Category: Singapuraku

Malaysian Manicurist Earns Accountant’s Wage Thanks To Ringgit’s Plunge

There was no way she could have secured a job that would pay her RM5,000 ($1,681) if she had remained in Sarawak.

“Impossible,” said manicurist Betty Sii, 25.

“My highest education is PMR (Malaysia’s version of the GCE O Levels). Nobody will offer that kind of money there,” she added.

The impossible, however, became possible when the exchange rate slumped to a low of RM3.03 to the Singapore dollar last Tuesday.

“I was definitely happy (about the exchange rate) when I saw the news,” she said.

“It means that I am earning about RM6,000 now. That wouldn’t have been possible at home.”

According to the latest salary guide by recruitment company Kelly Services, RM6,000 is the monthly pay of an accountant with a degree and three years of work experience.

“If I were in Sarawak, I could only dream of a pay cheque like that,” she added.

With her $2,000 salary, Miss Sii is able to pay her $600 room rent here and give her mother – who lives in her hometown of Miri in Sarawak – a monthly allowance of RM1,000.

Meanwhile, the attractive exchange rate has pushed Miss Sii to seriously consider a bigger financial commitment – buying a three-bedroom house back home.

She claims to have been contemplating the idea for quite some time.

“The property that I’m looking at would cost me about RM200,000 but I should be able to afford it with my current salary,” she said.

“If I get a house for myself now, it would be good for me in the future.

“Anything can happen, so at least if I start now, then I’ll have something waiting for me if I had to move back,” she added.

MEASLY PAY

Before she moved to Singapore in April 2013, Miss Sii tried working in Malaysia for about five months, taking up a job as a salesgirl in a retail store.

“My basic pay was RM800. There was commission too but the most I ever got for it was RM200,” she said.

Earning a measly pay cheque made life feel completely different to what it is like now.

She said: “It was tough to live with that kind of pay.

“Even if things are cheaper there, it’s really hard to live on RM1,000.”

While the exchange rate makes it cheaper for Miss Sii to support her mother, she is worried about how the bad economy will affect prices back home.

She said: “It’s a good thing for me but this also means that things over there could start getting more expensive and that’s my only worry.

“If it does start getting expensive, then eventually, the increased exchange rate will not mean as much to Malaysians working here.”

Miss Sii’s 36-year-old sister is also based in Singapore. Her sister works as a facial therapist.

“My brother is working in a publishing house in Sarawak while my sister and I are living and working here in Singapore.”

Being able to travel back home only twice a year is tough on Miss Sii but the bigger picture is more important to her than anything else.

“I get homesick and I miss my family but I always try my best to focus on why being here is good.

“Me being homesick is not as important as my mum being able to live comfortably back home.

“And that is reason enough for me to look past everything else.”

Weak ringgit huge burden on his family

His aunt is the sole breadwinner making RM5,000 a month.

That, in Singapore dollars, is now a mere $1,680, but she is paying for his expenses while he studies in a university in Singapore.

Malaysian student Lee Song En comes from a single-parent household and his mother is a housewife.

The sinking ringgit, he said, has “dampened (his) spirits” in the weeks before he started his course at Singapore Management University.

“It made me panic a little,” he said of the all-time-low exchange rate.

The straight-As student, who starts his third week of university today, said: “There’s immediately a huge impact on my family’s financial burden.”

While the 19-year-old Business and Economics student is on the Lee Kong Chian scholarship, which covers his annual $11,300 school fees, his other expenses are an ongoing battle for his family.

“I’m now very conscious about my spending,” he said.

“Besides cutting back on the daily things, I have to stay out of certain academic or enrichment opportunities like study trips and excursions.”

His degree will take him four years to complete.

“It’s quite insane. If I spend about $1,100 every month, it will cost me about $52,800 by the time I finish”.

“And that is assuming there isn’t anything extra I need to pay for. And if I wanted to get involved in anything else, that number would probably increase quite significantly.”

Mr Lee first came to Singapore from Kuala Lumpur at the age of 13 on an Asean scholarship and attended Xinmin Secondary School before moving on to Anglo-Chinese Junior College.

That scholarship, which ceased after JC, covered school fees and provided an extra $5,800 annually for expenses.

Under the university scholarship, his spending is all on him.

He started working as a private tutor in April, teaching a JC student Economics and makes about $400 a month from that.

EXPENSES

He hopes to partly fund his living expenses himself now.

“My total monthly expenditure, including my hostel rent, is about $1,100 a month,”

His rent alone is about $600.

