Alleged discrimination based on nationality continued to top the list of complaints received last year by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP), with the banking and information technology sectors still the most problematic.
These cases made up half of the some 300 complaints in total. However, TAFEP general manager Roslyn Ten said many stem from misunderstanding and not from genuine bias, and urged companies to improve communication with job seekers or existing employees by explaining why, for example, foreigners instead of Singaporeans were hired or promoted.
Speaking to TODAY yesterday, she said: “Could they better explain that it’s really about the skills? Because when they hire, they just hire. They don’t really communicate why (they) hire A and not B, and why (they) promote A and not B. It’s because of the domain knowledge … that the employers require, and somehow they couldn’t find them in locals.”
In some cases, Singaporean jobseekers may have commitments at home, and are reluctant to take up overseas postings or jobs which require frequent travelling, she said. “It’s quite difficult for them to take up (these) and (they’re) not as versatile as their foreign colleagues, in terms of being very open to being relocated or just to travel,” she added.
Overall, the number of complaints about discriminatory hiring practices received by TAFEP last year fell sharply, compared to 2013 when there were 475 complaints. But the 2013 figure was considered a blip, as it was the year when the Fair Consideration Framework was introduced. The framework requires employers to consider Singaporeans first for job openings. In 2012, there were 303 cases.
Apart from alleged discrimination based on nationality, one in five complaints wre biased linked to age — a similar proportion to alleged discrimination related to language or race.
On the number of complaints from the banking and IT sectors, Mrs Ten felt this was because “people in these sectors are more vocal”.
“They’re the PMEs (professionals, managers and executives), so they know where to bring their complaints to. It’s because of people’s awareness, rather than because these sectors are more discriminative of the Singaporeans,” she said.
Reiterating that many unfair employment practices were largely due to miscommunication, she said clear-cut cases of discrimination against Singaporeans are rare. “It’s really more of … perception,” she said.
In cases where companies do not adhere to fair employment practices, TAFEP offers suggestions to boost their human resource (HR) systems, such as refining job application forms or training recruiters in interviewing techniques.
It also educates companies on a sectorial level — through union talks, seminars and campaigns. As part of its outreach efforts, it organises a conference for business leaders, HR practitioners and academics every two years. This year’s conference takes place on Thursday.
Mrs Ten said TAFEP will step up efforts in promoting work-life harmony and the hiring of older workers, through sharing case studies and commissioning more studies.
Following the announcement of a long National Day weekend from Aug 7 to 10, tour agencies said they are seeing a spike in bookings.
According to some agencies, there has been a 30 per cent increase in tour bookings for the extended National Day weekend, with some saying trips to nearby countries such as Thailand and Hong Kong are almost fully booked.
Numbers are expected to increase further, said the agencies, and companies have also approached the agencies for corporate bookings to reward staff.
BOOKINGS IN LOCAL HOTELS UP
However, not all are heading overseas, with local hotels reporting an increase in bookings for the weekend. Some hotels said that about 90 per cent of their rooms with a view of the parade have already been reserved, while others have introduced special packages to celebrate the nation’s Golden Jubilee.
“If they have done a 3-day booking, we’re obviously going to contact them again and offer the package over the four days because it is not fair that they didn’t know, so this is the government generosity of adding an extra day, which is terrific,” said Antoine Chahwan, Regional Vice President, Four Seasons Hotel. “To celebrate Singapore’s 50, I’m sure a lot of people will stay in Singapore to be part of this great celebrations.”
Previously, Speaker of Parliament Halimah Yacob urged Singaporeans to remain in the country during the long weekend to celebrate the nation’s 50th birthday instead of travelling overseas.
Former China tour guide Yang Yin will not be entitled to any part of Madam Chung Khin Chun’s assets after the Court recognised a new will drawn up by the wealthy widow.
The will was made in December last year, and it leaves most of her assets to charity, and nothing to Yang. It replaces an earlier will made in 2010, in which the 88-year-old had left her entire estate — estimated at S$40million — to Yang.
Mdm Chung had met Yang while on a trip to Beijing, where the latter acted as her private tour guide. A year later, Yang moved into Madam Chung’s Gerald Crescent bungalow to live with her. The widow’s niece, Madam Hedy Mok, later filed for legal action against Yang, accusing him of taking advantage of her aunt, who has since been diagnosed with dementia.
Mdm Chung’s lawyer Peter Doriasamy told TODAY that the court had “acted in (her) best interest… in light of what we have found out about Yang Yin”. The new will was made under the Mental Capacity Act due to Mdm Chung’s condition, Mr Doriasamy said. He added that under the new will, Madam Chung’s fortune will go to various charities after she dies.
