Tag: Singapore

Civil Servants Get One-Off $500 SG50 Bonus On Top Of Mid-Year AVC Of 0.5 Months

All civil servants will be given a special one-off SG50 payment of $500 in recognition of their contribution towards nation building, the Public Service Division (PSD) said in a statement today (June 17).

The Government has also decided to pay a mid-year Annual Variable Component (AVC) of 0.5 month in view of the economic climate.

The PSD, which falls under the Prime Minister’s Office, also said that all Division IV civil servants will be given a built-in wage increase of $30 to their monthly salaries.

“This [increment] will be in addition to their annual increment in 2015, and signals the Government’s continued commitment to help raise the salaries of low-wage civil servants,” the statement added.

Around 2,500 Division IV civil servants will benefit from the wage increase. While $30 is less than NWC’s recommendation of $60 for those earning less than $1,100, all Division IV civil servants already earn more than $1,100, PSD said.

The mid-year AVC, special one-off SG50 payment, and built-in wage increase for Division IV civil servants were decided in close consultation with the public sector unions and will be paid in July 2015.

Explaining the mid-year AVC of 0.5 month, PSD said: “The Singapore economy grew by 2.6 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the first quarter of 2015, faster than the 2.1 per cent growth in the preceding quarter. Global economic growth in 2015 is expected to come in marginally better than in 2014, but the pace of growth is likely to be uneven across economies.

“Given the expected improvement in global economic conditions in 2015, externally-oriented sectors are likely to see improved growth prospects. However, sector-specific factors could weigh on the growth of some sectors.

“Taking these factors into account, the Ministry of Trade and Industry forecasts a GDP growth of 2 per cent to 4 per cent for 2015, barring the materialisation of downside risks.”

Source: http://news.asiaone.com

June 17, 2015
Wild Dogs And Wild Boars Sighted In Punggol

Wild dogs and wild boars have been sighted in Punggol recently, causing residents to raise concerns about the possible dangers that the animals present.

Residents of Edgefield Plains have made complaints to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority Singapore (AVA) regarding the animals, reported Chinese evening newspaper Shin Min Daily News on Tuesday.

According to the residents interviewed by Shin Min, people have been witnessed leaving food for stray dogs in a field close to Edgefield Plains.

Some residents have reportedly resorted to carrying wooden sticks to defend themselves against the animals.

In response to public feedback on the wild boars and stray dogs in the vicinity, an AVA spokesman told The Straits Times that surveillance and control operations are being conducted in the area.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

June 17, 2015
A Mother’s Crowdfunding Attempt To Raise US$1.7 Million For Toddler

The sum of US$1.3 million (S$1.7 million) is an astounding amount to be asking strangers for.

But the kindness of strangers is exactly what Madam Jamie Chua is banking on to pave the way for her toddler to have the surgery she needs.

At just 21 months, Xie Yujia has suffered multiple operations, a collapsed lung, a seizure and a detached retina.

Her biggest problem is a congenital defect – her oesophagus, or food pipe, is not connected to her stomach.

Madam Chua, 30, has started a crowd-funding effort on Indiegogo to raise the necessary funds for Yujia to have reconstructive surgery at the Boston Children’s Hospital in the United States, which specialises in treating such defects.

“I was told before delivery that the baby might have a block in her food pipe, as she couldn’t swallow amniotic fluid,” recalled the housewife.

Tests revealed the far more serious problem of oesophageal atresia, which happens in about one out of 2,500 births.

A day after she was born, she was wheeled into the operating room for surgery, but her oesophagus was too far from the stomach to be joined to it.

For the next five months, Yujia was fed through a tube to her stomach and needed another down her throat to remove the saliva which might choke her.

She had corrective surgery in February last year and went home a month later for the first time, but complications, such as infections, continued to dog her.

That April, after a second procedure to widen her oesophagus, it ruptured and the gastric juice that leaked into her lungs caused her left lung to collapse.

