It is interesting to read about the debate on that magic
number, 6.9m, as population of Singapore.
Interesting not in the least because I myself am an import - the result
of the early stages of the policy currently being debated - as I was given a
scholarship to study here in Singapore (I swear I made no sex videos nor did I
disparage Singaporeans by calling them names).
A GLC was made to do national service to pay for my education, so I did
not burden the tax payer. I interned
with the organisation that sponsored my studies where my reporting manager for
some reason singled me out amongst my cohort while explaining that the ultimate
hope was that we would sink our roots here.
"Maybe one day you will marry locally and become a dutiful
wife," I recall him saying.
Although to date, I can't confirm if it was beautiful or dutiful - I
bristled at both adjectives. Well, I did
marry, became a citizen and have two Singaporean children who proudly hang
their flag out, come August. My son discusses the anticipated NS with his
friends in school. My daughter recently
declared for a planeload of passengers to hear as we touched down at Changi,
"I LOVE Singapore!”
Yet even I am beginning to feel there are too many
foreigners in Singapore. Without
offending the PRs whom I count as my friends - while I rejoice that GV now
shows Hindi movies, I am also alarmed when I hear so much Hindi in Raffles
Link, I have to remind myself I am not back in Pune. I too was enraged by the Chinese service
staff at a Subway who scowled at me - presumably because she could not
understand what I was asking for and I was not speaking Mandarin. While some of my friends who are PRs feel a
little miffed (ok, postively enraged) at the almost xenophobic tone this
discourse seems to take at times - the point I am trying to make is, if a
naturalised citizen like me can feel this way - try and view it from the point
of view of a Singaporean. This view
point is what the government needs to be cognizant of too.
What saddens me the most is the way the government has
introduced this whole debate. It seems
to me that it is a major PR debacle and I cannot wrap my head around the fact
that the best and brightest of the land could not foresee it. Firstly, the PM had only 20 months ago apologized
to the electorate for getting things wrong on matters pertaining to housing and
transportation vis-à-vis the virtual explosion in population. Clearly, this white paper could have been
presented as a blue print to address the issues that arose from that mis-step
on the government’s part and to highlight that they have also learnt from their
past mistakes and have now incorporated a plan to anticipate future population
growth. This is what every Minister is
now trying to repeatedly convince us of – why then lead with the 6.9m number?
Had they not lead with the number, Singaporeans could well have recognized the
need for a number for planning purposes and would have then put the number in
perspective and focused on the real news that there will be a concerted effort
to ease transport and housing woes.
There are two conclusions I can draw from this – the government and our
mandarins in the Civil Service are so woefully lacking in EQ that they could
only think of this White Paper as a means of CYA (cover your a**, in corporate
parlance) in case the population does hit the target they used for planning
purposes. In that scenario, they could say – I know Singapore is very crowded
and trains are congested, but I already told you in 2013 that we are probably
growing to 6.9m. So live with it. The
other, which most people would like to believe, is that the government has
already decided that 6.9m is the target for 2030 (planning purposes, my a**,
they might add sotto voce). Planning for infrastructure development while simultaneously
increasing the load on it sounds to Singaporeans very much like business as
usual despite the sound bites of "We understand your pain." Both
conclusions point to a severe disconnect between the government and the
citizens of Singapore which cannot be good for the country.
The next issue that arises is of the perennial bogeyman of
economic decline should immigration policies be tightened. Even mothers stop threatening their kids with
the imaginary Pontianak when the child is older. What I am dismayed about is that I am told
time and again that if we curbed immigration then wages would go up, costs
would increase and businesses would suffer.
Singapore’s economy would stagnate and even decline and we would all be
doomed. ST tells me of the numerous
Chambers of Commerce that have written to protest curbs in importation of
foreign labour. Khaw Boon Wan threatens
that should an increase in the foreign labour quota not be increased – then the
200,000 flats promised will not be built.
Who will suffer then, he asks?
Ok, lets analyse this. Firstly,
everybody recognizes that foreign labour is required for certain sectors like
construction. Can one not believe that despite
a cap on foreign labour the flats could still be built, if priority was given
to allocating work permits to the sectors that require them? Could we not believe that it should be made
more difficult for retailers to hire Chinese salesgirls (even though I have met
some lovely ones in my shopping experiences) who are cheaper than Singaporean
salesgirls? Yes, the business will
suffer due to the higher costs of hiring the Singaporean – but is it ok for the
Singaporean salesgirl to not find a job that pays her a decent wage so that the
Singaporean retail business can continue to profit? What are the other cost factors that are
impeding this Singaporean retail business from hiring a higher cost local? High
rents? Cost of training staff? Productivity lags? How can we alleviate these
expenses to make it possible for the Singaporean company to pay the higher wage
and yet continue to flourish? I feel I
have not been given enough information on the alternatives and why they need to
be discarded, for me to make an informed decision to support the government.
Here we need to acknowledge the fact the while we have
fanciful schemes, I am not sure how far these schemes trickle down to the intended
targets. We
cannot expect that just because we have these schemes they will reach the
intended target and thereby work. What
is being done to improve productivity amongst SMEs and given the fact that they
have largely operated independent of government aid thus far – what is being
done to reach out them? Please give me
more information on these matters, so that I am convinced that enough is being
done to address alternatives – and despite that, I need to support the 6.9m
number. Otherwise, one can only be
reminded of how during the hustings Minister Mah Baw Tan repeatedly assured us that
there was sufficient housing to meet Singaporean demand – yet his successor
admitted to exactly the opposite and is now on a drive to provide housing to
meet pent up demand. Am I to always
believe that the government has got it right, in face of facts telling me
otherwise? Mind you, I am not saying
that I do not think this government can’t get it right – but there has to be
some effort to win back my unwavering trust.