“I’m looking for more students to tutor but even if I have just this one, it is a burden I can help relieve my family of, even if it is just a little bit.

“Every dollar that I can earn counts,” he said.

“When I came back in March to prepare for university, my mum had to change RM13,500 to give me about $5,000 to start with so I can cover the cost of books, food and rent,” he said.

It is time for him to get the next lump sum and Mr Lee is feeling helpless.

“While I need (the money), I don’t want to ask (my family) for it now because the rate is ridiculously high.

“It’s not easy to stomach the fact that another lump sum of $5,000 is almost my aunt’s entire three months’ salary.

“What’s worse is this is just the beginning.”

“It’s quite insane. If I spend about $1,100 every month, it will cost me about $52,800 by the time I finish.”

— Malaysian student Lee Song En on the sum he will need for expenses during his four-year degree course. It was to come from his family, whose sole breadwinner earns in ringgit.

Source: www.tnp.sg

September 7, 2015
Reform Party Unveils 12-Page Manifesto

The Reform Party on Monday (Sep 7) unveiled its party manifesto in Boon Lay Place, as the election period crosses the halfway mark.

The 12-page document outlines the objectives of the party and covers a wide range of issues from healthcare and defense spending to economic policy.

According to its manifesto, possible policy proposals include introducing a minimum wage, capping the number of foreign workers, reduce National Service (NS) to one year with a view of progressing to a professional army and introducing an old-age monthly pension of S$500 for all seniors above 65.

On the timing of the release, Reform Party Secretary-General, Kenneth Jeyaretnam said: “We’ve had a manifesto since 2009, and an election manifesto in 2011. So we are relaunching it and bringing it up to date. Our flyers already incorporate our seven main pledges.”

He also elaborated on the party’s NS proposal, saying it “imposes a heavy burden on male Singaporeans, particularly in comparison with foreign workers”.

“The Government spends S$400 million on scholarships for foreigners who are then able to work here upon graduation without doing NS. This is grossly inequitable,” Mr Jeyaretnam said.

“So what we want to do is reduce the burden on male Singaporeans and cut NS term to one year and expand a professional army. Now with modern technology, drones, robots, you don’t need so many boots on the ground.”

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

September 7, 2015
Singapore’s Rulers Hope A Nudge To The Left Will Keep Voters Loyal

At breakfast time one day last week, Singapore government minister K. Shanmugam dropped in to a bustling food court to greet voters, listen to their grumbles and urge them to back the People’s Action Party (PAP) in this Friday’s general election.

There was a burst of applause from a table of tea-drinking men, old ladies looked up smilingly from bowls of noodle soup, and one of the sharpest complaints he heard was from a resident about pigeons roosting outside her house.

A bedrock of support from communities like this guarantees that the PAP, which has ruled this city state since it won independence 50 years ago, will be returned to power this week.

But Shanmugam, who is law and foreign minister, says the PAP can no longer take popular loyalty for granted: the party’s share of the vote dropped to 60.1 percent in the last election, in 2011, its lowest ever, and a swing of just a few thousand votes in some electoral districts this time could erode its overwhelming majority in the 89-seat parliament.

To prevent that, the party has tweaked its policy playbook in ways that will shift the direction of a country whose meteoric rise from tropical backwater to haven of wealth was based on a no-nonsense model of growth at all costs.

Under the iron-handed founding father of Singapore, the late Lee Kuan Yew, the idea of Western-style welfarism was scorned and people were mostly expected to stand on their own feet.

NUDGE TO THE LEFT

But years of galloping growth led to yawning wealth gaps and to resentment over an open door for foreign workers, overcrowded trains and expensive housing, forcing the PAP to respond with a nudge to the political left.

“In the 80s, 90s to 2000s there was a lot of emphasis on the private sector,” Shanmugam said in an interview with Reuters. “From ’07 the rhetoric has shifted to a centre-left position.”

Eugene Tan, a political analyst and associate professor at Singapore Management University, says this new strategy will have to stay as the PAP manages a more competitive political landscape and a population now less patient with paternalism and one-party rule.

“The PAP will now have to deal with much stronger pressures for populist policies, such as higher taxes for a larger swathe of income-earners and nationalistic manpower policy as well as more social spending, which are very often the antithesis of the ruling party’s core policies for the past 50 years,” Tan said.

Shanmugam rejects the idea that the PAP’s 2011 wobble triggered a reset of social policies and says Singapore was one of the world’s most welfarist countries way before then.

But this year, the government has raised taxes on top earners to pay for a hefty increase in healthcare spending and a better safety net for the aged and low-paid workers, and just before calling the election Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced plans to make state housing more affordable.

