Singapore: A nation of paradoxes?
By Alicia Wong – January 17th, 2011Email Facebook Twitter Print
Has the government neglected nation-building while developing Singapore as a global city? Is Singapore full of paradoxes? What more can be done to help the vulnerable in society?
These questions and more were raised during a discussion at the Institute of Policy Studies’ annual Singapore Perspectives conference on Monday. Twelve panelists from various industries shared their views on three major topics – a “Global City”, a “Caring Community” and the “Singapore Spirit”.
While Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng mapped out the government’s plans to develop Singapore as both a global city and endearing home in his keynote address, subsequent discussions raised doubts on the possibility of doing so.
One key concern was the “cost” of nation building, with the focus on growing Singapore into a global city.
Writer and independent scholar Derek da Cunha said the apparent focus on developing a global city had “the unintended side effect of causing some fissures to the national fabric”.
For instance, bringing in more immigrants to create a cosmopolitan “buzz” put pressure on transport, housing and employment, he said.
Citing the sharp increase in casino exclusion orders and news reports of crime in the casinos, Dr de Cunda wondered if the drive to turn the Republic into the “Monaco of the East” would further entrench the underclass and lead to a widening social divide.
Chairman for the Workers’ Party and Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Sylvia Lim also highlighted the “palpable sense of loss of identity among Singaporeans due to the pace of change over the last few years”.
Pointing out the contradiction in the terms “Global City” and “Endearing Home”, Ms Lim said the change in the population mix adversely impacted citizens’ sense of belonging and security.
In 1990, 86 per cent of the population was local but in 2010, the figure fell to 63 per cent, she cited.
She said, “Singaporeans must always feel empowered at home”.
The government should retreat from various spheres in life and allow for others to take charge, such as in sports associations, and Singapore should celebrate political diversity, she suggested.
“We must have the confidence that as Singaporeans we will be taken care of,” she stressed, calling for a “closer look at the social safety nets”.
Some felt more should be done for the vulnerable groups, for example, by tackling the widening income gap.
Member of Parliament Denise Phua, who spoke about the needs of the low-income and the disabled, young and elderly in Singapore, called on the government to “play a leading role” so that all citizens have equal access to goods that are their “basic social entitlement”.
Everyone else can also do their part by doing more for others, she stressed.
However, chief executive of the Singapore Indian Development Association T Raja Segar pointed out, a recent survey by the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre found Singaporeans more willing to donate money than their time.
In true adversity, such as the Brisbane floods, would Singaporeans step up to help others, he asked. Those who responded said, they believed Singaporeans would.
In addressing the Singapore spirit, some speakers described it as one that looks ahead to what Singapore can be, rather than one that relied on the past. While it brings vitality and openness to society, it could also mean Singaporeans lack refinement and a stable identity, said associate editor at The Straits Times Janadas Devan.
But to director at the Theatre Training & Research Programme, T Sasitharan, “to be at once at home and always at the edge; to feel rooted and at the same time to feel constantly blown away by the wind – these contradictions are what makes us who we are.”
Mr Sasitharan, pointing to the increasing diverse demographics in Singapore, said, “Unless we find space in our hearts to include those who are different… we would no longer feel at home.”
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, January 14, 2011
Experts explain S’pore’s declining birth rate
Experts explain S’pore’s declining birth rate
By Kai Fong – January 14th, 2011
Experts believe the high cost of living is the main deterrent to couples having children. (Photo: AFP Images).
They are only getting married in June, but already the couple have decided against having any children.
Speaking to The Straits Times (ST), civil servant Jean Heng, 30, said she chooses her independence and freedom above having a baby.
She said, “Life in Singapore is very stressful. Work takes up a huge amount of time and I have no energy to take care of kids. If I want to have kids, I would want to devote enough resources in terms of time and money.”
Ms Heng and her teacher-fiance are just one of the many couples in Singapore who have decided to strike babies off their marriage checklist, citing common reasons such as financial and time constraints.
Experts ST spoke to are not surprised by the findings of the Census of Population 2010, which saw more childless married women and more one-child families. They cited the high cost of living as a main reason for couples shying away from raising children.
Associate Professor Tan Khye Chong, a statistics lecturer from Nanyang Technological University, said both husband and wife have to work to pay off the property loan. “It’s more difficult to start a family with both working and some may put off having a family until they are older.”
Professor Gavin Jones, a demographer at the Sociology department at the National University of Singapore, said the “perceived high financial and opportunity cost” deters couples.
“Once they have children, it closes off options seen as desirable; for example, free time, holidays and a career,” he said, adding that parents are also under pressure to produce “quality children” to do well in school and get ahead in life.
“There is pressure to devote a lot of effort to parenting, so it means giving them things like tuition. It’s a highly labour-intensive process to raise kids here,” he said.
Experts expect the low numbers to translate into far-reaching implications for the country, reported ST.
Singapore Management University’s Assistant Professor of Asian Studies Hoon Chang Yau said the increase in immigrants needed to make up the Republic’s workforce will “lead to a more complex society with more people from around the world settling here”.
“While it can be quite exciting, there will also be anxiety over the change in the Singapore identity,” he added. Policies would also need to be tweaked to cope with an already ageing population, which means people would have to work even longer.
The recent Census of Population 2010 found a six percentage point increase in the proportion of childless married women aged 30 to 39 and a near-3 percentage point increase in women in their late 40s.
Higher-educated women are having fewer children, compared to their less-educated counterparts, the Census found.
Thank you for the incredible, amazing response to Yahoo!’s Fit-To-Post blog so far. We continue to welcome your views and comments but please don’t abuse this opportunity. Be nice. Be courteous. Be sensible. Respect the feelings of others and refrain from using any kind of offensive language. And in the spirit of great conversations, please don’t stray from the topic at hand.
By Kai Fong – January 14th, 2011
Experts believe the high cost of living is the main deterrent to couples having children. (Photo: AFP Images).
They are only getting married in June, but already the couple have decided against having any children.
Speaking to The Straits Times (ST), civil servant Jean Heng, 30, said she chooses her independence and freedom above having a baby.
She said, “Life in Singapore is very stressful. Work takes up a huge amount of time and I have no energy to take care of kids. If I want to have kids, I would want to devote enough resources in terms of time and money.”
Ms Heng and her teacher-fiance are just one of the many couples in Singapore who have decided to strike babies off their marriage checklist, citing common reasons such as financial and time constraints.
Experts ST spoke to are not surprised by the findings of the Census of Population 2010, which saw more childless married women and more one-child families. They cited the high cost of living as a main reason for couples shying away from raising children.
Associate Professor Tan Khye Chong, a statistics lecturer from Nanyang Technological University, said both husband and wife have to work to pay off the property loan. “It’s more difficult to start a family with both working and some may put off having a family until they are older.”
Professor Gavin Jones, a demographer at the Sociology department at the National University of Singapore, said the “perceived high financial and opportunity cost” deters couples.
“Once they have children, it closes off options seen as desirable; for example, free time, holidays and a career,” he said, adding that parents are also under pressure to produce “quality children” to do well in school and get ahead in life.
“There is pressure to devote a lot of effort to parenting, so it means giving them things like tuition. It’s a highly labour-intensive process to raise kids here,” he said.
Experts expect the low numbers to translate into far-reaching implications for the country, reported ST.
Singapore Management University’s Assistant Professor of Asian Studies Hoon Chang Yau said the increase in immigrants needed to make up the Republic’s workforce will “lead to a more complex society with more people from around the world settling here”.
“While it can be quite exciting, there will also be anxiety over the change in the Singapore identity,” he added. Policies would also need to be tweaked to cope with an already ageing population, which means people would have to work even longer.
The recent Census of Population 2010 found a six percentage point increase in the proportion of childless married women aged 30 to 39 and a near-3 percentage point increase in women in their late 40s.
Higher-educated women are having fewer children, compared to their less-educated counterparts, the Census found.
Thank you for the incredible, amazing response to Yahoo!’s Fit-To-Post blog so far. We continue to welcome your views and comments but please don’t abuse this opportunity. Be nice. Be courteous. Be sensible. Respect the feelings of others and refrain from using any kind of offensive language. And in the spirit of great conversations, please don’t stray from the topic at hand.
Monday, November 1, 2010
India - Land of Many Cell Phones and Fewer Toilets
MUMBAI, India (AP) -- The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup along the rocky, pocked earth that serves as a road. No power except from haphazard cables strung overhead illegally.
And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.
Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.
When President Barack Obama visits India Nov. 6, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet, according to the United Nations.
