved to tackle the issues.

“Despite incremental enhancements made to the existing IT system over the last few years, there remain inherent limitations which continue to contribute to some management and reporting challenges associated with S&CC arrears management and corporate governance,” he said. “The new system is expected to be operational within 18 to 24 months from the award of tender.”

The chairman also highlighted that they had appointed external consultants in March 2015 to advise the Town Council on compliance matters to address the Auditor-General’s Office’s (AGO) findings published in February 2015.

“In light of the recent Court of Appeal judgment, the TC will appoint an accountant(s) as mandated by the Court. The TC will work with the accountant, MND and HDB to facilitate the transfer of the outstanding government grants and make the mandatory sinking fund transfers,” said Mr Singh.

CHUA CHU KANG AND POTONG PASIR TOWN COUNCILS RESPOND TO “AMBER” BAND

In response to the report on Tuesday, the Chua Chu Kang and Potong Pasir town councils said they have stepped up efforts to improve the “amber” rating they both received under S&CC arrears management and estate maintenance.

“This is the first time Chua Chu Kang Town Council has received an ‘amber’ rating for arrears management,” said MP for Chua Chu Kang GRC, Mr Zaqy Mohamad.

He noted that an increase in appeals by residents to delay payment or lower their arrears instalments caused the S&CC arrears for three months or more to increase and exceed the MND threshold “marginally”.

He said: “Immediately, the TC stepped up its efforts with house visits and worked closely with social assistance agencies to help deserving needy cases. Families with financial difficulties who receive help are often better able to pay their arrears.”

“By late March 2015, we were back in ‘green’, as residents affected needed time to have their cases evaluated and manage their arrears,” he added. “However, this was not in time to overturn the results during the evaluation period of Apr 1, 2014 to Mar 31, 2015. We have since been in ‘green’ status”.

Mr Sitoh Yih Pin, MP for Potong Pasir, said his Town Council has also been “working tirelessly with our residents who have fallen in arrears with their payments of S&CC”.

“We have contacted these residents and are working closely with them to deal with their arrears,” he said. “Often times, we have taken into account their financial circumstances and have arranged a scheme for them to make payment of their S&CC in instalments. This is done on a case-by-case basis.”

He added: “We are pleased to announce that we have made good headway in the past six months and our S&CC arrears have improved. Our Town Council will continue to work on further reducing our S&CC arrears.”

On estate maintenance, Mr Zaqy said Chua Chu Kang Town Council is “constantly working to improve our rating in this area”.

He said: “More than 50 per cent of the highlighted issues in the Town Council Management Report are caused by corridor obstruction and unauthorised fixtures by residents. This will be a focus area to continue our efforts to educate residents in helping to manage corridor clutter and illegal fixtures.

“We have also stepped up activity by our officers to proactively manage building defect issues moving forward to enhance the maintenance of our estate.”

Mr Sitoh said that Potong Pasir Town Council is also stepping up efforts to ensure estates are in compliance with MND rules. He pointed out that Potong Pasir is a mature estate, and as such, many of the HDB blocks are “older and in need of more maintenance”.

“We have been aggressively pursuing our Home Improvement Programme (HIP) to renew our HDB blocks and the homes of our residents,” he said. “As a result of the intensive HIP works, further defects, such as spalling concrete and damaged plaster/cracks, have emerged. These will be dealt with in due course through the HIP works.”

Mr Sitoh added: “On the issue of obstruction and unauthorised fixtures in common areas, our Town Council property officers are in active surveillance of such issues.

“Once observed, we will advise our residents to remove such obstruction and unauthorised fixtures. Some do so immediately, while others take a longer time to comply. However, if residents fail to comply after a reasonable length of time, our Town Council will intervene and remove these obstruction and unauthorised fixtures by enforcement.”

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

December 2, 2015