It has taken other steps since the last election that many see as rearguard action, such as cooling the property market – from which many have felt increasingly locked out – and stemming the tide of foreign workers.

IMMIGRATION DILEMMA

A nation of 5.5 million people with no natural resources, Singapore became a global hub for financial services and oil trading and a major electronics manufacturer thanks partly to a liberal immigration policy that provided plentiful cheap labour.

Now, the government faces a backlash over immigrants who are blamed for taking jobs, fuelling inflation and depressing wages, but is in a bind because it needs them to underpin growth as the population greys and the workforce shrinks.

Already it expects growth in coming years to be less than half the 8 percent average rate of Singapore’s first 50 years, and a tight labour market could make even that a challenge.

Shanmugam accepts that making the argument for immigration is not going to be “an easy message” for voters.

Immigration has been a hot topic among the overwhelmingly young people at raucous rallies of the opposition Workers Party which have been attended by tens of thousands.

The PAP is hoping that a sense of patriotism inspired by this year’s golden jubilee and the death of Lee Kuan Yew in March will work in its favour on Friday. However, opinion polls are illegal and so no one is making confident predictions.

Garry Rodan, a professor of politics and international studies at Australia’s Murdoch University, said the increased welfare and social redistribution since 2011 was necessary but had been too little for a major reversal of inequalities.

“Singaporeans can reward these initial steps or ramp up the pressure on the government through their votes,” he said.

Source: https://sg.news.yahoo.com

September 7, 2015
Art Fazil: How To Answer To PAP?

How To Answer Back:

The PAP are banging on the crucial Malay votes to help swing the election should the Chinese votes split at 50/50. They are targeting the older malay generation who are more inclined to vote for the PAP. Here are a few tips on how to answer back should your parents or grandparents give you the usual PAP spin :

1. When they tell you “we used to be backward, no modern facilites, kampong houses, jamban (toilet) no pump, etc. so without the PAP we won’t be like this now.”
You answer: Its the job of any elected government to make a country progress including providing housing, roads, water system, sewage system. Thats why we pay taxes like GST, Income tax etc. Singapore is not the only country on the planet that became modernised in the last 50 years.

2. When they tell you: “Look at the countries around Singapore and how much troubles they are in”.
You answer: If our neighbour has a fever and we have a toothache, as much as we empathise with the neighbour being sick with fever, we have our own toothache to deal with. Other people’s problems are theirs, not ours. And there is a Kaypoh Road in River Valley.

3. When they tell you: ”We must be thankful to the PAP because compared to the neighbouring countries, we are better off”.
You answer: Stop making comparisons like that. If really they need to compare, then compare Singapore by GDP i.e. against developed nations in Europe and compare our welfare, health and retirement policies. Its easy to compare against a less developed economy. That’s bullying. Its like a guy driving a fast car and laughing at the man on the trishaw. But try comparing Singapore to that of developed nations and we will see the shortcomings.

4. When they bring up THE Name of the Dead: Tell them that nobody asked LKY to join politics. He wanted to be the Prime Minister, ran for elections and he got the job. LKY did not work for free. He was paid a salary, like any other civil servant. The salary came from tax-payers money. And he also said untrue things about Malays/Muslims in his Hard Truth book. (The book hasn’t been re-edited inspite of the backlash from the Malay/Muslim community).

5. When they say: “If you don’t vote the PAP, they will know & you will be in trouble”.
You answer: The vote is secret. No one will know who voted for whom. And by the way, the whole country knows majority of residents in Aljunied, Hougang & Punggol East didn’t vote for the PAP. They are still alive and kicking.

6. When they tell you: “Look how many mosques the PAP has built.”
You answer: In Singapore there used to be more than 100 mosques built by the community (read ex-Mufti Isa Semait’s biography) which has been around for many years. Sadly such heritage sites are now gone. In place are MUIS-administered mosques with a 99 year lease. Also ask them about Waqaf land being taken away, sold for peanuts resold to developers for gazzilions of dollars.”

7. When they tell you only the PAP has Malay interest at heart.
You answer: Yaacob Ibrahim

Source: Rilek Brader

September 7, 2015
First Time Voter: Stop Slamming The PAP & Start Impressing Me With Alternatives

Dear Editors,

This is the first time I’m voting for the elections and there are many things running through my mind. I’m don’t follow much on politics and thus needed to be convinced by both parties for my vote. But I am deeply troubled by the way most parties present themselves and their topics.