It is a country buoyed by a vibrant business world of call centers and software developers, but hamstrung by a bloated, corrupt government that has failed to deliver the barest of services.
Its estimated growth rate of 8.5 percent a year is among the highest in the world, but its roads are crumbling.
It offers cheap, world-class medical care to Western tourists at private hospitals, yet has some of the worst child mortality and maternal death rates outside sub-Saharan Africa.
And while tens of millions have benefited from India's rise, many more remain mired in some of the worst poverty in the world.
Businessman Mukesh Ambani, the world's fourth-richest person, is just finishing off a new $1 billion skyscraper-house in Mumbai with 27 floors and three helipads, touted as the most expensive home on earth. Yet farmers still live in shacks of mud and cow dung.
The cell phone frenzy bridges all worlds. Cell phones are sold amid the Calvin Klein and Clinique stores under the soaring atriums of India's new malls, and in the crowded markets of its working-class neighborhoods. Bare shops in the slums sell pre-paid cards for as little as 20 cents next to packets of chewing tobacco, while street hawkers peddle car chargers at traffic lights.
The spartan Beecham's in New Delhi's Connaught Place, one of the country's seemingly ubiquitous mobile phone dealers, is overrun with lunchtime customers of all classes looking for everything from a 35,000 rupee ($790) Blackberry Torch to a basic 1,150 rupee ($26) Nokia.
Store manager Sanjeev Malhotra adds to a decades-old -- and still unfulfilled -- Hindi campaign slogan promising food, clothing and shelter. "Roti, kapda, makaan" and "mobile," he riffs, laughing. "Basic needs."
There were more than 670 million cell phone connections in India by the end of August, a number that has been growing by close to 20 million a month, according to government figures.
Yet U.N. figures show that only 366 million Indians have access to a private toilet or latrine, leaving 665 million to defecate in the open.
"At least tap water and sewage disposal -- how can we talk about any development without these two fundamental things? How can we talk about development without health and education?" says Anita Patil-Deshmukhl, executive director of PUKAR, an organization that conducts research and outreach in the slums of Mumbai.
India's leaders say they are sympathetic to the problem.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an economist credited with unleashing India's private sector by loosening government regulation, talks about growth that benefits the masses of poor people as well as a burgeoning middle class of about 300 million. He describes a roaring Maoist insurgency in the east -- which feeds in large part on the poor's discontent -- as the country's biggest internal security threat.
Sonia Gandhi, chief of the ruling Congress Party, has pushed laws guaranteeing a right to food and education, as well as a gargantuan rural jobs program for nearly 100 million people. But as many as 800 million Indians still live on less than $2 a day, even as Mumbai's stock exchange sits near record highs.
Many fear the situation is unsustainable.
"Everybody understands the threat. Everybody recognizes that there is a gap, that this could be the thing that trips up this country," says Anand Mahindra, vice chairman and managing director of the Mahindra & Mahindra manufacturing company.
Private companies have tried to fill that gap, and Tata sells a 749 rupee ($16) water purifier for the poor. Mafias provide water and electricity to slumdwellers at a cost far higher than what wealthy Indians pay for basic services.
"For every little thing, we have to pay," says Nusrat Khan, a 35-year-old maid and single parent who raises her four children on less than 3,000 rupees ($67) a month and blames the government for her lack of access to water and a toilet.
The government is spending $350 million a year to build toilets in rural areas. Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, estimates the country needs about 120 million more latrines -- likely the largest sanitation project in world history.
"Those in power, only they can change the situation," says Pathak, who claims to have helped build a million low-cost latrines across India over the past 40 years. "India can achieve this -- if it desires."
In the slums of Mumbai, home to more than half the city's population of 14 million, the yearning for toilets is so great that enterprising residents have built makeshift outhouses on their own.
In Annabhau Sathe Nagar, a raised latrine of corrugated tin empties into a river of sewage that children splash in and adults wade across. The slum in east Mumbai has about 50,000 residents and a single toilet building, with 10 pay toilets for men and eight for women -- two of which are broken.
With the wait for those toilets up to an hour even at 5 a.m., and the two-rupee (4-cent) fee too expensive for many, most people either use a field or wait to use the toilets at work, says Santosh Thorat, 32, a community organizer. Nearly 60 percent have developed piles from regularly waiting to defecate, he says.
Conditions are far worse in Rafiq Nagar, a crowded, 15-year-old slum on the lip of a 110-acre garbage dump.
Most of the slumdwellers are ragpickers who sort through heaps of trash for scraps of plastic, glass, metal, even bones, anything they can sell to recyclers for cash. A pungent brew of ripe garbage and sewage blows through the trash-strewn streets, as choking smoke from wood fires rolls out the doorways of windowless huts. Children, half clothed in rags, play hopscotch next to a mysterious gray liquid that has gathered in stagnant puddles weeks after the last rainfall.
Just beside the shacks, men and women defecate in separate areas behind rolling hills of green foliage that have sprung up over the garbage. Children run through those hills, flying kites.
Khatija Sheikh, 20, splurges to use a pay toilet in another neighborhood 10 minutes away, but is never sure what condition it will be in.
"Sometimes it's clean, sometimes it's dirty. It's totally dependent on the owner's mood," says Sheikh, whose two young children use the street. Her home is less than five feet from an elevated outhouse built by a neighbor that drops sewage next to her walls.
Since there are no water pipes or wells here, residents are forced to rely on the water mafia for water for cooking, washing clothes, bathing and drinking. The neighborhood is rife with skin infections, tuberculosis and other ailments.
A large blue barrel outside a home is filled with murky brown water, tiny white worms and an aluminum drinking cup. To fill up two jerry cans costs between 40 ($.90) and 50 ($1.10) rupees a day, about one-third of the average family's earnings here.
"If the government would give us water, we would pay that money to the government," said Suresh Pache, 41, a motorized rickshaw driver.
Instead, it has issued demolition notices throughout the slum, which sits illegally on government land. Pache, whose home was razed 10 times, jokes that the destruction is the only government service he can count on.
Yet the world of technology has embraced the slumdwellers with its cheap cell phones and cut-rate calling plans that charge a sliver of a penny a minute. Pache bought his first phone for 1,400 rupees ($31) four months ago. Since then, his wife, a ragpicker, found two other broken models as she scoured the garbage dump, and he paid to have them repaired.
He speaks with fluency about the different plans offered by Tata, Reliance and Idea that cost him a total of 300 rupees ($6.70) a month. Now, when his rickshaw breaks down, he can alert his wife with a call. She uses her phone to tell the recyclers where she is in the dump so they can drive out to her, saving her the time and effort of dragging her bag of scraps to them.
Mohan Singh, a 58-year-old bicycle repairman, says his son uses their 2,000 rupee ($45) Orpat phone to play music and talk to relatives. Thorat, the community organizer, shows photographs of his neighborhood and videos of a pre-school he started on his Nokia cameraphone, while his second phone rings in his pocket. Sushila Paten, who teaches at the pre-school, organizes a phone chain with her Samsung to instantly mobilize hundreds of people in the streets when violent thugs show up demanding "rent" from the squatters.
In fact, the spread of cell phones may end up bringing toilets.
R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director of Tata Sons, one of India's most revered companies, says the rising aspirations of the poor, buttressed by their growing access to communications and information, will put tremendous pressure on the government to start delivering.
People already are starting to challenge local officials who for generations answered to no one, he says.
"I think there are very, very dramatic changes happening," he says.
And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.
Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.
When President Barack Obama visits India Nov. 6, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet, according to the United Nations.
It is a country buoyed by a vibrant business world of call centers and software developers, but hamstrung by a bloated, corrupt government that has failed to deliver the barest of services.
Its estimated growth rate of 8.5 percent a year is among the highest in the world, but its roads are crumbling.
It offers cheap, world-class medical care to Western tourists at private hospitals, yet has some of the worst child mortality and maternal death rates outside sub-Saharan Africa.
And while tens of millions have benefited from India's rise, many more remain mired in some of the worst poverty in the world.
Businessman Mukesh Ambani, the world's fourth-richest person, is just finishing off a new $1 billion skyscraper-house in Mumbai with 27 floors and three helipads, touted as the most expensive home on earth. Yet farmers still live in shacks of mud and cow dung.
The cell phone frenzy bridges all worlds. Cell phones are sold amid the Calvin Klein and Clinique stores under the soaring atriums of India's new malls, and in the crowded markets of its working-class neighborhoods. Bare shops in the slums sell pre-paid cards for as little as 20 cents next to packets of chewing tobacco, while street hawkers peddle car chargers at traffic lights.
