Category: Sosial

JB Malls ‘On High Alert’

Shopping malls and popular tourist destinations in Johor are beefing up security to ensure public safety in light of the recent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threats.

A Johor Bahru City Square shopping mall official, Ms Joyce Lee, told The Star that the management had been training its staff to be more vigilant.

She said: “We have also set up a standard operating procedure for more effective training and police have been doing frequent rounds in the vicinity.”

She said the mall had about 2.3 million visitors a month last year.

“Our shoppers are a mix of locals and Singaporeans.

“We take the security issue very seriously and constantly monitor the place through closed-circuit television (CCTV) and patrols,” she said.

Sutera Mall centre manager Crystal Soon said they have also been conducting impromptu bomb emergency drills in the mall.

Ms Soon said the exercises were carried out discreetly to avoid panic or chaos, adding that the mall receives about 700,000 visitors a month.

The added security measures come after Malaysian police have said the June 28 blast in a bar in Selangor was the work of Malaysian ISIS militants.

Police said the blast, which injured eight people, was caused by an old hand grenade that was thrown into a crowd watching a Euro 2016 match.

At least 15 people, including two low-ranking policemen, have been arrested in connection with the attack.

Malaysia has also ramped up security following the blast, including putting its main transport hub in the capital on high alert.

On Friday, police denied claims circulating on social media that militants are targeting locations in Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur.

STEPPED UP

Security at KL Sentral railway station will be stepped up to similar levels as the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to safeguard against an extremist attack, Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said early last week.

All passengers and bags destined for KLIA from KL Sentral will be subjected to security checks, said Mr Liow. More CCTV cameras and screening machines will also be installed at KL Sentral, he said.

Mr Liow said he also ordered security measures to be increased at all airports and train stations.

“We are on high alert,” he said.

While the security level at the gateways is now at “amber”, Mr Liow urged the public not to panic.

Meanwhile, a terrorism expert said Malaysians have joined ISIS’ new battalion in the Philippines.

Dr Rohan Gunaratna, who heads the Nanyang Technological University’s International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, said the new regional base was set up due to difficulties faced by ISIS recruits in going to Syria and Iraq.

“Now we have seen that in the Philippines, ISIS has created Katibah Al-Muhajir, the Battalion of Migrants.

“They are (made up of) Malaysians and Indonesians,” he was quoted as saying by the New Straits Times yesterday.

“There are about 10 Malaysians (there now),” he added, citing intelligence on the new battalion.

Citing an ISIS propaganda video released last month, Mr Gunaratna said the militant group told its South-east Asian supporters to head to the battalion in the Philippines if they found it hard to go to Syria and Iraq.

Source: The New Paper

July 11, 2016
Man Found Dead At Yishun, 20-Year-Old Suspect Arrested

A 26-year-old man was found dead outside a unit on the sixth floor at Block 279 Yishun Street 22 on Saturday (Jul 9).

A 20-year-old male suspect was arrested in connection to the case, said the police.

The police were first alerted at 7.57pm requesting for assistance, and paramedics pronounced the man dead at 8.29pm. Police investigations are ongoing.

Channel NewsAsia understands that both men had been involved in a prior dispute, and that no weapon was used in the incident.

According to Mr Diin, 42, who lives on the fifth floor, he heard a “loud bang” at 7.45pm, but added that he did not know what happened exactly.

“I heard a very loud thumping sound. It’s like something dropped onto the floor. It’s a very loud sound. I thought my neighbour was moving something,” Mr Diin recounted.

Mdm Tan Saik Khar, 75, who lives on the sixth floor, claimed that she had been attacked by the 26-year-old man on Wednesday night. She said he ran away after she shouted for help.

Another neighbour, Andy, 37, also said that he had started noticing the man two years ago, as he would loiter at the void deck up to four times a week. “He has never spoken to me before, but he would just stare at me and walk around the block for a few hours,” he said.

Earlier the same day, the body of a 52-year-old man was found at Geylang Lorong 23. Police said they were investigating the “unnatural death”.

