When Singaporeans complain about foreigners, they are particularly referring to people from their neighbour country “Malaysia”. They need to use subtle way to complain to the Government.
Most Singaporeans are afraid to discriminate and complain against Malaysians because Singapore is small and solely depending on Malaysia for many things and their survival.
Singapore and Malaysia are just across the border and people from Malaysia can come into to Singapore at anytime to get jobs easily because they can speak Chinese, English and Malay which are the 3 main national languages in Singapore. Especially, when the people from nearby Malaysia border area can just spend 5 to 10 minutes on the bus to get into Singapore.
Addition to that people from Malaysia can acquire permanent resident and citizenship easily. After they receive the residency or citizenship status, they can get access to education, housing, healthcare and etc from another side of the fence.
One of the good examples will be – after being granted resident or citizenship status, they will buy the HDB house to rent it out.
Then, they travel back and forth to go to work in Singapore daily because housing and living cost at Malaysia border is a lot cheaper than Singapore due to the strong Singapore currency.
Singaporeans are so angry about their neighbour country exploiting them but on the other hands they can’t reject them directly.
If you go and ask them, they will say it is not true for sure because they don’t want to sour the relationship with their neighbour for survival sake.
They will always say, “we are brothers and good neighbours”.
Editor’s note: This article is retrieved from a comment posted and it reflected the true sentiment of many Singaporeans here due to the historical and cultural similarities between the two neigbhouring countries. It is estimated that more than 300,000 Malaysians are working and residing here with as many as 150,000 living as permanent residents. Many remain as permanent residents after more than 20 years refusing to convert to Singapore citizens.
Many thousands commute daily between the two countries via the Johore Bahru checkpoint due mainly to our strong currency difference and professional work culture.
Many companies also prefer to hire Malaysians due to their strong work ethics and survival instinct. Many took on significant positions within the companies and become a important pillar in the work hierarchy.
When Captain Mona Shindy climbed aboard HMAS Canberra to test missiles in the Pacific, a locker had to be converted into a sleeping quarters to accommodate her.
Never before had an active Australian warship carried women. But aged 23 and launching what would become a 26-year career with the Navy, this was just the first hurdle of a trailblazer.
Already she had a University degree in the blokey domain of engineering. Weapons engineer. And if this were not unusual enough, Captain Shindy happens to be Muslim, and for most of her career in the navy, has been a mother.
Australian Navy Captain Mona Shindy
On board HMAS Canberra Captain Shindy and her two female room-mates were like celebrities, and not all of it was positive publicity.
“We were an absolute novelty and people knew our every movement, what we got up to and where we were. Overall the experience was a positive experience but there certainly were times that were quite challenging,” Captain Shindy says.
“Most female engineers in any work environment _ you really do have to work that little bit harder initially to prove your worth, to demonstrate your competence to really be accepted fully as valued member and a real contributor to the team.”
Then came the challenge of Ramadan, and explaining as a young sublieutenant that she was fasting and would appreciate a meal being put aside for her.
The response was along the lines of: “You’ll eat with everyone else, or you just won’t.” Which left her “the middle of the ocean with a few cans of tuna”.
Once the right ranking officer was made aware of the problem, a solution was soon found.
Anger was never an option.
“My first reaction is to empathise, rather than get angry, and to try and be part of the solution and work on the education piece, through engagement and interaction and just being professional about what I do and delivering professional outcomes and results. In the end, people respect that.”
It’s an attitude that has delivered her to the pinnacle of her career, recognised this week when she was named NSW Telstra Business Woman of the Year. As Director Littoral Warfare and Maritime Support, Captain Shindy advises the Government on the best way to spend billions of dollars on replacement tankers, ships, patrol boats — almost everything except submarines.
She was previously charged with turning around the Fast Frigate System Program Office, from an inefficient organisation with adversarial stakeholder relationships, to a collaborative culture with performance-based contracts. And she shaved 30 per cent in costs from a $130 million budget.
“People were happy at the end of the tenure, ships were leaving the wharf on time with all the maintenance done, when initially they weren’t.”
Soon after her first tour of duty on HMAS Canberra, Captain Shindy married and had a daughter, now 20 and a son, 18, who finished his HSC on Wednesday. Their happy accident followed a decade later in the form of another daughter, now 11.
Captain Mona Shindy at Garden Island Navy Base in Sydney. Picture: Toby Zerna
The job has required service on ships for two-year durations, with time away ranging from two to six months.