Back into hospital she went. Finally, in February, she was well enough to go home with her mum and dad, Mr Xie Wen Long, 40, a self-employed event organiser.

Madam Chua said the dreaded process of sticking a tube down Yujia’s throat every few hours is the main reason she would like her daughter to have reconstructive surgery.

“Feeding her through a tube to her stomach is okay, but I can’t see her go through the suction process,” she said.

When she heard the amount needed for the surgery in Boston, her heart dropped as she had thought it would cost the same amount as the surgery in Singapore, which was about $300,000.

Her Indiegogo campaign had received US$35,200 as of last night.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

June 17, 2015
IMH Resident Charged For Abusing IMH Employees

When she was warded at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), she abused two employees there. She was then put in a welfare home, where she damaged a room and tried to commit suicide.

Then, while being assessed at IMH to see if she was suitable for a mandatory treatment order, Joanne Lim Wan Ting punched a nurse.

Yesterday, the 23-year-old was sentenced to five months’ jail for a string of misdemeanours, including two counts of voluntarily causing hurt and one count of wilfully destroying the property of a welfare home.

Lim has borderline personality disorder, where one has difficulty regulating their emotions, but is understood to have been of sound mind during the offences.

Last November, Lim punched and pulled the hair of IMH nurse Thein Thein Moe, 44, when the latter was trying to stop her from banging her head on a glass counter because she was angry the nurse could not immediately attend to her.

In March, while living at the Angsana Home @ Pelangi Village in Buangkok Green, she was taken to a padded cell for safety reasons after shouting and throwing her food on the floor. Lim tore fabric off the wall lining and tried to strangle herself with it.

On April 13, Lim punched the head of IMH senior staff nurse Lim Theng Theng, 61, multiple times because she was unhappy staying at IMH and the nurse would sometimes scold her for not behaving herself.

At the time, Lim was being assessed for suitability for a mandatory treatment order.

In court yesterday, Lim told State Courts judge May Mesenas that she was sorry and was unsure where she would be living after her release from prison. She also agreed to cooperate if she were to be admitted to a welfare home again.

Asked about its standard procedures when staff members are assaulted at work, an IMH spokesperson said employees may lodge a police report.

“The management of IMH will not tolerate any form of abuse on our staff, be it verbal or physical,” she said. “However, sometimes, patients who hit our staff may be very unwell and have no insight into their actions. In such cases, our staff would usually choose not to make a police report.”

Source: www.todayonline.com

June 17, 2015
More Charges For Man Accused of SingPass Breach

Sixteen more charges were on Tuesday (Jun 16) slapped on James Sim Guan Liang, 39, who is accused of illegally using 293 SingPass accounts to access the Central Provident Fund (CPF) and Media Development Authority (MDA) websites.

Sim now faces an additional 13 charges of abetting to make false statements to attempt to obtain a Singapore visa for another person, plus three fresh charges of handing over possession of his identity card to another person. He now faces a total of 884 charges.

Sim is accused of handing over his SingPass login details to “Lemon aka Long”, who then created false statements for visa applications for 13 China nationals. Electronic records showed that Sim was cited as either friends or relatives of the China nationals.

Sim was also accused of handing over his identity card to “Lemon”, in three of the new charges.

He was previously accused in 868 counts under the Computer Misuse Act, where 575 of them were for illegal access to users’ CPF Member’s Homepage and/or MDA’s Online Services and Application Migration server. The remaining 293 charges were for emailing SingPass details to “Lemon”, who is believed to have used the information to make false statements to obtain a Singapore visa.

Sim remains on S$30,000 bail and will have his case heard in a pre-trial conference on Jun 26 at 3pm.

For parting with possession of an identity card to any person, Sim could be sentenced to a maximum of ten years’ jail as well as fined up to S$10,000. For abetting to make a false statement to obtain a Singapore visa, Sim could be sentenced to a maximum of 12 months’ jail and face a S$4,000 fine.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

June 17, 2015