Source: ChannelNewsAsia

July 11, 2016
Malaysia Police Chief Warns Of ‘Push-Pocket’ Blackmail Scams

Malaysia’s police chief has advised the public not to fall prey to “push-pocket” criminals who accuse victims of stealing their personal items as part of a blackmail scam.

Their targets are said to be mainly foreigners arriving at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) or who happen to be at LRT stations, according to warnings being circulated on social media, Bernama news agency reported on Sunday (July 10).

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar Khalid advised victims not to be afraid and take the perpetrators up on their threat by offering to follow them to the nearest police station, the report said.

“Should anyone come up to you and accuse you of theft, have no fear just take them to the nearest police station,” Khalid was quoted as saying.

“Do not try to settle the matter by yourself because they will not dare to go to the police station,” he said.

The “push-pocket” perpetrators reportedly slip items such as mobile phones or wallets into the victims’ pockets in crowded places around Kuala Lumpur.

They will then accuse the unsuspecting victims of theft – before asking the victim to pay a sum of money or be reported to the police.

Victims usually agree to fork out the money out of fear, reported Bernama.

Kuala Lumpur Criminal Investigation Department chief Rusdi Mohd Isa was quoted as saying police had yet to receive any report of the scam.

“Checks with Dang Wangi and Brickfields stations found no cases have been reported to the police,” he said.

Source: The Straits Times

July 11, 2016
Ground-Up Initiative Founder: Take Ownership Of Choices, Don’t Blame Government

To some, Tay Lai Hock is a “hippie” who’s misleading the youth; to others, he is just one Singaporean who is promoting the philosophy of living in harmony with nature.

Tay is founder of the Ground-Up Initiative (GUI), a non-profit group that aims to reconnect city dwellers with the earth. The group’s 26,000sqm Kampung Kampus site in Khatib is designed as a low carbon footprint area featuring tropical sustainable architecture. Their idea is not only to enable people to be with nature, but also actively look after the space, get their hands dirty and in the process, learn how to take risks and be leaders – all while working as a team with a 21st century kampong spirit.

Previously a highly-paid IT executive, the SilkAir crash in 1997 prompted Tay to have a rethink of what he was doing with his life. He later quit his job, backpacked around the world, and then started GUI.

Debates over land use in Singapore and the loss of rustic spaces are issues which resonate with him. He went “On the Record” with Bharati Jagdish about this, values in an ideal society, and what it means to put your money where your mouth is. But first, he took on what it meant to be called a “hippie”.

Tay Lai Hock: Well, I always say that if I’m a hippie, then I’m a hippie who promotes free love, free play, free spirit, but I don’t talk about free drugs or free sex, things like these. What I’m trying to do is help Singaporeans free their minds.

So often, we hear people say that they are very stifled. They’re very caught up with all the day-to-day running around and making a living that they have forgotten how to live. What’s wrong with what I’m trying to do? I’m not against anything. I’m just not doing what the mainstream thinks everybody should be doing.

So I’m just providing an alternative platform for Singaporeans. So naturally, the government officials when they started to try and understand what I’m trying to do, they asked me about it. Of course, the more progressive ones, the more open-minded ones will think that I’m doing good. But there are people who said I’m misleading youth. That one really hurts me.

Bharati Jagdish: Are you at liberty to say who said this about you?

Tay: No, I don’t think I should.

Bharati: But it was a government official?

Tay: Of course. I had more than one government official telling me this.

Bharati: Why do you think they think this of you?

Tay: I don’t know. I was shocked, I was like “Why are you saying this? What have I done? What did I do wrong?” Fortunately, that was about three years ago. I was really upset that day. Why do they think I’m poisoning the minds of the young? What have I done wrong?

CREATING A CULTURE OF RISK-TAKING AND CREATIVITY

Bharati: To what extent do you think this is because in Singapore, we have a culture of focusing on certain things – academic success, material success, but what you’re trying to do is quite different?