Yang’s lawyer Daniel Zhu said that he has applied for permission to meet with his client — who has been in remand since Oct 31 last year — sometime next week, to receive instructions on how to proceed.
Separately, Yang is facing more than 300 charges in total, including two for criminal breach of trust, for allegedly misappropriating S$1.1million of Madam Chung’s assets.
The police are investigating a complaint that its officers physically abused a 41-year-old Singaporean man during a spot check it conducted at a nightclub on Friday morning (April 3).
The allegation was first reported by sociopolitical website The Online Citizen (TOC) yesterday. It posted photos of businessman Lim Chin Huat with injuries on his face and a bandaged arm, as well as a 37-second video clip showing officers trying to get a handcuffed Mr Lim into a police car.
In response to TODAY’s queries, the police said they conducted a spot check at a public entertainment outlet located at Bras Basah Road at about 1:15am. Subsequently, a 41-year-old Singaporean man was arrested for disorderly behaviour and police investigations are ongoing.
The police spokesperson also confirmed that a report was lodged, alleging abuse by officers during the arrest. “Investigations into the veracity of the allegations are ongoing,” he added.
In a phone interview today, Mr Lim said he was drinking with a group of business partners at Yang Gui Fei nightclub in Hotel Rendezvous that day when plainclothes police officers entered the outlet and asked for their identification cards.
As the officers’ police identity tags were facing inwards, he asked for their names but could not hear their replies. Subsequently, he tried to flip an officer’s tag but was told that he was not allowed to do so.
Mr Lim said he apologised but the officers pinned him on the ground and handcuffed him, without explaining why he was arrested. He added that the officers also hit his face with their knees and stopped only when his friends told them that he was bleeding.
“It happened too fast, the whole process (took) about 5 to 10 minutes,” said Mr Lim, who runs a logistics and engineering business.
After being admitted to Tan Tock Seng Hospital that day, Mr Lim said an investigating officer came to take his statement at around noon on Saturday. He also said he suffered from a fractured nose, arm and had bruises near his ear, eyes and head. He was given 10 days of medical leave and will have to return to the hospital for plastic surgery on his nose.
Mr Lim denied that he was drunk, adding that eight of them had shared two towers of beer that night.
The police spokesperson said it takes “a serious view of all complaints made against officers”.
“Such complaints will be thoroughly investigated and if substantiated, the police will not hesitate to take action against any errant officer(s),” he said.
The spokesperson added that appropriate legal action will be taken against any persons who furnish false information, which is punishable with up to one year’s imprisonment and/or a fine not excedding S$5,000.
On Wednesday night, along with thousands of other Singaporeans, I lined up to pay my respects to Lee Kuan Yew. I was a little surprised at myself for doing this – after all, I’ve been involved in countless activist events over the years, few of which the man would have approved of: Against censorship, against the Internal Security Act, against the death penalty and the general whitewashing of national history.
Still, I did have something quite specific to be grateful for. Pictured above is what I wrote as a condolence message for the wall outside Parliament House: “Thank you for speaking up for the gay and lesbian community.”
I’m referring to the fact that Lee Kuan Yew consistently stated in interviews that he believes homosexuality is natural and should not be persecuted. His statements on this issue have been documented and praised on SG Wiki, as well as the Chiongs’ blog (a same-sex parenting site run by two of my friends) and this very news site.
He was the first Singaporean politician to say anything supportive about gay people, beginning with a CNN interview in 1998 where he replied to a gay caller’s concerns about his future in the country with an assurance that “we don’t harass people”.
In 2007, he reiterated these views at a PAP Youth Wing event: “[Y]ou are genetically born a homosexual… So why should we criminalise it?” The same year, he denied that there was any censorship of art depicting homosexuality in Singapore. In his infamous 2011 book Hard Truths to Keep Singapore Going, he went so far as to say he’d be OK with a lesbian daughter or MP.
These statements mattered a hell of a lot to us LGBT activists. We’ve been trying for years to improve Singapore’s laws and social attitudes, against a tide of religious opposition and rhetoric about “Asian values”.
Lee Kuan Yew on homosexuality in interview with the Sunday Times.
But whenever things seemed hopeless, we were able to hearken back to those words and remember that the most conservative, curmudgeonly, establishment figure in the Singapore government was OK with our existence. And that meant that maybe, just maybe things might just turn out all right.
Given these facts, you might be wondering why a number of Singapore’s queer intellectuals – Alfian Sa’at, myself, and others – have mostly been sharing articles critical of Lee Kuan Yew on social media.
The biggest reason, of course, is that we’re not single-issue activists. We also care about the fact that he sued opposition politicians into bankruptcy, made offensive statements about Malays, Muslims and women, and caused the destruction of much of our pre-independence architecture and culture. These things matter, and we don’t want people to forget this, even in the midst of mourning.
