Category: Singapuraku

Interior Design Firm Partners HOME To Raise Funds For Cancer-Stricken Bangladeshi Employee

SINGAPORE: Things were looking well for Mr Alam Shah, who had found a job as a construction supervisor at an interior design firm, after working here for four years as a manual labourer.

The 31-year-old was two months into his new job, earning S$1,200 a month, with a bride waiting for him in Bangladesh, until one word shattered his dreams: Cancer. Doctors gave him less than a year to live, if the disease was left untreated.

Other employers might have sent Mr Alam, a work-permit holder, home once he was deemed medically fit to travel, but his employer, Archetype, decided otherwise. It is now trying to raise funds for his medical treatment, estimated to cost about S$60,000.

The firm will dig into its profits to help Mr Alam, but has also roped in the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME). It is raising funds through HOME’s account on charity portal SG Gives — something the non-governmental organisation said was a first for an employer.

Mr Alam underwent surgery immediately after he was diagnosed with Stage 3 brain cancer early last month. However, doctors managed to remove only 40 per cent of the tumour. Mr Alam would have to undergo radiotherapy and chemotherapy to try to stop the rest of the cancer from spreading, which might prolong his life by up to 10 years.

Mr Alam is covered under medical insurance that employers are required to buy for their work-pass holders, but the S$15,000 policy was only enough to cover his three-day stay at the Singapore General Hospital’s intensive care unit. Chemotherapy alone would cost up to S$30,000.

Archetype operations manager Melissa Tan said the firm hopes to raise about S$100,000, which would pay for the treatments, follow-up care in Bangladesh and to help his ageing parents financially.

The company had approached various non-governmental organisations and Government channels to enlist help for Mr Alam. However, they turned the firm down and advised it to send him back to Bangladesh.

“Even if we sent him home, he would still have no money to pay for treatment,” said Ms Tan.

So far, Archetype, which Ms Tan said could not afford to cover all of the costs, has raised about S$2,200.

A check with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) showed that employers are required to buy mandatory medical insurance of at least S$15,000 per foreign worker, which provides basic cover for hospitalisation expenses.

An MOM spokesperson said under the Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) Regulations, employers are responsible for the costs of providing medical treatment for their work-permit holders, regardless of whether the conditions are work-related.

“The Government does not provide healthcare subsidies to foreigners. If the work-permit holder requires long-term medical care arising from a non-work-related ailment, the employer may send the foreign worker home to continue treatment at the worker’s own expense, once the worker’s condition has stabilised and the worker is deemed medically fit to travel,” the spokesperson added.

HOME executive director Jolovan Wham said Mr Alam’s case raises the question of whether the medical coverage provided to work-permit holders is comprehensive enough. “This is definitely something we need to look into again as these workers play an important role in this country,” he said.

As of June, there are 980,800 work-permit holders in Singapore, making up 17.9 per cent of the total population.

For more details on how to make a donation for Mr Alam, send an email to [email protected] or [email protected].

November 12, 2014
PAP MP Shames Small Boy Online For Cycling At High Speed At Void Deck

PAP MP for Nee Soon GRC Lee Bee Wah has taken to Facebook to shame a small boy for cycling at a void deck in her constituency.

She posted to the Nee Soon South Community Club Facebook page alerting residents of a “high speed cyclist” at the void deck of Blk 879.

She had uploaded a photo of the CCTV camera footage and asked for residents to email her if they know where the cyclist lived.

The photo that was uploaded showed a small boy on his bicycle going through the void deck:

It seems that even small kids can be shamed online and punished for trying to enjoy themselves and exercise in the area around their home.

Singapore is already very crowded and there is very little space for young children to play or cycle near their homes.

Do you think it is appropriate to put photos of a young boy online and ‘shame’ him for cycling in the void deck?

Source: www.therealsingapore.com

November 12, 2014
Singaporeans Less Open to Inter-Racial Dating

SINGAPORE – Despite interracial marriages being on the rise here, most Singaporeans still prefer dating within their own race, data from a major dating agency here has shown.

Last year, 20.9 per cent of marriages registered here involved couples of different races, up from 20.7 per cent in 2012.

But of the almost 1,000 Singaporean members of dating agency Lunch Actually, 92.5 per cent would rather not date people of other ethnicities.

This is a higher proportion than 89.6 per cent of the agency’s members in Hong Kong, and 76.6 per cent of those in Malaysia.