Tay: We all know that we’re chasing the five Cs right? You’ve probably heard that I backpacked around the world for four years. And in the last year, the last few months of my travels, I was sitting in the Sahara Desert, and I was looking back at Singapore and I said, “Okay Lai Hock, you haven’t died yet, you did well in the last few years, so what are you going to do now?”

So I said, “I’m going back to Singapore.”

At that time, our Government released the Remaking Singapore blueprint. Two things caught my attention. The first thing was, we want to teach Singaporeans how to take risks. I thought, “Wow, how do you create that, how to do that when the whole environment doesn’t even promote risk-taking?” Of course compared to back then in the early 2000s, I think Singapore is doing better now.

If you read the press, if you interview our local institutions, they are promoting a lot of entrepreneurship. The Government is putting in a lot of money to promote all kinds of things. But in my opinion, a lot of people are only taking risks because there’s a lot of money being put into them.

The second thing they said was, “We want to teach Singaporeans how to be more creative.” But our definition of creativity is narrow. For people like me, I will never be classified as a creative person.

Bharati: Why not?

Tay: You must be an artist, you must be this, you must be that.

Bharati: Yeah, that’s the conventional definition of “creative”.

Tay: But my four years of travelling around the world living as a backpacker in so many countries made me have this confidence. I said, “I am a creative person. I’m living creatively.” Now creativity need not be confined to just an art skill, but if you’re able to live creatively, and that’s where you need to be that free spirit. You need to be able to freely conceive things and adapt along the way, and change if you need to change. And –

Bharati: Solve problems.

Tay: Solve problems and not be just “uhh.” So when I came back, I really wanted to do all these kinds of things. And of course it was five years later that I decided that I will start my own organisation.

Bharati: In your opinion, why do we lack a culture of risk-taking and creativity?

Tay: It’s recognised that we have a good government. And the people do look up to them. It’s either we’re too comfortable or everything has been too convenient. The other thing is the lesser emphasis on character building; everything is always about results. Also, the majority of our population is Chinese. Chinese traditionally have Confucian ethics. So maybe it’s in the Chinese blood to always to be a little bit more driven to study, right?

Bharati: Nothing wrong with studying.

Tay: Nothing wrong with studies, but traditionally studying means rote learning.

Bharati: It’s about how you study isn’t it?

Tay: Yeah, but I think our Education Ministry is one of the most progressive ministries. Almost every year, they will come up with new policies. But I think if you talk to any teachers enough, everybody is jaded. There’s a disconnect somewhere, and that’s the truth. I’m sure we all know that.

Bharati: What do you think needs to happen to bridge this disconnect?

Tay: I remember one Minister for Education who said that we must treat our students as clients. With this American philosophy of customer is king, suddenly a lot of parents started to behave like kings and started going to schools and making demands, and so I did tell the last Minister, who’s now the Minister for Finance –

Bharati: Mr Heng Swee Keat.

Tay: Yeah, I did tell him that; I’m glad that one day in the press it was reported that he said no to this. And I feel that we need to have a fine balance. So I’m not entirely sure that these are the reasons, but I think that our teachers are already under stress. And then they have added stress to deal with ugly parents. I’ve met some outstanding teachers, and they’re trying their best to do this, implement teaching to encourage creativity, for example.

But I think it has come to the point where a lot of them just do it for the sake of doing it. There are many things affecting our system here. The whole world is facing this – prevalent technology and the internet, but the things that anchor us as human beings are eroding.

I know our country is trying to bring back Character and Citizenship Education, but this is after 20 years of cutting that away. That’s why I’m trying to do what I’m doing, to first focus on you as a person, as a character, and asking you to understand your place on earth and in this world, and as a living person.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

July 10, 2016
6 Steps To Escape Living From Paycheck To Paycheck In Singapore

Living paycheck to paycheck is not only stressful – it’s dangerous. Here’s how to stop and turn your finances around.

If your paycheck seems to vanish as soon as it arrives, and you find yourself surviving on Maggi mee toward the end of the month – you have a problem. Specifically, you’re living paycheck to paycheck.