The spartan Beecham's in New Delhi's Connaught Place, one of the country's seemingly ubiquitous mobile phone dealers, is overrun with lunchtime customers of all classes looking for everything from a 35,000 rupee ($790) Blackberry Torch to a basic 1,150 rupee ($26) Nokia.
Store manager Sanjeev Malhotra adds to a decades-old -- and still unfulfilled -- Hindi campaign slogan promising food, clothing and shelter. "Roti, kapda, makaan" and "mobile," he riffs, laughing. "Basic needs."
There were more than 670 million cell phone connections in India by the end of August, a number that has been growing by close to 20 million a month, according to government figures.
Yet U.N. figures show that only 366 million Indians have access to a private toilet or latrine, leaving 665 million to defecate in the open.
"At least tap water and sewage disposal -- how can we talk about any development without these two fundamental things? How can we talk about development without health and education?" says Anita Patil-Deshmukhl, executive director of PUKAR, an organization that conducts research and outreach in the slums of Mumbai.
India's leaders say they are sympathetic to the problem.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an economist credited with unleashing India's private sector by loosening government regulation, talks about growth that benefits the masses of poor people as well as a burgeoning middle class of about 300 million. He describes a roaring Maoist insurgency in the east -- which feeds in large part on the poor's discontent -- as the country's biggest internal security threat.
Sonia Gandhi, chief of the ruling Congress Party, has pushed laws guaranteeing a right to food and education, as well as a gargantuan rural jobs program for nearly 100 million people. But as many as 800 million Indians still live on less than $2 a day, even as Mumbai's stock exchange sits near record highs.
Many fear the situation is unsustainable.
"Everybody understands the threat. Everybody recognizes that there is a gap, that this could be the thing that trips up this country," says Anand Mahindra, vice chairman and managing director of the Mahindra & Mahindra manufacturing company.
Private companies have tried to fill that gap, and Tata sells a 749 rupee ($16) water purifier for the poor. Mafias provide water and electricity to slumdwellers at a cost far higher than what wealthy Indians pay for basic services.
"For every little thing, we have to pay," says Nusrat Khan, a 35-year-old maid and single parent who raises her four children on less than 3,000 rupees ($67) a month and blames the government for her lack of access to water and a toilet.
The government is spending $350 million a year to build toilets in rural areas. Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, estimates the country needs about 120 million more latrines -- likely the largest sanitation project in world history.
"Those in power, only they can change the situation," says Pathak, who claims to have helped build a million low-cost latrines across India over the past 40 years. "India can achieve this -- if it desires."
In the slums of Mumbai, home to more than half the city's population of 14 million, the yearning for toilets is so great that enterprising residents have built makeshift outhouses on their own.
In Annabhau Sathe Nagar, a raised latrine of corrugated tin empties into a river of sewage that children splash in and adults wade across. The slum in east Mumbai has about 50,000 residents and a single toilet building, with 10 pay toilets for men and eight for women -- two of which are broken.
With the wait for those toilets up to an hour even at 5 a.m., and the two-rupee (4-cent) fee too expensive for many, most people either use a field or wait to use the toilets at work, says Santosh Thorat, 32, a community organizer. Nearly 60 percent have developed piles from regularly waiting to defecate, he says.
Conditions are far worse in Rafiq Nagar, a crowded, 15-year-old slum on the lip of a 110-acre garbage dump.
Most of the slumdwellers are ragpickers who sort through heaps of trash for scraps of plastic, glass, metal, even bones, anything they can sell to recyclers for cash. A pungent brew of ripe garbage and sewage blows through the trash-strewn streets, as choking smoke from wood fires rolls out the doorways of windowless huts. Children, half clothed in rags, play hopscotch next to a mysterious gray liquid that has gathered in stagnant puddles weeks after the last rainfall.
Just beside the shacks, men and women defecate in separate areas behind rolling hills of green foliage that have sprung up over the garbage. Children run through those hills, flying kites.
Khatija Sheikh, 20, splurges to use a pay toilet in another neighborhood 10 minutes away, but is never sure what condition it will be in.
"Sometimes it's clean, sometimes it's dirty. It's totally dependent on the owner's mood," says Sheikh, whose two young children use the street. Her home is less than five feet from an elevated outhouse built by a neighbor that drops sewage next to her walls.
Since there are no water pipes or wells here, residents are forced to rely on the water mafia for water for cooking, washing clothes, bathing and drinking. The neighborhood is rife with skin infections, tuberculosis and other ailments.
A large blue barrel outside a home is filled with murky brown water, tiny white worms and an aluminum drinking cup. To fill up two jerry cans costs between 40 ($.90) and 50 ($1.10) rupees a day, about one-third of the average family's earnings here.
"If the government would give us water, we would pay that money to the government," said Suresh Pache, 41, a motorized rickshaw driver.
Instead, it has issued demolition notices throughout the slum, which sits illegally on government land. Pache, whose home was razed 10 times, jokes that the destruction is the only government service he can count on.
Yet the world of technology has embraced the slumdwellers with its cheap cell phones and cut-rate calling plans that charge a sliver of a penny a minute. Pache bought his first phone for 1,400 rupees ($31) four months ago. Since then, his wife, a ragpicker, found two other broken models as she scoured the garbage dump, and he paid to have them repaired.
He speaks with fluency about the different plans offered by Tata, Reliance and Idea that cost him a total of 300 rupees ($6.70) a month. Now, when his rickshaw breaks down, he can alert his wife with a call. She uses her phone to tell the recyclers where she is in the dump so they can drive out to her, saving her the time and effort of dragging her bag of scraps to them.
Mohan Singh, a 58-year-old bicycle repairman, says his son uses their 2,000 rupee ($45) Orpat phone to play music and talk to relatives. Thorat, the community organizer, shows photographs of his neighborhood and videos of a pre-school he started on his Nokia cameraphone, while his second phone rings in his pocket. Sushila Paten, who teaches at the pre-school, organizes a phone chain with her Samsung to instantly mobilize hundreds of people in the streets when violent thugs show up demanding "rent" from the squatters.
In fact, the spread of cell phones may end up bringing toilets.
R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director of Tata Sons, one of India's most revered companies, says the rising aspirations of the poor, buttressed by their growing access to communications and information, will put tremendous pressure on the government to start delivering.
People already are starting to challenge local officials who for generations answered to no one, he says.
"I think there are very, very dramatic changes happening," he says.
‘I don’t know what I’m defending anymore’
‘I don’t know what I’m defending anymore’
By Ewen Boey – October 30th, 2010
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392yahoo_ntu
Young Singaporeans like Lim Zi Rui are becoming increasingly disillusioned and they’re not afraid to let it show.
The 23-year-old final-year aerospace engineering student was among a 1,000-strong crowd who attended a Ministerial Forum organised on Friday by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Students’ Union.
Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong was the guest-of-honour.
During a dialogue session after SM Goh’s main address, Lim stood up and asked if the Minister was aware that many young people no longer felt a sense of ownership in Singapore.
“When I was younger, I was very proud of being a Singaporean,” said Lim as reported in The Straits Times.
“But that was about five, ten years ago. Five years later, with all the changes in policies and the influx of foreign talent, I really don’t know what I’m defending any more.”
He said this was a view that many of the men he served with during National Service also held.
“I feel that there is a dilution of the Singapore spirit in youth… We don’t really feel comfortable in our country any more,” he said.
Mr Goh replied, “‘This is one early sign of danger… If this is happening, it is very serious.” He went on to ask Mr Lim why he felt disconnected.
Mr Lim told SM Goh, ”‘I’m still serving as an officer and I definitely would love to defend Singapore.”
But he said the key difference between him and his foreign friends was, “I tell them, this is my country. I can’t just leave here whenever I want to. You can come and play and work here, but I have to stay here.”
SM Goh responded by defending the government’s policy of welcoming foreigners.
“You want to have a home. Who’s going to build your HDB flat?” said the Minister.
Lim replied that due to the inability to afford the sky-high public housing prices, his brother had to call off his engagement.
“My brother got engaged, but lost his engagement because he could not afford an HDB flat,” said Lim, who went on to state that his question was not about “integrating foreigners”.
“My question was, how are we going to help the younger generation feel a sense of belonging to Singapore? I don’t think it’s about integrating foreigners,” said Lim.
“This is your country,” SM Goh replied. “What do you want me to do to make you feel you belong?”