Altogether, the data analysed was from close to 3,000 of the agency’s members in the three territories. It takes into consideration the clients’ first preferences for their ideal partner.

Lunch Actually CEO Violet Lim, 34, theorises the results may be because most of the agency’s Singaporean clientele are Chinese.

“Social conditioning and family expectations may lead to them to prefer to date other Chinese people first,” she said. “It’s not necessarily that they’re not open to dating other races, but the people who join our dating agency are generally looking to settle down and have to think about factors such as finding somebody their family might approve of.

“It’s important to realise there is a difference between a person’s first dating preferences and the person they actually end up being compatible with.”

Of the 996 clients surveyed in Singapore, 488 women and 462 men were Chinese.

The data was analysed by data analytics company Qlik using its app called Qlik Sense. Qlik then worked with Lunch Actually to combine the app with the agency’s data into a new app, which generates graphs and charts that show such dating trends. This new app, The Ideal Partner, can be downloaded for free from http://www.qlik.com/datingtrends.

Other results produced by the new app also showed more “traditional preferences” among the singles surveyed in all three territories, Ms Lim said.

For instance, men across all age ranges showed a preference for women in their 20s. While younger women preferred men aged 30 to 35, older women aged 45 to 50 seemed more inclined towards younger men aged 25 to 35.

Close to 80 per cent of the men surveyed did not want to date divorcees, and 93.8 per cent preferred not to date people who already have children. Women were more open on this front, with 33.5 per cent willing to date divorcees and 12.9 per cent willing to date those with children.

Ms Lim hopes to use the data to understand her clientele better and to help them manage their expectations.

“People are wired to look for certain things in their ideal partners,” she said. “If we share this data with them, they might realise some expectations are unrealistic and consider being more open about who they are willing to go out with.”

The next step will be to analyse how closely the clients’ visions of their ideal partners correspond to the people they are matched with.

Qlik Sense can be adapted to analyse other sets of data. Qlik Asia’s vice president Terry Smagh, 38, said: “The ability to take data such as these survey statistics from Lunch Actually and drop it into Qlik Sense for visual analysis is something that many businesses, including small and medium enterprises in singapore, will find valuable.”

Source: www.straitstimes.com

November 12, 2014
Irfan Fandi To Work Even Harder After Top 40 Achievement

SINGAPORE: Irfan Fandi, son of Singapore’s football icon, Fandi Ahmad, was recently named in a list of top 40 best young talents in world football. The 17-year-old was the only Singaporean among six Asian youngsters on the list that was posted on British news site, The Guardian.

In an interview with Channel NewsAsia on Tuesday (Nov 11), the teenager, currently training in Chile, said he first got wind of it on social media.

“My teacher from my old school, the Singapore Sports School, told me about this through Instagram,” said Irfan. “At first, I thought she was joking, then she sent me more links to it and then I realised that it was all real.

“Then after a few hours, I got tweets from people and Instagram pictures, and I felt really happy because I have been working really hard for the past few years. This doesn’t mean that I stop working hard, it only means that I have to work even harder for the next upcoming years.”

At 1.86 metres tall, Irfan has a significant height advantage over other Asian footballers. He is hoping to gain valuable experience from his training stint in Chile.

“The biggest change for me is adapting to the weather and also adapting to the playing style here,” he said. “The style of play in Chile compared to Singapore is totally different. Here, it’s really fast, really technical. So I have to work really hard to be at their standard, and then be better than them to play in a higher level than them.”

His father, Fandi, was the first Singaporean footballer to play in Europe, and said going west is the aim.

“Definitely, their main target is to play professionally in Europe, anywhere in Europe,” said Fandi. “But because they love football too much, so much, that’s why they are on this path, and they want to carry the name of Fandi Ahmad.

“Right now, I think focus is on Irfan, as he is already 17 years old. I know it’s not easy for a 17-year-old to sign a contract. It’s against the rules. But slowly, surely, I am sure he will get there.”

CIMB has offered a 6-figure sponsorship deal to both Irfan and his 15-year-old brother, Ikhsan.

“I am sure all soccer-loving Singaporeans must feel very proud that one of our home-grown young football talents has been voted one of the Top 40 best footballers,” said CIMB Bank Singapore CEO Mak Lye Mun. “I also read that Irfan’s stint in Chile has made him a better footballer and that was one of the reasons why he was voted, so CIMB is happy that we played a part in that sponsorship.”

