Four US warships designed to fight in coastal areas similar to South-east Asian waters will be operating out of Singapore by 2018, up from one currently, a senior US Navy official said on Tuesday.
The “rotational deployment” of the vessels, called littoral combat ships (LCS), comes as China continues to flex its muscles in the South China Sea and tensions remnain on the Korean Peninsula.
“We will soon see up to four LCS here in Singapore as we rotationally deploy Seventh Fleet ships,” said Rear Admiral Charles Williams.
“We envision four ships here by May 2017 to sometime in 2018… but I think what you have is that by 2018, four LCS ships will be rotationally deployed here to Singapore.” Williams, commander of the Seventh Fleet’s Task Force 73, was speaking to reporters aboard the USS Fort Worth, an LCS on a 16-month deployment to Southeast Asia.
It replaced another LCS, the USS Freedom, which recently ended an eight-month tour of duty.
The USS Fort Worth is set to take part in exercise Foal Eagle, a joint military drill with South Korea from Feb 24 to March 6.
It will also join regional navies in the annual Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training exercises and the International Maritime Defence Exhibition.
Fast and agile, LCS vessels can be adapted for specific missions through a system of interchangeable modules and crew.
The US Navy plans to build 52 LCS vessels at a total cost of US$37 billion (S$50 billion) but the programme has become controversial due to cost inflation, design and construction issues.
In 2012 the then-US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that Washington would shift the bulk of its naval fleet to the Pacific by 2020 as part of a new strategic focus on Asia.
China is embroiled in a maritime dispute with four Southeast Asian countries – Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam – as well as with Taiwan over territorial claims in the South China Sea.
While not a claimant, the United States has said it has an interest to ensure freedom of navigation in the area.
Two of the three people behind The Real Singapore (TRS), a socio-political website, have been arrested.
This follows a Feb 4 article where the duo are said to have embellished an article posted by a witness of an incident during the recent Thaipusam festival.
The TRS article had claimed a Filipino family had sparked an exchange which led to three Singaporean men being arrested on Feb 3.
But no Filipino family was involved.
The original author of the article also denied the involvement of a Filipino family.
Police confirmed the arrest of a Singaporean, 26 and an Australian woman, 22.
The two were arrested on Feb 6 under the Sedition Act and investigations into the case are ongoing.
One of the Editors who is involved in running The Real Singapore has been called up for Investigation by the Police along with about 4 others in relation to an article about the Thaipusam Incident which was an article compiled based on various witness accounts.
Some time in the future, we will be publishing a full story and explain clearly everything that we can share. This may also include how we work and who is behind the website but currently, as investigations are ongoing, such a full response would be inappropriate.
In fact, there appears to already be a bit of misinformation as very little information has actually been shared with the media.
This lack of information has resulted in some misleading articles being published in the mainstream media in regard to this issue including a Channel News Asia article which suggested that the arrest (on 6th Feb) was made after an MHA statement warning the public about making comments about the Thaipusam Incident (statement made on 14 Feb):
Also, only 1 Editor behind the website has been brought in for investigation. It is understood that she is currently cooperating fully with the police.
Investigations are centering around only this 1 article and all other contributors and other articles are currently not being probed.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue to run the website with minimal interruption and hope to receive your support.
Again, we’d like to wish our readers a happy lunar new year!
When Singaporeans are retrenched, they are left out in the cold with no financial protection. Through no fault of theirs, retrenched workers suddenly find themselves in uncertainty and hardship.
Low-wage workers are especially vulnerable as they have no say in company restructuring or the factors that cause MNCs to relocate their operations. This affects even middle-income professionals in the fields of life sciences and hospitality.
Unexpected lay-offs cause severe strain on the entire family with serious social repercussions. Even though income stops, the bills don’t. The family still needs to eat, children still need to go to school, and electricity bills still need to be paid.
On the other end, when CEOs and top managers are let go, they are given golden handshakes, sometimes worth millions of dollars.
To remedy such an imbalance, the SDP proposes a retrenchment insurance scheme called RESTART (Re-Employment Scheme and Temporary Assistance for the ReTrenched) for our workers who find themselves laid-off from work.
Here’s how it works:
If a worker is retrenched, RESTART pays him/her 75% of last drawn salary for 1st 6 months, 50% for 2nd 6 months, and 25% for final 6 months.
The payout stops once the individual is re-employed or 18 months after retrenchment.
The payout capped at the prevailing median wage (which is $3,770 as of 2014). This means that a retrenched employee earning $3,200/month would be paid $2,400 for the first 6 months and so on whereas an employee earning $5,000/month would get paid 75% of $3,770 for the first 6 months.
MOM will assist the retrenched individual to seek re-employment and help match his/her skill- and salary-level to new job where possible.
The individual can reject only up to 3 job offers.