Not only is it stressful; it’s dangerous. A single emergency, such as retrenchment, will send you neck deep in debt. Here’s how to break the habit:

1. Always pay yourself first

Before you start spending your money, make sure 20 per cent goes into your savings. We know the CPF does this for you already, but you can’t take out your CPF money easily. It’s important to have an emergency fund that you can tap into when you need.

So the moment you get your pay, take 20 per cent and put it in a separate savings account. You’ll want to keep doing this until you accumulate six months worth of savings (however long that takes).

Having an emergency fund means you won’t need to resort to loans in a crisis. It also gives you the confidence to make critical decisions, such as switching jobs or starting up a small side-business.

2. Reduce your loan interest

If you find that almost all your money goes into repaying loans, it’s time to reduce the interest rates. One simple way to do this is to use a balance transfer to pay off a credit card completely, or to use a personal instalment loan to pay off higher interest debts.

For example: Say you owe $5,000 on a credit card, which has an interest rate of 24 per cent per annum. You could take a personal instalment loan for S$5,000, at just six per cent per annum. You then pay off the credit card with the personal loan. This would effectively reduce your interest rate from 24 per cent to just six per cent.

If you use a balance transfer, you might be able to get deals that reduce your debt to zero per cent interest for six months. This makes it considerably easier to pay off the amount owed. You should stop using a credit card or credit line after making a balance transfer to pay it off, or using a loan to do so.

3. Find an expense tracking method that works for you

What gets measured gets managed. If you track your expenses, you are less likely to overspend.

Here’s the tricky part: the same tracking method won’t work for everyone. For some of us, having an Excel spreadsheet does the trick; the rest of us need methods such as sticky notes or phone apps. Experiment with the methods available, from writing things down to using phone apps. Stick to the one that feels most intuitive.

This is the first step to developing a functional budget. Which leads to the next issue.

4. You need a budget, but forget the rigid methods

The easiest and most effective way to budget is to deduct 20 per cent of a particular expense. For example, if you spend S$1,200 a month on food, see if you can cut it down to S$960. Do this by setting aside $960 in your food budget, and then storing the excess S$240 in savings. You are free to spend the S$960 on food any way you choose – but when you run out, you’ve run out. No cheating and tapping your savings to pay for more. This method is usually more effective than trying to plan out the dollar value of each and every meal.

Because we are human beings and not companies, it is not natural for most of us to stick to corporate-style budgets, where the exact amount of each expense is predetermined.

Try to use this method for two or three categories in which you spend the most (e.g. food, travel, and clothes). If you fail to keep the budget in one, you may still succeed with the others.

5. Stop automating payments

If you have automated payments, such as for gym memberships, MMORPG subscriptions, or clubs, we suggest you cut them off. You should always be aware of what you’re paying, and how much you’re paying for them. This will remind you to stop forking out money for services or goods you don’t actually need.

On the other hand, you do want to automate your savings if possible. The reason your CPF seems so huge is because the 20 per cent is deducted for you – out of sight, out of mind.

6. Tighten your belt the first week you receive your pay

Make a pledge to do minimal to no shopping, on the very first week you receive your pay. The only thing you should do that week is transfer money into your savings account and repay any due debts. This will help to break the habit of overspending in the first week, and then needing loans or credit to get you through the rest of the month.

It will also prevent you from needing an advance, something that employers look on negatively as it affects their payment process.

7. Let someone else do the shopping

As a last resort, if you truly cannot control your spending, consider letting someone else do the shopping.

Get a spouse, parent, or close friend who is willing to help, and give them a fixed shopping list. Pass them the cash to do the shopping for you, so you don’t get tempted.

You can still indulge in the occasional bit of shopping. During the LAST week of the month, if you have a surplus, you may take the money and go shopping yourself. However, you should not bring any credit cards, lest you be tempted to rack up debt.

Source: http://business.asiaone.com

July 10, 2016