we must welcome talent from abroad to create and ...........

[Pen88n]

limlim:

many Town council out source to private companies..


How they choose which agent is.. a mystery..... rem the case where the committee member of some TC is the stake holder of the appointed agent or the like.. etc..

talking about conflict of interest.... anyway, that is a bit OT..

Hence, it would not be surprising if the agent is some private company..

This is an area where I really have \"a bone to pick\"!

I personally felt that in a country, there are basic \"infrastructure\" that should be provided by the government (the country as a whole should support this), and not \"outsourced\" to private commercial entities through \"privatisation\". Once \"privatised\", it will become a profit-making business and the concern will be to cover operating cost. Many of our basic infrastructure has been \"privatised\", resulting in rising cost of living. Eg. transportation, healthcare, even housing (with the new EC, etc.) and education (look at the number of independent schools though there are some scholarship to support fees!). If this trend continues, I do not doubt the need to continue raising the retirement age in order to continue supporting ourselves.

[limlim]

insider:

MOM, if really serious about enforcing minimum conditions stated in the Employment Act, should lay heavy penalties on employers who exploit workers. A good punishment will be to ban such errant employers from employing any foreign workers and levy a hefty fine of for example, 12 - 24 months of a worker's salary. Think the current penalty is too light and so people bochup... (I have a friend who used to be a principal and was sacked with no good reasons during her pregnancy. She complained to MOM and MOM simply asked the boss to pay her the benefits she was entitled to and that was all! That was not a punishment at all. No wonder some bosses are trying to be funny...)

Like that, to the employer, is like, worst case, pay what they're supposed to pay. Or maybe they could get away with it. There's no \"penalty\" at all!!..

So sick..

[limlim]

Pen88n:

This is an area where I really have \"a bone to pick\"!

I feel that whether the govt body outsource or not is not so big issue..

The real issue is \"conflict of interest\". There must be safeguard in place to prevent our CPF money from being indiscriminately squandered away..

If there is proper procedure to follow and they pick the most \"value for money\" agents, that is okay.. it might result in better efficiency.

But the big problem is \"conflict of interest\", and the appointment agent is not only NOT \"value for money\" but chop the govt dept like carrot.. like the recent case of overcharging of the police force.

That is crime against the pple....

[Oppsgal]

verykiasu2010:

the team of doctors that rushed to help Haiti from Singapore was led by a malaysian who is a PR here, and the team's expenses - which was paid by themselves - was probably more than the US$50k the SG gov't donated

Wonder they help singaporeans first?

[verykiasu2010]

Oppsgal:

verykiasu2010:

the team of doctors that rushed to help Haiti from Singapore was led by a malaysian who is a PR here, and the team's expenses - which was paid by themselves - was probably more than the US$50k the SG gov't donated

Wonder they help singaporeans first?

they help anyone there

i doubt any singaporeans there at the time of the earthquake

this team always the first out there in many of the recent disasters

(not every one in the team is from City Harvest)

[kiddo]

insider:

limlim:

Like that, to the employer, is like, worst case, pay what they're supposed to pay. Or maybe they could get away with it. There's no \"penalty\" at all!!..

So sick..

I think the problem is we don't have the collective statistics of these local workers who are suffering. We only manage to hear from one case here and one case there and when these cases are presented to Ah Gong, Ah Gong may say this is an 'isolated' case and that it is the exception than the norm and concludes that 'Singaporean workers are well protected under the Employment Act'. (typical reply. Can never forget when one of the Heads of MCYS rebutted me firmly / fiercely that there were sufficient preschool teachers in Singapore coz the statistics were in her hands when I feedback about lack of teachers here. She seemed like standing high up there looking down at me, wanting to give me a feeling that \"I know everything and you know nothing and so you don't make noise\". Now, they have to eat back their words by relaxing certain qualifications required for preschool teachers coz market is simply so acutely short of teachers. Really how come their foresight is so bad that only know how to put up big and bigger plans that cannot be executed???)

The next GE is worth waiting for. Sparks are here and there and it's just a matter of time that it will turn into a big fire... (four voices in my house are ready to cast our votes to tell Ah Gong that we don't want progress and prosperity if these GDP growth numbers do not bring happiness for most Singaporeans in general...)

All this while, I am against privatising some basic social services and one of course is childcare under PAP/PCF/etc, who is now collaborating with bigger brand name to charge higher fees. Instead of improving the quality of their core childcare services , they are collaborating with external party to further divide the children into 'low/regular class' and 'high/higher class'. Why can't they work on their existing services to ensure that most kids have a similar start in life at a good subsidised rate (that all kids should be entitled to)? Our reserve definitely should be sufficient to give our young ones a quality preschool ed at good subsidised rates instead of maybe still trying to make money at higher fees by collaborating with brand names?????

Ah Gong's calculator is definitely different from a normal citizen like me...

In a common man's words,

My poor lowly educated brother and my brother'S children
have no hope of a chance in life in SG unless my brother
have someone in the Ivory Tower to open the door for him :slapshead:

[Oppsgal]

kiddo:

In a common man's words,

My poor lowly educated brother and my brother'S children
have no hope of a chance in life in SG unless my brother
have someone in the Ivory Tower to open the door for him :slapshead:

Have to try to be in low or high income family to survive :?

[Oppsgal]

WCW:

wow... new talent from Vietnam...

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/vietnamese-prostitutes-openly-prowl-chinatown.html

http://forums.asiaone.com/showthread.php?t=44011