“But six months in anyone’s language for a mother with two young children and a young family, is a very significant sacrifice.
“I’m not going to dress it up. It was tough.”
It could not have happened without an extended family backing her up. Crucial were her mother — “who in many ways acted as a pseudo mother for my children sometimes when I was away” — and husband, who has taken many career breaks.
“For me, the only thing that made it easier is knowing that those kids had just as much love and support from those that were with them than I could have given them myself.”
Her family migrated from Egypt when she was three.
“The moment my parents migrated to Australia, they were determined to feel as Australian as anyone else.” She holds the position of Chief of Navy’s Strategic Adviser on Islamic Cultural Affairs, for which she was awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross in this year’s Australia Day honours for her work bridging cultural divides.
It is her aim to encourage more Muslims to join the defence force — around 100 of the 45000 defence force personnel identify as Muslim, 27 of them in the Navy.
“There’s lots of Australian Muslims who feel very hurt … by previous military campaigns that our defence forces have been on that have I guess resulted in discomfort and difficulty …. where those campaigns have occurred that have caused ramifications for a lot of innocent people.”
She says terrorist attacks which have hijacked aspects of religious teachings to justify those behaviours have created “fear and uncertainty for others who are non-Muslims”.
“For some people that gets looked at as the whole Muslim community,” Captain Shindy says. Some young Muslim see this in black and white “us and them” terms.
“They don’t have the maturity necessarily to see the greys and to understand that this is not everyone that has those views about you. That erodes confidence for those kids.”
There’s lots of Australian Muslims who feel very hurt … by previous military campaigns that our defence forces have been on
Her message to them is this: “You can be a proud Australian that loves everything about this great nation and still love your roots and love where you came from and straddle both worlds and both communities. That’s how I live my life and I like to help other people find their way in living those two things.”
And she can cite her own experience, including active service at the start of the 2003 Iraq War.
“It’s always tough, when you go anywhere, whether that’s Iraq. They were difficult times, they were interesting times I think for the whole nation.
“We are an instrument of our democratically elected government and I think that’s something that is very much accepted, understood and part of the contract that I personally have with my organisation. That’s my role, that’s what I signed up to do.”
I like to bring to your attention a discriminatory job advertisement spotted at Valu$ store (Causeway Point) and the company behind the Valu$ and ABC Bargain Centre chain of stores is Radha Exports Pte Ltd.
The attached pictures show words and phrases in their job advertisements which are against TAFEP’s (Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices) Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices.
Please highlight this in your website to let all Singaporeans know how this Indian-origin owner’s company employs mostly their own kind as well as Filipinos in their HQ and retail stores.
For Fair And Progressive Job Advertisemets A.S.S. Contributor
The manager of an IT company who was caught on video punching and slapping a subordinate pleaded guilty on Tuesday (Aug 18) to four counts of voluntarily causing hurt.
Lee Yew Nam, 44, from Encore E-Services admitted that he assaulted Mr Calvin Chan Meng Hock, now 31, on four occasions in their office at the iHub at Jurong Town Hall Road between January and May 2013.
Lee had slapped Mr Chan, grabbed his chin and pulled it back and punched his face a few times during this time.
The court heard that he assaulted Mr Chan and scolded him with vulgarities for mistakes the younger man had made at work.
Employees here could see their salaries grow by 4.4 per cent this year, on the back of low inflation, according to a survey released on Tuesday.
This is slightly more than the 4.3 per cent last year.
The survey, compiled by global professional services firm Towers Watson in February, comprised 2,000 responses from companies across 19 countries in Asia-Pacific.
“The Singapore Government has been sticking to a tight monetary policy to keep the lid on inflation,” noted Mr Sambhav Rakyan, data services practice leader for Asia-Pacific at Towers Watson, in a statement.
“Its policy to stabilise property prices has also helped curb inflationary pressures.”
The survey also showed that Singapore’s pay increase will be in line with that across the Asia-Pacific region, which is forecast at 4.3 per cent this year, compared with the 3.3 per cent last year.
“This is good news for employees, who are finally seeing the results of the post-financial crisis pick-up in economic growth and in receiving more cash in hand,” said Mr Rakyan.
In East Asia, China is expected to see the highest increase, at 7.4 per cent, while Hong Kong will see the smallest, at only 1.3 per cent.