Let’s talk about MNCs and the impact wage increases will
have on them. Companies have been
leaving Singapore steadily, despite our attempts to keep wages down through
import of cheaper labour. Can we
effectively stem this tide? Apart from
labour we have become an expensive locale with respect to other costs as
well. Once tax holidays and other
incentives expire, it would be foreseeable that these MNCs would move to the
source of this cheap labour we keep trying to import. Should we have not anticipated this trend to
re-align our strategy about what industries attract and what type of incentive
structures we provide them? Is it not
analogous to the housing scenario of we know what we are doing, there is
nothing to be changed. Trying to feed MNCs through a tap of cheap labour is a
strategy that is bound to fail at some time in the future – unless we keep subsidizing
their operations with tax credits and other incentives. Why can’t this spend be used to give credits
to SMEs to employ more Singaporeans at higher wages?
The other trend in MNCs and major companies is the
importation of foreign talent at higher levels – in increasing numbers than the
cheap labour that has been discussed previously. While acknowledging the irony of me being one
such “foreign talent” imported into Singapore and trying not to alienate my PR
friends who possibly fall in this category, let me try and make my point. Some banks in Singapore are known to be
literally teeming with PRs from the Indian sub-continent – so much so that
hiring managers at one point were given instructions not to hire from that
demography to ensure diversity. I can’t
help but wonder if there really is such serious lack of talent in Singapore
that these banks cannot function without importing PRs to do Relationship
Management jobs. I have great respect
and admiration for the intelligence and drive of the people from the
sub-continent, but really before their entry en masse into the Singaporean
banking scene – it was on the strength of work done by Singaporeans within and
outside the banking industry that made Singapore attractive for banks to locate regional/global offices here. So what changed – why did the talent that was
present in Singapore before suddenly vanish?
Ok, let’s say the advent of a new global era for the banks required
talent that was hitherto absent amongst Singaporeans. Does that mean that Singaporeans are not even
trainable in this arena – that for the 20 years that these banks have operated in Singapore they could not have a structured training program to
ensure that there is a big enough pool of Singaporeans to fill these positions at
potentially lower cost than an expatriate and to reduce reliance on imported,
even if top notch, talent. Perhaps the argument is that global operations need multicultural talent - agreed. But why is there a surfeit of non Singaporeans in country level positions in these banks? This might be
a contentious point, but I can’t help but empathise with some people who lament
that hiring often gets done on cliquish lines – because of course, comfort and
the lack of cultural differences might make it easier for birds of a feather to
flock together. While I do not wish to
paint of picture of a conspiracy of sub-continental takeover – one does wonder
if enough is being done to show no suitable Singaporean exists for a job and on
lines of what Inderjit Singh mentioned – it should be made mandatory for the
companies to start doing so.
There are difficult issues to be settled in this regard - no
one is denying that. My husband
describes how it is difficult to hire Singaporeans to work in the building
materials industry - despite the offer of higher wages. They even approached former convicts under
the Yellow Ribbon project - who declined these jobs. Some objections are as frivolous as
"Wah, the place so ulu one. I don't want to travel so far to work."
But can this be a reason for us to perennially turn to foreign labour to bridge
the gap? My husband says yes, no
choice. But would a better transport
network eliminate this frivolous excuse of insurmountable distance. Maybe Sugei Kadut IS really difficult to
travel to from Tampines - hence maybe the objection is valid.
Have we really examined the underlying reasons for people's
lack of interest in certain jobs - apart from the expedient one of Singaporeans
are spoilt and lazy and do not have fire in their belly.
Clearly
there will be trade-offs and discomfort if policy decisions were realigned - but the current
argument seems to the citizenry to be that - "Look everything else will be
too painful for businesses and our economic growth - so ultimately it’s you lot that needs to bear with higher cost of
housing and the great MRT rush hour crush."
For the average Singaporean who is being jostled at the
Jurong East train platform as he rushes back to the home he can barely afford,
to coach his child with the homework which the tuition centre that he sends her
to doles out in addition to her school work, it seems to be too high a price to
pay. He will naturally get more ‘spoilt’
as he is not certain he sees the effects of the GDP growth he is expected to
make this sacrifice for reach him as directly as it does the PR he possibly reports to. Who, by a virtue of the fact that he is a
higher educated import, earns more and lives in a condominium and he sends his
son to an international school on a long term visit visa so that he has the
option to send him back to his home country before the NS call comes
through. Or the housewife, who when her
child is in full time school wants that sales assistant job, but merely due to
the fact that she needs to be paid CPF she is more expensive. I say this not to paint people, Singaporeans
and non-Singaporeans alike, as evil, good, nasty, lazy, stupid etc – but just
to say that sometimes one needs to try and understand where the frustration
comes from. In formulating policies, as
much as policies need to be intelligent, the government needs to understand the
frustration of the populace. And maybe
sometimes the government needs to make hard decisions to set aside its
cherished KPIs – to listen. As Inderjit
Singh said in his speech, maybe the government needs to take a breather. There may be hardships that arise from this
breather, but maybe Singaporeans would then feel that they are valued enough in
this country to work hard, to innovate – to look for that fire that their
fathers and grandfathers had to bring the country to where it is right
now. Today they probably feel merely as
tools to meet the KPIs of Singapore Inc. If we cannot compete with NY or London as a
top notch city if we did this, perhaps we need to reconsider Ngiam Tong Dow’s
words to even review if we want to compete with the top tier cities in the first
place. http://newshub.nus.edu.sg/news/1301/PDF/HYPE-st-12jan-pD17.pdf
I say this also
because my experience of Singapore has been a pleasant one. I have never
felt unwelcome here. I would like to believe that when
Singaporeans complain about the influx of foreigners they do so because they
are tired of not being listened to.