But then there’s the fact that, deep down, we don’t feel like we were been handed a fair deal by the government while Lee was alive. While I wouldn’t say he was homophobic, he certainly had a hand in creating the culture of homophobia that exists in Singapore today.
From the very beginnings of his rule as Prime Minister in 1959, he was determined to police the morals of his citizens. That very year, he launched his attack on “yellow culture”, placing a ban on jukeboxes and pinball machines. By the 1980s, he was espousing the idea of “Asian values”, claiming that male-dominated nuclear families were the basic unit of our society.
All this emphasis on a singular vision of morality trickled down to create a policy of harassment against LGBT people: the efforts to chase transgender women out of Bugis Street (culminating in its demolition in 1984), the entrapment operations on gay men, the censorship of queer-themed plays and movies, the dismissals of gay teaching staff, the fact that in the late 1990s, the police actually spied on People Like Us, Singapore’s first LGBT organisation. (If you don’t believe that last point, check out Lynette Chua, Mobilizing Gay Singapore, p 55-56.)
Mind you, there’s no evidence that Lee Kuan Yew directly ordered any of these actions. There’s no evidence he held any animosity towards us, ever. But because he was so central to the creation of modern Singapore, it’s hard not to feel that most of our current problems are traceable back to him.
And there’s a further charge I want to lay at his feet. In spite of all the gay-affirming things he said, he never did anything for us. He had the power to get rid of Section 377A (our colonial anti-gay sex law) and to retire our anti-gay censorship policies, but he didn’t.
You can’t claim he was ignorant. He knew there were dissatisfied queer Singaporeans – they were the ones who prompted his questions during his CNN interview and his PAP Youth Rally. We know he read the papers, so he would have known about current affairs, and in Hard Truths, he reveals that he had researched homosexuality and found it natural. But when we urged him to do something about the censorship of gay art, his response was to claim it didn’t exist.
This is why I am supremely skeptical of Trevvy.com’s tribute to him, which claims, that the “repeal of Section 377A would probably had been a success had he been the Prime Minister then.” If he had wanted to, Lee could have chucked out this law at any of a number of moments in the past, simply by slipping a note into his now-fabled red briefcase.
Gender symbols (image – Wikimedia Commons)
But he didn’t. Perhaps he didn’t think we were very important. Perhaps he never felt we were worth the trouble.
This is why, like so many other Singaporeans – members of racial minorities, unmarried women, and many others – we LGBT citizens will always feel like we were among his least favourite children.
Yet at the end of the day, I’m grateful for Lee Kuan Yew’s comments. I know this for a fact, because in the wake of his death, I find I’m worried about the future of Singapore’s LGBT rights.
When gay rights came up for debate over the constitutional challenge to 377A, PM Lee Hsien Loong refused to acknowledge the psychological, institutional and concrete harm that the law perpetuates, blithely telling the world, “Why is that law on the books? Because it’s always been there and it’s best if we just leave it.” Discussing gay rights, he said, “These are not issues that we can settle one way or the other, and it’s really best for us to leave them be, and just agree to disagree.”
Why wouldn’t he stand up for us LGBTs? Regardless of his personal beliefs, he faces a much higher cost to defending our rights. He needs to win the support, not just of his citizens, but also of Parliament, of which a disproportionate 32% are Christian. Nor does he have the authority of a founding father to back up his position.
Beyond the PAP, we have the Workers’ Party, which refused to condemn the retention of 377A during the Penal Code revisions of 377A. It also boasts the only MP to take part in the anti-LGBT Wear White campaign: Muhamad Faisal Abdul Manap.
The National Solidarity Party, the Reform Party and the Singapore Democratic Party have made statements that they believe in equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation. But what hopes have they of forming a government? NSP even felt compelled to add, “we do not think Singapore is ready for equal promotion of alternative lifestyle.”
With Lee Kuan Yew gone, there is no mainstream politician we can point to who is willing to even defend our natural right to exist. And with the balance of power shifting, who knows what may happen in the coming elections? Might a specific politician, or even a whole party, use anti-LGBT rhetoric as a means to rally votes? Might we become the new scapegoats for the countries’ woes?
But I have to remind myself: These are things that could have happened even when the old man was alive. Life was pretty bad for us in the days of his administration; growing acceptance amongst the young would suggest it’s going to get better.
For years now, Lee Kuan Yew has been more of a symbol than a man, more of a philosopher than a politician. His death came slowly, with forewarnings. Even without his grudging support – as the song goes – we will survive.
Things are going to change. But then things have always been changing, even before he came along.
He had a few kind words for us. Now comes the time for action.