“For my part, don’t worry about me,” Mr Lim said. “I will definitely do something, if I can, for Singapore. But I can tell you honestly that the sentiment on the ground is a bit different.”
“If this is happening, it is very serious,” said SM Goh.
“If the majority feel they don’t belong here, then we have a fundamental problem. Then I would ask myself: What am I doing here? Why should I be working for people who don’t feel they belong over here?” asked SM Goh.
Earlier on during the dialogue session, the Minister made the point that the next General Elections, due to be held by February 2012, would be a “watershed” for the future of Singapore from which a “fourth Prime Minister and a core team of younger ministers will emerge”.
SM Goh also challenged the young undergrads in his audience to “make a difference to Singapore” by joining local politics.
By Ewen Boey – October 30th, 2010
Email Facebook Twitter Print
392yahoo_ntu
Young Singaporeans like Lim Zi Rui are becoming increasingly disillusioned and they’re not afraid to let it show.
The 23-year-old final-year aerospace engineering student was among a 1,000-strong crowd who attended a Ministerial Forum organised on Friday by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Students’ Union.
Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong was the guest-of-honour.
During a dialogue session after SM Goh’s main address, Lim stood up and asked if the Minister was aware that many young people no longer felt a sense of ownership in Singapore.
“When I was younger, I was very proud of being a Singaporean,” said Lim as reported in The Straits Times.
“But that was about five, ten years ago. Five years later, with all the changes in policies and the influx of foreign talent, I really don’t know what I’m defending any more.”
He said this was a view that many of the men he served with during National Service also held.
“I feel that there is a dilution of the Singapore spirit in youth… We don’t really feel comfortable in our country any more,” he said.
Mr Goh replied, “‘This is one early sign of danger… If this is happening, it is very serious.” He went on to ask Mr Lim why he felt disconnected.
Mr Lim told SM Goh, ”‘I’m still serving as an officer and I definitely would love to defend Singapore.”
But he said the key difference between him and his foreign friends was, “I tell them, this is my country. I can’t just leave here whenever I want to. You can come and play and work here, but I have to stay here.”
SM Goh responded by defending the government’s policy of welcoming foreigners.
“You want to have a home. Who’s going to build your HDB flat?” said the Minister.
Lim replied that due to the inability to afford the sky-high public housing prices, his brother had to call off his engagement.
“My brother got engaged, but lost his engagement because he could not afford an HDB flat,” said Lim, who went on to state that his question was not about “integrating foreigners”.
“My question was, how are we going to help the younger generation feel a sense of belonging to Singapore? I don’t think it’s about integrating foreigners,” said Lim.
“This is your country,” SM Goh replied. “What do you want me to do to make you feel you belong?”
“For my part, don’t worry about me,” Mr Lim said. “I will definitely do something, if I can, for Singapore. But I can tell you honestly that the sentiment on the ground is a bit different.”
“If this is happening, it is very serious,” said SM Goh.
“If the majority feel they don’t belong here, then we have a fundamental problem. Then I would ask myself: What am I doing here? Why should I be working for people who don’t feel they belong over here?” asked SM Goh.
Earlier on during the dialogue session, the Minister made the point that the next General Elections, due to be held by February 2012, would be a “watershed” for the future of Singapore from which a “fourth Prime Minister and a core team of younger ministers will emerge”.
SM Goh also challenged the young undergrads in his audience to “make a difference to Singapore” by joining local politics.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Fate of historic train station stirs nostalgia in Singapore
On Tuesday 12 October 2010, 10:37 SGT
No more glittering shopping malls, chic restaurants and expensive condos, please!
The fate of a shabby but historic Malaysia-owned train station tucked away in an obscure corner of ultramodern Singapore's port and business district is stirring nostalgia for a bygone age.
The Tanjong Pagar station, built during British colonial rule over the two countries, is to be vacated by July 2011 under a recent deal to settle a longstanding land dispute between the two neighbours.
The Singapore terminal is to be relocated to Woodlands, a northern suburb across a narrow strip of water from Malaysia. A causeway that includes the rail tracks connects the two countries.
With its faded facade and four imposing life-size marble sculptures atop the main entrance, the station is an anomaly in a landscape dominated by office towers, hotels and high-rise apartment blocks.
The four sculptures represent agriculture, commerce, transport and industry -- key symbols of economic prosperity during the heyday of British rule until the late 1950s.
Time seems to stand still in the cavernous but sparsely furnished passenger hall of the 78-year-old terminal, which relies on exhaust fans and breezes blowing in from outside to provide relief from the stifling tropical heat.
Lunchtime is always busy -- not from passenger traffic but from customers of Malaysian delights offered by food stalls such as the greasy Ramly Burger, featuring a beef or chicken patty wrapped in a fried egg.
There are no digital boards showing departure and arrival times of the service, which stops at sleepy towns until reaching Kuala Lumpur seven hours later even though the Malaysian capital is just 367 kilometers (228 miles) away.
Instead, a blue board with the service schedule is mounted on one side of the hall and any changes to the timing have to be made manually by station staff.
The future of the station as well as other Malaysian railway land to be handed back to Singapore will be part of an ongoing review by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on land use in the next 40 to 50 years.
"The land parcels will be put to optimal use," the Ministry of National Development said.
In a country where land is scarce and many colonial buildings have been refitted for commercial use, a group of Singaporeans has started a petition to preserve the station and its rich history for future generations.
"I want them to know that once upon a time, this station connected Singapore to the rest of the world... before Internet made it easy to Google for anything," Carolyn Seet, who started the petition in July, told AFP.
"Old buildings remind you of your roots," said Seet, an IT specialist who also created a public Facebook account called "Turn Tanjong Pagar Station into a Museum."
On Facebook, Seet wrote: "Not another restaurant. Not another condo. We need some culture and history. Think Musee D'Orsay. Not just about making money!"
The Musee D'Orsay is a museum in Paris housed in a former railway station.
Seet says she hopes to gather at least 1,000 signatures by the end of the year before handing the petition to the office of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The petition contains a few proposals including turning the station into a museum to showcase the roles of various means of transport in Singapore's rapid rise from a sleepy tropical port to a world trading hub.
As of the first week of October, the petition had gathered just 360 signatures.
Seet says her campaign is driven partly by the demolition of several history-rich buildings to make way for the country's urban development, and she worries her two young boys will have no inkling of Singapore's past from the urban architecture.
"To me, this is the last bastion," Seet said of the station, which holds plenty of fond childhood memories since it was there that she embarked on her first train ride to Malaysia.
Ho Weng Hin, an architectural conservation specialist who is co-authoring a book on the building's history, said the British made a strategic decision to have the railway building next to the port.
"The station was built next to the port for a good reason," said Ho, a partner of architectural restoration and research consultancy Studio Lapis.
"It is from here that valuable Malayan commodities such as tin and rubber were transported to the rest of the world. The railway line expanded British clout in Malaya," he said.
Malaysia, formerly known as Malaya, was under British rule until the late 1950s. Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia briefly in 1963 before it gained statehood in 1965.
Ho said the station could be described as Singapore's version of New York City's famous Grand Central Terminal building.
"Part of what makes a city great is you have the different chapters of its history still functioning and still accessible to the people," he said, adding that historic train stations in Milan and Tokyo have been preserved and kept accessible to the general public.
Lai Chee Kien, an assistant professor with the National University of Singapore's department of architecture, also feels the station's colourful past makes it worth conserving.
"There are not many places left in Singapore that can evoke memories of the pre-independence period," he said.
"Before airplanes became prominent, the railway was the main source of goods and passengers.
"Together with Keppel Harbour, the railway station is an important building that connected people to a larger history involving Singapore and Malaysia."
For 63-year-old Masudul Hasan, who has operated a drinks stall at the station for 26 years, there is little he can do except wait for the day when he will have to lower the shutters for good.
"I will miss the place, it has been so many years," said Masudul, who sleeps for just four hours and spends the rest of his time at the stall.
No more glittering shopping malls, chic restaurants and expensive condos, please!
The fate of a shabby but historic Malaysia-owned train station tucked away in an obscure corner of ultramodern Singapore's port and business district is stirring nostalgia for a bygone age.
The Tanjong Pagar station, built during British colonial rule over the two countries, is to be vacated by July 2011 under a recent deal to settle a longstanding land dispute between the two neighbours.
The Singapore terminal is to be relocated to Woodlands, a northern suburb across a narrow strip of water from Malaysia. A causeway that includes the rail tracks connects the two countries.