Opposition:

Most of them should stop talking bad about the PAP. It’s not like the PAP forms the worst government in the world. They should address current issues, and inform the public about their solutions. One good example would be the speech by Dr Chee Soon Juan. I’m not a fan of the SDP, but at least his speech is made fair and equal and not being biased to himself.

Most of the time I hear them talking about giving out money to elderly and children, greatly reducing living costs, etc. But everything works in a Give and Take rule. If you want something, you have to give something. Where will the funds for all these free policies come from? Definitely not from the children or the elderly, but from the middle-age group. The country still needs funds to operate. A country cannot simply have a few million dollars in it’s reserve. An economic power house like Singapore definitely needs its reserve to be in Billions. And by giving out freebies to Singaporeans, it’ll only increase the pressure for its sustainability.

This can end up in a vicious cycle. If we can’t sustain the freebies, the only way is to increase how much the middle-age group is giving. The government can’t always depend on investments to have an increase in revenue and the middle-age group is a reliable pool of money. Which will see an increment in unhappiness among the people and the demand to have similar freebies. This will not do good in the long run. Always remember, don’t take a privilege as an entitlement.

And if you want to convince my generation of their votes, you have to impress. Yes, we all know politics are all about manipulation and once you get in, we won’t know if you will really fulfil your promises as you won’t have that much experience as compared to PAP when running the country. But still conduct yourself well. Take it like an interview where the people will choose whether or not to hire you. Prepare yourself and not shout out the other party’s name by accident. That clearly shows how serious you are and how much effort you put into campaigning. Needless to say, making a fool out of yourself. And don’t throw mud at others just to make yourself cleaner. Talking bad about others doesn’t solve any issues.

Finally, the PAP isn’t as terrible as you made them out to be. I have to admit that Singapore is safer and cleaner than majority of the countries. Our currency is ever growing in the region. Don’t compare Singapore to another country like Africa. Make a fair and just comparison. So give credit where credit is due.

PAP:

Stop it with the constant reminder of the PAP’s achievement for the past 50 years. PAP did well for the past 30-40 years, but not the last 10. And it’s not the current generation of candidates who can be credited for those achievements. Your education system is improving and with that, the youth will grow wiser and more intelligent. So stop treating your people as if they are idiots. We are no fools. Taking a seat in the parliament does not increase your IQ.

You deserve credits for the success of Singapore in the eyes of the world, for which I am greatly grateful for. And we must give you that. But in return, many of your people are not satisfied with the method of ruling. I understand that bills like ERP, CPF, etc must be implement to maintain the current tax rate, and also generate an income for the country. But do deliver promises you made to the people and not change the policies to better your needs, then convince the people you’ll improve the policies just to garner votes, only to know that it’ll be discarded after polling day.

As stated above, we are no fools and can tell that gerrymandering means you are not confident of the elections. If you have been ruling well as indicated in your constant reminder, why would you not have the confidence? And please stop defaming others to achieve your desired goal. Stepping on others, or worse, countries, is an immoral thing to do. Isn’t that what we learnt during Primary school under your education system? My generation will be the one that can create shocking results as many of us are rebels, but in return, all of us are educated and can tell between the good and bad. So as long as you address the current issues with your solutions, stop bringing up your ancestor’s achievements and stop resorting to “character assassination” and avoiding topics, we will still think through thoroughly with our votes.

And to us Singaporeans, I don’t have the right to tell you your way of life and who knows, maybe 10 years down the road, I’ll probably end up with your mindset. But one example is that some of us insist on the dismissal of National Service, etc. That’s a terrible decision. As much as I hate receiving the SMS from Mindef, it’s still crucial for security. Stop saying that it’s redundant because we won’t go to war. That clearly shows how far your foresight takes you. Those of you who supported the idea is due to your bad experience or your inability to take on hardships. And that attitude of yours is downright selfish. You’re just being selective on what you want without thinking for others or the whole picture. And to those who supports NS and saying that NS builds you to be a better person, fuck you. That’s not a valid political reason. You can still be a better person if you attend some Adam Khoo workshop or go to some church and praise the name of Jesus. Just that you pay instead of getting paid.

This particular election is an interesting one to watch as it is pretty similar to the start of a new era for Singapore. Obviously PAP won’t lose ownership of the government any time soon, but no matter the party, if things don’t change for the better, the people will change it for you.

These are just some of my thoughts about the rallies so please don’t take it personally. I apologise if this was offending as I have no intention of having done so.

Thank you for reading this long rant.

First Time Voter
A.S.S. Contributor

Source: www.allsingaporestuff.com

September 7, 2015