With football scouts sniffing around, there could be a chance that Irfan will eventually follow in his father’s footsteps and play for a European club.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

November 12, 2014
Xenophobic Singaporeans and What We Can Do About It

Xenophobia is on the rise in Singapore. After a wealthy Chinese expatriate crashed his Ferrari into a taxi and killed the driver and passenger in May 2012, and Indian migrant workers rioted in response to the death of a fellow employee in 2013, racist comments have become increasingly prevalent on online social-networking platforms. 80% of participants in an online 2012 Yahoo! poll agreed that “Singaporeans are turning xenophobic.” But something strange is also going on: even though xenophobia seems to have increased, 6 out of 10 Singaporeans still agree or strongly agree that the country is free from both racial and religious tension.

Is there a contradiction here? What’s happened, and where are we going?

Paul Chu examines this question in his dissertation, titled “Migration and the Politics of Multiculturalism in Singapore“.

What’s Going On?

The Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other model has framed our understanding of race since the colonial era, when the Jackson Plan of 1822 first segregated Singaporeans by ethnicity. But the huge wave of immigration has stretched the model, and it isn’t flexible enough to cope.

1. The CMIO model is struggling to cope with recent challenges

The Singapore state is what academics call “corporatist”. This means that a strong elite sets social norms and has firm political authority to achieve harmony. The CMIO model was the chosen norm. It has maintained racial harmony in three ways:

1.De-politicizing ethnicity
2.influencing people to turn ethnic-based loyalty into a civic-based one
3.promoting the principle of equality across all ethnic groups

While the model has worked for a long time, it is facing a challenge unlike any it has seen before because of the unprecedented levels of migration since 2005. The graph below shows this rapid increase in the migrant population:

2. Singaporean society does not understand race like the CMIO model

One major reason why CMIO racial categorization cannot cope with migrants is that it conflates race, ethnicity and culture. Society, on the other hand, seems to distinguish between the three ideas.

For example, a 2013 IPS-OnePeople.sg survey of over 4000 Singaporeans showed that while 93.8% of non-Chinese respondents were comfortable with a Singaporean-Chinese boss, this figure dropped by nearly 20 percentage points if he was Mainland-Chinese. We see this also with other races. In the curry feud in 2011, a Singaporean-Chinese woman defended a Singaporean-Indian family, and was “incensed with a People’s Republic of China family telling my fellowmen not to cook curry”, suggesting a redefinition of “us” and “them” that was along cultural rather than racial lines.

3. Relying on the government to solve the problem is part of the problem

The corporatist model that underlies CMIO also creates a larger problem: it has made citizens rely too much on the government to determine racial identity. When citizens are resentful about immigrants, they look to the state to solve the problem. But given that Singaporeans are increasingly skeptical about central authority, they also reject the state’s solutions. Ultimately, this leads to greater dissatisfaction with both the state and immigrants, thereby completing a vicious downward spiral as shown below:

Spiral

What can we do?

1. Recognize that race is not the only identity marker.

Integration will not happen just because migrants share the same race as Singaporeans. Racial categories such as “Chinese” or “Indian” are complicated by class and nationality. While the government has officially dialed down overt race-based categorizations, the narrative of the CMIO model still influences society’s understanding of race. Instead, we should encourage a broad understanding of our national identity as Singaporeans, yet also recognize our migrant roots so that even new migrants can integrate.

2. Be more transparent.

We as Singaporeans need to take charge of integrating foreigners. Increasing transparency around discussions about migration and ethnicity will make it easier for us to do so. For example, if citizens were able to access public information about the non-residents living around them, or knew more about the procedures behind PR and citizen selection, we would be more likely to own the problem than to see this as an issue that the government must solve.

3. Realize that citizenship is not just about economics.

The state needs to show that they appreciate the emotive aspect of citizenship, instead of justifying migration entirely on economic grounds and demanding compliance. The citizenship naturalization process should be more rigorous to ensure better integration.

4. Strive for encounters, not just physical co-existence.

Different cultures and races should not just exist side by side, each in their own bubble. That is a holdover from the colonial idea of segregation and with it the CMIO model. Instead, the goal should be to have different cultures and races interact constructively with one another.

This article snapshot was prepared by the editorial team. It was based on a final year dissertation at the University of Cambridge written by Paul Chu, who received First Class Honours for his work and presented the paper at the IRiS-University of Birmingham International Conference 2014 on Superdiversity. For more insights and nuance, please see the full paper.

Source: http://singaporepolicyjournal.com

November 11, 2014