With its faded facade and four imposing life-size marble sculptures atop the main entrance, the station is an anomaly in a landscape dominated by office towers, hotels and high-rise apartment blocks.
The four sculptures represent agriculture, commerce, transport and industry -- key symbols of economic prosperity during the heyday of British rule until the late 1950s.
Time seems to stand still in the cavernous but sparsely furnished passenger hall of the 78-year-old terminal, which relies on exhaust fans and breezes blowing in from outside to provide relief from the stifling tropical heat.
Lunchtime is always busy -- not from passenger traffic but from customers of Malaysian delights offered by food stalls such as the greasy Ramly Burger, featuring a beef or chicken patty wrapped in a fried egg.
There are no digital boards showing departure and arrival times of the service, which stops at sleepy towns until reaching Kuala Lumpur seven hours later even though the Malaysian capital is just 367 kilometers (228 miles) away.
Instead, a blue board with the service schedule is mounted on one side of the hall and any changes to the timing have to be made manually by station staff.
The future of the station as well as other Malaysian railway land to be handed back to Singapore will be part of an ongoing review by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) on land use in the next 40 to 50 years.
"The land parcels will be put to optimal use," the Ministry of National Development said.
In a country where land is scarce and many colonial buildings have been refitted for commercial use, a group of Singaporeans has started a petition to preserve the station and its rich history for future generations.
"I want them to know that once upon a time, this station connected Singapore to the rest of the world... before Internet made it easy to Google for anything," Carolyn Seet, who started the petition in July, told AFP.
"Old buildings remind you of your roots," said Seet, an IT specialist who also created a public Facebook account called "Turn Tanjong Pagar Station into a Museum."
On Facebook, Seet wrote: "Not another restaurant. Not another condo. We need some culture and history. Think Musee D'Orsay. Not just about making money!"
The Musee D'Orsay is a museum in Paris housed in a former railway station.
Seet says she hopes to gather at least 1,000 signatures by the end of the year before handing the petition to the office of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The petition contains a few proposals including turning the station into a museum to showcase the roles of various means of transport in Singapore's rapid rise from a sleepy tropical port to a world trading hub.
As of the first week of October, the petition had gathered just 360 signatures.
Seet says her campaign is driven partly by the demolition of several history-rich buildings to make way for the country's urban development, and she worries her two young boys will have no inkling of Singapore's past from the urban architecture.
"To me, this is the last bastion," Seet said of the station, which holds plenty of fond childhood memories since it was there that she embarked on her first train ride to Malaysia.
Ho Weng Hin, an architectural conservation specialist who is co-authoring a book on the building's history, said the British made a strategic decision to have the railway building next to the port.
"The station was built next to the port for a good reason," said Ho, a partner of architectural restoration and research consultancy Studio Lapis.
"It is from here that valuable Malayan commodities such as tin and rubber were transported to the rest of the world. The railway line expanded British clout in Malaya," he said.
Malaysia, formerly known as Malaya, was under British rule until the late 1950s. Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia briefly in 1963 before it gained statehood in 1965.
Ho said the station could be described as Singapore's version of New York City's famous Grand Central Terminal building.
"Part of what makes a city great is you have the different chapters of its history still functioning and still accessible to the people," he said, adding that historic train stations in Milan and Tokyo have been preserved and kept accessible to the general public.
Lai Chee Kien, an assistant professor with the National University of Singapore's department of architecture, also feels the station's colourful past makes it worth conserving.
"There are not many places left in Singapore that can evoke memories of the pre-independence period," he said.
"Before airplanes became prominent, the railway was the main source of goods and passengers.
"Together with Keppel Harbour, the railway station is an important building that connected people to a larger history involving Singapore and Malaysia."
For 63-year-old Masudul Hasan, who has operated a drinks stall at the station for 26 years, there is little he can do except wait for the day when he will have to lower the shutters for good.
"I will miss the place, it has been so many years," said Masudul, who sleeps for just four hours and spends the rest of his time at the stall.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The great class divide in Singapore By Ewen Boey – October 1st, 2010
By Raju Gopalakrishnan, Reuters
SINGAPORE - Along a sun-splashed cobblestone street in central Singapore, coatless bankers with loosened ties quaff imported beers in a neighbourhood of gaily painted shophouses called Duxton Hill.
The scene is almost European. And for long-time residents of this Southeast Asian city-state at the crossroads of some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, a bit bemusing. Just a couple of years ago late-night revellers used to tumble out of ill-lit pubs and grimy, illicit brothels on Duxton Hill.
The transformation is a microcosm of the reinventions Singapore has undergone to keep an island with almost no resources and roughly the size of New York City competitive in a neighbourhood of fast-growing emerging markets.
Boutique funds, advisory firms and brokerages are putting down roots in a revamped Duxton Hill, where opium and gambling dens run by Chinese triad gangs flourished last century.
Singapore has attracted hundreds of such firms in the past decade, lured by its light-touch registration requirements and relatively benign regulatory climate, even as Switzerland, the world’s leading wealth manager, gets tougher on bank secrecy.
“Our vision of this place is the Singapore version of London’s West End,” said Ed Peter, 47, a Swiss-born fund manager who has been buying up shophouses in Duxton Hill.
The neighbourhood, in truth, bears little resemblance to London’s theatre district, but it’s also a far cry from its shady past.
“It’s going upmarket. It’s cool. It’s funky,” said Peter, speaking effusively at his office in a three-storey building which housed an Elvis impersonator bar just two years ago. “You’ve got half the financial community here.”
Next door, the raunchy Aristocats pub closed shop a few months ago, providing space for Daun Consulting, a private equity adviser, to expand from its upper-level offices.
Peter, Deutsche Bank’s head of asset management for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa before setting up his own firm in Singapore, manages about $650 million .
The squeaky clean city of 5.1 million, nicknamed the “nanny state” for its propensity for micromanagement, is fast emerging as one of the world’s hottest destinations for wealth — and the wealthy, who now have casinos and theme parks for play, and seaside mansions and penthouses to stay.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore at end-2009 — the most in Asia and up about 40 percent from a year ago.
The Boston Consulting Group estimates private banks alone in Singapore manage about $500 billion in assets. The numbers are dwarfed by the estimated $2 trillion in private wealth managed in Switzerland, but the growth in Singapore is startling, wealth managers say.
“In the last 10-12 years I’ve seen Singapore really take a leadership role in changing the landscape of the wealth management industry,” says Deepak Sharma, chairman of Citi Private Bank.
“The regulatory environment in Singapore is one of the finest. It has one of the best standards in the world, but at the same time, it is consultative. It engages the industry.”
GO EAST YOUNG MAN
The big players, including Swiss giants UBS AG and Credit Suisse who have a global stranglehold on private wealth management, are among those looking East. UBS, usually chary about its plans, says it will hire 400 new staffers in the Asia-Pacific region in the next few years.
Credit Suisse said net new assets from clients in Asia climbed to 11.5 billion Swiss francs in 2009 from 8.4 billion in 2008. In the first six months of this year, net new assets came in at 7.1 billion Swiss francs.
Morgan Stanley plans to double its Asia headcount in wealth management over the next three years, largely focussing on the top end of the market.
JPMorgan Chase & Co plans to triple its private banking assets in Asia over the next five years and plans to increase its headcount in the region by 40 percent over the current 400, a company spokesman in New York said this week.
“I believe Singapore will be the true private banking hub,” said Massimo Hilber, managing partner at private Swiss bank Marcuard who, like Peter, has an office on Duxton Hill. “All the big players are here, and the smaller players like us. You have to be here.”
Why Singapore?
First, assets held by Asia-Pacific’s high net worth individuals – people owning more than $1 million excluding home, collectibles and durables – surged 31 percent in 2009 to $9.7 trillion, overtaking Europe, according to CapGemini/Merrill Lynch.
Second, high net-worth individuals seeking high-return investments are turning to emerging markets. Accordingly, portfolios of such individuals included 22 percent in Asia-Pacific investments in 2009, up from 19 percent in 2008, and will soon overtake Europe, the CapGemini study says.
Many of these changes are focussed on Singapore, which is at the crossroads of new wealth being created in China, India and Indonesia, some of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Singapore, which has the world’s highest concentration of millionaires, is poised to grow its own economy 13-15 percent this year, possibly the fastest rate in the world.
Hong Kong is Asia’s other big financial centre, but tends to focus on investment banking and deal-making in China rather than in the management of private wealth, bankers say.