Based on a 5% unemployment rate, we estimate RESTART’s budget to be $2 billion a year. This budget will come from
the state (80%), employers (10%) and workers (10%)
employees’ contributions are made on a sliding scale with the higher-income groups paying more
employers would match their employees’ contributions dollar for dollar
Such a hybrid system of financing would spread out the fiscal responsibility to all stakeholders.
To prevent abuse of the programme, those relieved of their work due to misconduct, resign from their jobs or worked with the company for less than a year will not be eligible for RESTART.
As the name, suggests, RESTART is meant to provide temporary assistance to retrenched workers and to help them get back on their feet to contribute to the economy. It will help to reduce tension and hardship for families, keeping our social fabric secure and strong.
Some of us might be bewildered by what happened in Parliament last week, when a motion was tabled to discuss at length about the Accounting General’s investigation into the finances of Aljunied Hougang Punggol East Town Council.
Two whole days were spent niggling over the finances of a single town council, with various Ministers taking the stand to chastise, lambast, accuse and denigrate the effectiveness and integrity of the Workers’ Party Members of Parliament in charge of AHPETC, who then had to defend themselves against these allegations.
That was followed up by countless media reports, and even all the way to this week, we can hear the topic being discussed on national radio. The circus continues.
With such a big fuss, what exactly was the issue about, you might ask?
The Minister for National Development Mr Khaw Boon Wan would have you believe that it was about transparency and accountability. Much was said about how AHPETC was not able to cobble together a proper audit report, the figures were all in a mess, and how the way its managing agent attended to the affairs of the town council was anything but lawful.
Low Thia Khiang and Sylvia Lim
Indeed, AHPETC has a lot to answer for. The dearth of any managing agent or existing company willing to take up contracts run by opposition party town councils might mean the need for the party to appoint a preferred vendor that has little experience in running such affairs, but it then becomes the party’s obligation to ensure that nothing should ever slip through the cracks.
This has nothing to do with the risk of being picked on by their opposition, but the simple need to break in new vendors and ensure they can more than adequately comply with existing regulations.
Yet for all the accountably owing, is this issue worthy of time in Parliament and national media? In truth, AHPETC needs to address the concerns of its residents in how their money had been used. This issue is at best a municipal one, hardly worth a two-day debate in the House.
In spite of all the red marks AHPETC received in its annual town council audits by MND, to question the effectiveness of its leaders is very different from questioning their integrity. In fact, putting the same spotlight of scrutiny that AGO had on any other town council might have yielded similar results.
What is of national concern, however, was not given the air time it deserves in Parliament. We are talking about many millions more, given to the government led by the ruling People’s Action Party for the management of the nation, yet with clear transgressions of proper accountability. We are talking about yet another report by AGO, this time on the financial irregularities in government agencies. This is not money given to one town council, but money that an entire nation of tax-payers had entrusted to the government. Were any of these financial issues debated as robustly as AHPETC’s finances?
Oddly, a recent media report on radio, where reporters actually went to the Aljunied ward to talk to residents to get their views on the issue, indicated that residents generally trust AHPETC to do the right thing, and indeed, their neighbourhoods are no worse than before despite the fracas.
Heng Swee Keat
That aside, it is perhaps a tad contradictory that the actions by Mr Heng’s colleague should disagree with his concerns for the residents. For all the review to the Town Council Act that Mr Khaw had promised, his Ministry’s decision on the matter was to withhold about S$7 million of service and conservancy charges grants for the financial year 2014 from AHPETC until it can fill in the gaps for its finances.
Is this withholding of funds meant to penalise AHPETC, or to punish the residents? Where exactly is PAP’s focus on this issue? Has it lost focus, or did it have any to begin with?
In net effect, the berating of AHPETC using precious time in Parliament was not about accountability. It was also not about the rights of citizens, as the actions of MND have proved. But if it was about politics, then it was clearly not the smart kind.
Indeed, Mr Heng had claimed that the issue was not about partisan politics. Perhaps he was right. Partisan politics would require that you put in some effort to defend your party’s interest against your opponent. What we saw in Parliament last week was little more than the PAP going for WP’s jugular, completely disregarding that the ground had already been stained with its own blood.
PAP, in letting its key office holders loose to freely attack WP, need to realise that the residents of Alijunied, Hougang and Punggol East did not vote in WP because they wanted MPs who are fantastic at running their estates. By PAP’s own admission – and in case it has forgotten – WP won because voters wanted WP to be their voice in Parliament.
Last week, voters saw that voice being drowned out in Parliament and in media. One can only wonder what their reaction might be, come the next general elections.
If this had been about projecting a positive perception among the electorate, WP might have taken a bruising, but it was surely the PAP that has bashed itself to a pulp. But of course, it is not. It has been about, and will always be told to be about, public accountability and the interest of residents – if you would believe it.