“Hong Kong probably makes great business sense from an investment banker perspective, but I don’t think it has invested as much in itself in creating a place for families to live,” says Nick Pollard, Asia chief executive of private banker RBS Coutts.
“What Singapore has done very well is that it has almost created a whole infrastructure, not just a place to work, but also a place to live, a place to educate your children, a place to have great fun.”
FINE CITY
Stuffy. Staid. A “fine city” where every minor transgression attracts a fine. Where the sale of chewing gum is banned, and caning is prescribed for offences such as vandalism.
That was, and in some cases still is, Singapore.
But about five years ago, the government launched a concerted effort to change the image. Two casinos sprang up this year at a cost of about $11 billion in a city where gambling had been banned. It’s the only country in the world where the Formula One Grand Prix is held at night.
Singapore impeccably conducted its third F1 race on September 26, with Fernando Alonso winning on a balmy tropical night, driving his Ferrari through 61 laps around the city’s business district.
Top music acts including Mariah Carey, Sean Kingston, Chris Daughtry and Adam Lambert performed at different areas around the circuit. Some of the jet-setting crowd partied after the race at a newly opened rooftop bar at the $5.3 billion Marina Bay Sands casino resort, built by Las Vegas Sands on reclaimed land around the mouth of the Singapore River.
Sentosa island, just offshore Singapore, is being redeveloped as a home for the seriously wealthy, with golf clubs, a sailing marina and sea-facing bungalows priced at $20 million and more. Genting Singapore’s Resorts World casino and Universal Studios theme park opened in February, raking in S$503.5 million in the first three months.
“Rebranding Singapore as a global city and tourism hub fits in very well with its natural advantage, which is its strategic location in the centre of Southeast Asia and good transportation links,” said Kit Wei Zheng, a Citigroup economist.
The aim is simple. Make the city more attractive for high-end foreign talent and wealth. Turn tourism into a money spinner. Focus on services as manufacturing shifts to lower-cost countries in the region. And make it easy for foreigners to work.
It is the latest incarnation of a city that emerged from British colonial rule in the 1960s as a gritty port town. Founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his People’s Action Party — dressed in trademark white shirts and pants — set out to scrub the city clean of corruption in all its manifestations.
By the 1970s, the port had become one of the world’s busiest and was soon complemented by the opening of top-ranked Changi international airport.
By the 1980s, Singapore was a regional manufacturing hub, particularly for electronics. Then it reinvented itself as a financial hub, and by the 1990s was one of the world’s leading centres for foreign exchange trading. A decade ago, the PAP patriarchs began building an education and bio-tech hub.
NUMBER 10
The common denominator for each Singapore incarnation has been to make it easy to do business. Be the fastest shipper, the most proficient manufacturer, the state with the least red tape.
For the Singapore financial industry, that comes from what they call “Number 10″. That’s 10 Shenton Way, not Downing Street but the address represents an institution similarly powerful — the headquarters of MAS, the central bank.
“The regulatory environment is fair as opposed to arbitrary, random and difficult,” says Peter, the fund manager. “The rule of law is incredibly important. This is probably the best-managed country on the planet. It’s managed in a pro-active business-friendly way.”
Funds with less than 30 institutional investors can set up shop without a licence from MAS. While MAS is set to introduce tighter rules next year, Singapore remains one of the easiest jurisdictions for funds to begin operations.
But as regulation is tightened in Europe and the United States following the 2008 financial crisis, and Switzerland responds to concerns about its bank secrecy laws, Singapore, too, has come under the spotlight.
In November, Singapore was taken off the OECD “grey list” of nations not implementing international disclosure standards, but has yet to sign a tax treaty with the United States.
“The business model for private bankers is going to change — they can no longer tell customers just to put their money in Singapore and they will make sure no one ever knows about it,” said Edmund Leow, principal at law firm Baker & McKenzie, Wong & Leow.
“Instead, bankers are already marketing themselves as providing the best advice on how to legitimately minimize the amount of money their customers have to pay in tax.
“This is a global trend. I think Singapore is doing what most other countries are doing and shouldn’t be disadvantaged compared with other wealth management centres.”
RISKS OF REINVENTIONS
Singapore’s seismic reinventions were possible because the government nipped any political opposition in the bud and voters who have seen their per capita incomes grow seven-fold over the years were not inclined to grumble much.
But as Singapore undergoes its latest manifestation as a “global city”, with an ever-mounting proportion of foreign residents crowding the roads and competing for space and jobs, the government is having to soothe escalating criticism from the “heartland”, the sprawl of government housing blocks in the interior of the island where much of the citizenry lives.
Take, for example, Pipit Road, where a public housing compound is set amid factories and warehouses. People there live in tiny one-room apartments and are among the least well-off in Singapore.
Elderly residents shuffle along through corridors to the open area at the ground level, many with vacant stares.
“Look at my life. Do you think I have the time?”, said Seet Siew Buay, a 49-year-old woman when asked if she had seen the casino resorts or heard of the F1 race. “I have to look after them,” she said pointing to a 26-year-old son with learning and speech disabilities and an unemployed common-law husband.
They subsist on the S$300 given to the son each month in welfare, and Wong’s savings from his days as a carpenter. Singapore households earn an average income of S$7,440 a month, according to government statistics, but the bottom 20 percent earn only S$1,274.
There is some anger in the Pipit Road housing block at what is seen as the headlong rush to attract foreign investment and wealth.
“The bloody government will get the money,” said a middle-aged man, who called himself Jack. “We will get nothing. But somehow we still vote for them.”
Having a super-rich pool of foreigners in the city poses the risk of accentuating social tensions. Already, housing prices are rising faster than in the rest of the region. Porsches, Jaguars and Ferraris flash by in the streets. The number of international schools in the city catering mostly to foreigners has risen five-fold in the last decade or so.
The number of overseas workers — mostly for menial and blue collar jobs — has also risen rapidly to around 1.8 million, a figure that also includes foreigners who have become permanent residents. That means one in three people in Singapore is a foreigner, one of the highest such proportions in the world outside the Middle East.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong addressed those rising concerns in his August 9 National Day speech saying that without an inflow of workers to make up for “the shortage of workers and the “shortfall of babies in our population”, the economy and society would stagnate.
“I understand Singaporeans’ concerns about taking in so many foreign workers and immigrants. Some of us wonder: Will it change the ethos of our society? Will it mean more competition for us at work, or for our children in schools? Will the new arrivals strike roots here? Can they adjust to us, and we to them? These are valid concerns which we must address.”
One way to ensure some trickle-down effect from Singapore’s rapid growth is on public spending.
The government plans to spend $44 billion alone in the next decade on extending the commuter rail network to cope with a population projected to grow another 25 percent in the next few years following a 25 percent increase the past decade.
“There is a certain degree of discontent, but it is not brewing over and spilling out into unrest,” said Gerald Giam, an executive councilor of the opposition Workers’ Party. “It is something we need to keep a watch on.”
ST. JACK
Over at Duxton Hill, it’s getting to evening and executives are winding their way home, some hailing a cab, one or two clambering onto bicycles.
It’s still a ribald place around the edges. Some of the old bars still operate. In a few corners, one can almost imagine Jack Flowers, the protagonist of Paul Theroux’s novel “St. Jack” about Singapore in the 1960s, rifling his deck of porno cards in a seedy shophouse doorway and asking a tourist: “Can I get you anything? Anything at all you need?”
For Peter, the fund manager, Singapore has what he needs.
“This place works,” he says, strolling down the cobbled street on Duxton Hill. “Take a look at the airport. In how many countries in the world do you find your luggage on the carousel when you come out? In Geneva, you wait 25 minutes. In the US of A, you worry, will your bags show up?”
Peter, who worked in private banking in Europe and Hong Kong before setting up in Singapore in 2005, is also involved in a chain of wine shops in Singapore, and vineyards in Australia.
On Singapore’s social tensions, he becomes reflective and says: “It’s a new risk that’s worth watching. Is it a big risk? No.” Then reverting to his natural ebullience, he says: “This place has the potential to be Monaco and Luxembourg, and Geneva or even London.”
SINGAPORE - Along a sun-splashed cobblestone street in central Singapore, coatless bankers with loosened ties quaff imported beers in a neighbourhood of gaily painted shophouses called Duxton Hill.
The scene is almost European. And for long-time residents of this Southeast Asian city-state at the crossroads of some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, a bit bemusing. Just a couple of years ago late-night revellers used to tumble out of ill-lit pubs and grimy, illicit brothels on Duxton Hill.
The transformation is a microcosm of the reinventions Singapore has undergone to keep an island with almost no resources and roughly the size of New York City competitive in a neighbourhood of fast-growing emerging markets.
Boutique funds, advisory firms and brokerages are putting down roots in a revamped Duxton Hill, where opium and gambling dens run by Chinese triad gangs flourished last century.
Singapore has attracted hundreds of such firms in the past decade, lured by its light-touch registration requirements and relatively benign regulatory climate, even as Switzerland, the world’s leading wealth manager, gets tougher on bank secrecy.
“Our vision of this place is the Singapore version of London’s West End,” said Ed Peter, 47, a Swiss-born fund manager who has been buying up shophouses in Duxton Hill.
The neighbourhood, in truth, bears little resemblance to London’s theatre district, but it’s also a far cry from its shady past.
“It’s going upmarket. It’s cool. It’s funky,” said Peter, speaking effusively at his office in a three-storey building which housed an Elvis impersonator bar just two years ago. “You’ve got half the financial community here.”
Next door, the raunchy Aristocats pub closed shop a few months ago, providing space for Daun Consulting, a private equity adviser, to expand from its upper-level offices.
Peter, Deutsche Bank’s head of asset management for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa before setting up his own firm in Singapore, manages about $650 million .
The squeaky clean city of 5.1 million, nicknamed the “nanny state” for its propensity for micromanagement, is fast emerging as one of the world’s hottest destinations for wealth — and the wealthy, who now have casinos and theme parks for play, and seaside mansions and penthouses to stay.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore at end-2009 — the most in Asia and up about 40 percent from a year ago.
The Boston Consulting Group estimates private banks alone in Singapore manage about $500 billion in assets. The numbers are dwarfed by the estimated $2 trillion in private wealth managed in Switzerland, but the growth in Singapore is startling, wealth managers say.
“In the last 10-12 years I’ve seen Singapore really take a leadership role in changing the landscape of the wealth management industry,” says Deepak Sharma, chairman of Citi Private Bank.
“The regulatory environment in Singapore is one of the finest. It has one of the best standards in the world, but at the same time, it is consultative. It engages the industry.”
GO EAST YOUNG MAN
The big players, including Swiss giants UBS AG and Credit Suisse who have a global stranglehold on private wealth management, are among those looking East. UBS, usually chary about its plans, says it will hire 400 new staffers in the Asia-Pacific region in the next few years.
Credit Suisse said net new assets from clients in Asia climbed to 11.5 billion Swiss francs in 2009 from 8.4 billion in 2008. In the first six months of this year, net new assets came in at 7.1 billion Swiss francs.
Morgan Stanley plans to double its Asia headcount in wealth management over the next three years, largely focussing on the top end of the market.
JPMorgan Chase & Co plans to triple its private banking assets in Asia over the next five years and plans to increase its headcount in the region by 40 percent over the current 400, a company spokesman in New York said this week.
“I believe Singapore will be the true private banking hub,” said Massimo Hilber, managing partner at private Swiss bank Marcuard who, like Peter, has an office on Duxton Hill. “All the big players are here, and the smaller players like us. You have to be here.”
Why Singapore?
First, assets held by Asia-Pacific’s high net worth individuals – people owning more than $1 million excluding home, collectibles and durables – surged 31 percent in 2009 to $9.7 trillion, overtaking Europe, according to CapGemini/Merrill Lynch.
Second, high net-worth individuals seeking high-return investments are turning to emerging markets. Accordingly, portfolios of such individuals included 22 percent in Asia-Pacific investments in 2009, up from 19 percent in 2008, and will soon overtake Europe, the CapGemini study says.
Many of these changes are focussed on Singapore, which is at the crossroads of new wealth being created in China, India and Indonesia, some of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Singapore, which has the world’s highest concentration of millionaires, is poised to grow its own economy 13-15 percent this year, possibly the fastest rate in the world.
Hong Kong is Asia’s other big financial centre, but tends to focus on investment banking and deal-making in China rather than in the management of private wealth, bankers say.
“Hong Kong probably makes great business sense from an investment banker perspective, but I don’t think it has invested as much in itself in creating a place for families to live,” says Nick Pollard, Asia chief executive of private banker RBS Coutts.
“What Singapore has done very well is that it has almost created a whole infrastructure, not just a place to work, but also a place to live, a place to educate your children, a place to have great fun.”
FINE CITY
Stuffy. Staid. A “fine city” where every minor transgression attracts a fine. Where the sale of chewing gum is banned, and caning is prescribed for offences such as vandalism.
That was, and in some cases still is, Singapore.
But about five years ago, the government launched a concerted effort to change the image. Two casinos sprang up this year at a cost of about $11 billion in a city where gambling had been banned. It’s the only country in the world where the Formula One Grand Prix is held at night.
Singapore impeccably conducted its third F1 race on September 26, with Fernando Alonso winning on a balmy tropical night, driving his Ferrari through 61 laps around the city’s business district.
Top music acts including Mariah Carey, Sean Kingston, Chris Daughtry and Adam Lambert performed at different areas around the circuit. Some of the jet-setting crowd partied after the race at a newly opened rooftop bar at the $5.3 billion Marina Bay Sands casino resort, built by Las Vegas Sands on reclaimed land around the mouth of the Singapore River.
Sentosa island, just offshore Singapore, is being redeveloped as a home for the seriously wealthy, with golf clubs, a sailing marina and sea-facing bungalows priced at $20 million and more. Genting Singapore’s Resorts World casino and Universal Studios theme park opened in February, raking in S$503.5 million in the first three months.
“Rebranding Singapore as a global city and tourism hub fits in very well with its natural advantage, which is its strategic location in the centre of Southeast Asia and good transportation links,” said Kit Wei Zheng, a Citigroup economist.
The aim is simple. Make the city more attractive for high-end foreign talent and wealth. Turn tourism into a money spinner. Focus on services as manufacturing shifts to lower-cost countries in the region. And make it easy for foreigners to work.
It is the latest incarnation of a city that emerged from British colonial rule in the 1960s as a gritty port town. Founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his People’s Action Party — dressed in trademark white shirts and pants — set out to scrub the city clean of corruption in all its manifestations.
By the 1970s, the port had become one of the world’s busiest and was soon complemented by the opening of top-ranked Changi international airport.
By the 1980s, Singapore was a regional manufacturing hub, particularly for electronics. Then it reinvented itself as a financial hub, and by the 1990s was one of the world’s leading centres for foreign exchange trading. A decade ago, the PAP patriarchs began building an education and bio-tech hub.
NUMBER 10
The common denominator for each Singapore incarnation has been to make it easy to do business. Be the fastest shipper, the most proficient manufacturer, the state with the least red tape.
For the Singapore financial industry, that comes from what they call “Number 10″. That’s 10 Shenton Way, not Downing Street but the address represents an institution similarly powerful — the headquarters of MAS, the central bank.
“The regulatory environment is fair as opposed to arbitrary, random and difficult,” says Peter, the fund manager. “The rule of law is incredibly important. This is probably the best-managed country on the planet. It’s managed in a pro-active business-friendly way.”
Funds with less than 30 institutional investors can set up shop without a licence from MAS. While MAS is set to introduce tighter rules next year, Singapore remains one of the easiest jurisdictions for funds to begin operations.
But as regulation is tightened in Europe and the United States following the 2008 financial crisis, and Switzerland responds to concerns about its bank secrecy laws, Singapore, too, has come under the spotlight.
In November, Singapore was taken off the OECD “grey list” of nations not implementing international disclosure standards, but has yet to sign a tax treaty with the United States.
“The business model for private bankers is going to change — they can no longer tell customers just to put their money in Singapore and they will make sure no one ever knows about it,” said Edmund Leow, principal at law firm Baker & McKenzie, Wong & Leow.
“Instead, bankers are already marketing themselves as providing the best advice on how to legitimately minimize the amount of money their customers have to pay in tax.
“This is a global trend. I think Singapore is doing what most other countries are doing and shouldn’t be disadvantaged compared with other wealth management centres.”
RISKS OF REINVENTIONS
Singapore’s seismic reinventions were possible because the government nipped any political opposition in the bud and voters who have seen their per capita incomes grow seven-fold over the years were not inclined to grumble much.
But as Singapore undergoes its latest manifestation as a “global city”, with an ever-mounting proportion of foreign residents crowding the roads and competing for space and jobs, the government is having to soothe escalating criticism from the “heartland”, the sprawl of government housing blocks in the interior of the island where much of the citizenry lives.
Take, for example, Pipit Road, where a public housing compound is set amid factories and warehouses. People there live in tiny one-room apartments and are among the least well-off in Singapore.
Elderly residents shuffle along through corridors to the open area at the ground level, many with vacant stares.
“Look at my life. Do you think I have the time?”, said Seet Siew Buay, a 49-year-old woman when asked if she had seen the casino resorts or heard of the F1 race. “I have to look after them,” she said pointing to a 26-year-old son with learning and speech disabilities and an unemployed common-law husband.
They subsist on the S$300 given to the son each month in welfare, and Wong’s savings from his days as a carpenter. Singapore households earn an average income of S$7,440 a month, according to government statistics, but the bottom 20 percent earn only S$1,274.
There is some anger in the Pipit Road housing block at what is seen as the headlong rush to attract foreign investment and wealth.
“The bloody government will get the money,” said a middle-aged man, who called himself Jack. “We will get nothing. But somehow we still vote for them.”
Having a super-rich pool of foreigners in the city poses the risk of accentuating social tensions. Already, housing prices are rising faster than in the rest of the region. Porsches, Jaguars and Ferraris flash by in the streets. The number of international schools in the city catering mostly to foreigners has risen five-fold in the last decade or so.
The number of overseas workers — mostly for menial and blue collar jobs — has also risen rapidly to around 1.8 million, a figure that also includes foreigners who have become permanent residents. That means one in three people in Singapore is a foreigner, one of the highest such proportions in the world outside the Middle East.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong addressed those rising concerns in his August 9 National Day speech saying that without an inflow of workers to make up for “the shortage of workers and the “shortfall of babies in our population”, the economy and society would stagnate.
“I understand Singaporeans’ concerns about taking in so many foreign workers and immigrants. Some of us wonder: Will it change the ethos of our society? Will it mean more competition for us at work, or for our children in schools? Will the new arrivals strike roots here? Can they adjust to us, and we to them? These are valid concerns which we must address.”
One way to ensure some trickle-down effect from Singapore’s rapid growth is on public spending.
The government plans to spend $44 billion alone in the next decade on extending the commuter rail network to cope with a population projected to grow another 25 percent in the next few years following a 25 percent increase the past decade.
“There is a certain degree of discontent, but it is not brewing over and spilling out into unrest,” said Gerald Giam, an executive councilor of the opposition Workers’ Party. “It is something we need to keep a watch on.”
ST. JACK
Over at Duxton Hill, it’s getting to evening and executives are winding their way home, some hailing a cab, one or two clambering onto bicycles.
It’s still a ribald place around the edges. Some of the old bars still operate. In a few corners, one can almost imagine Jack Flowers, the protagonist of Paul Theroux’s novel “St. Jack” about Singapore in the 1960s, rifling his deck of porno cards in a seedy shophouse doorway and asking a tourist: “Can I get you anything? Anything at all you need?”
For Peter, the fund manager, Singapore has what he needs.
“This place works,” he says, strolling down the cobbled street on Duxton Hill. “Take a look at the airport. In how many countries in the world do you find your luggage on the carousel when you come out? In Geneva, you wait 25 minutes. In the US of A, you worry, will your bags show up?”
Peter, who worked in private banking in Europe and Hong Kong before setting up in Singapore in 2005, is also involved in a chain of wine shops in Singapore, and vineyards in Australia.
On Singapore’s social tensions, he becomes reflective and says: “It’s a new risk that’s worth watching. Is it a big risk? No.” Then reverting to his natural ebullience, he says: “This place has the potential to be Monaco and Luxembourg, and Geneva or even London.”
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Corruption and the importance of financial matters
“How could fraud go undetected in a statutory board over a two-year period?”
That’s the common question asked by Yahoo! Fit-To-Post (FTP) users regarding the two senior Singapore Land Authority (SLA) officers who were charged with committing S$11.8 million fraud.
Koh Seah Wee, 40, a deputy director at SLA’s Technology and Infrastructure Department, is facing 249 fraud charges.
Christopher Lim Chai Meng, 37, a manager in the same department, is suspected to have conspired with Koh to cheat SLA.
The pair allegedly rendered false invoices for bogus maintenance contracts in transactions between January 2008 and March 2010, worth S$11.8 million.
Over 130 comments have been left behind by FTP users with the best-rated one by Esther, who wrote, “Yet another case to prove high pay does not guarantee corruption-free leadership.”
Another FTP user Youlahthan also questioned the level of audits and checks in government departments.
“Our government department has so many checks in place and yet such things happened. What’s going on? Have we become too complacent, as to let our guards down? Or have our “elite” become greedy to begin with?” he said.
Lily32sg agreed: “SLA should have a team of audit personnel’s and they are responsible for such failures. The authorities should also check if the entities/vendors that the contracts have been outsourced to have any investments connected to these 2 fellows.”
Another user KRK27 said, “You mean to say SLA auditors just did not notice S$11.8million amiss somewhere? They just go through the bills and invoices and not the physical worksites for inspection.”
News reports say Koh awarded maintenance contracts to various companies and was responsible of approving payments ranging from S$25,000 to S$60,000 without any work being done to fulfil the contracts.
According to The Straits Times, Koh used his “earnings” to buy his wife Yeing Nyok Sea a S$1.6 million Lamborghini and his mum-in-law, Kok A Mui, a $300,000 Mercedes Benz coupe.
He also invested in property at Axis@Siglap along East Coast Terrace, and well as purchased various unit trusts.
The SLA is a statutory board under the Ministry of Law. Its mission is to optimise land resources for the economic and social development of the country, ensuring the best use of State land and buildings.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, the SLA and the Ministry of Law said cash and assets worth about $10 million have been located and secured so far.
The two officers were said to have conspired with each other and the business entities involved to enable them to circumvent the checks and balances in the processes.
The Law Ministry set up an independent review panel following the matter in June to look into how the irregularities could have taken place.
The Panel was also asked to recommend improvements to SLA’s systems and processes, some of which have already been implemented.
Disciplinary investigations have also been ordered into the actions of two other officers, whose oversight might have allowed the fraud to go undetected.
That’s the common question asked by Yahoo! Fit-To-Post (FTP) users regarding the two senior Singapore Land Authority (SLA) officers who were charged with committing S$11.8 million fraud.
Koh Seah Wee, 40, a deputy director at SLA’s Technology and Infrastructure Department, is facing 249 fraud charges.
Christopher Lim Chai Meng, 37, a manager in the same department, is suspected to have conspired with Koh to cheat SLA.
The pair allegedly rendered false invoices for bogus maintenance contracts in transactions between January 2008 and March 2010, worth S$11.8 million.
Over 130 comments have been left behind by FTP users with the best-rated one by Esther, who wrote, “Yet another case to prove high pay does not guarantee corruption-free leadership.”
Another FTP user Youlahthan also questioned the level of audits and checks in government departments.
“Our government department has so many checks in place and yet such things happened. What’s going on? Have we become too complacent, as to let our guards down? Or have our “elite” become greedy to begin with?” he said.
Lily32sg agreed: “SLA should have a team of audit personnel’s and they are responsible for such failures. The authorities should also check if the entities/vendors that the contracts have been outsourced to have any investments connected to these 2 fellows.”
Another user KRK27 said, “You mean to say SLA auditors just did not notice S$11.8million amiss somewhere? They just go through the bills and invoices and not the physical worksites for inspection.”
News reports say Koh awarded maintenance contracts to various companies and was responsible of approving payments ranging from S$25,000 to S$60,000 without any work being done to fulfil the contracts.
According to The Straits Times, Koh used his “earnings” to buy his wife Yeing Nyok Sea a S$1.6 million Lamborghini and his mum-in-law, Kok A Mui, a $300,000 Mercedes Benz coupe.
He also invested in property at Axis@Siglap along East Coast Terrace, and well as purchased various unit trusts.
The SLA is a statutory board under the Ministry of Law. Its mission is to optimise land resources for the economic and social development of the country, ensuring the best use of State land and buildings.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, the SLA and the Ministry of Law said cash and assets worth about $10 million have been located and secured so far.
The two officers were said to have conspired with each other and the business entities involved to enable them to circumvent the checks and balances in the processes.
The Law Ministry set up an independent review panel following the matter in June to look into how the irregularities could have taken place.
The Panel was also asked to recommend improvements to SLA’s systems and processes, some of which have already been implemented.
Disciplinary investigations have also been ordered into the actions of two other officers, whose oversight might have allowed the fraud to go undetected.
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