Dear Singaporeans,We will primarily speak against the high influx of foreigners as their presence has affected basic infrastructure resulting in congested malls, over crowded eating places and jam-packed MRT trains.
The general feeling right now for Singaporeans is that the country has being invaded with too many people and the government has always laid the blame on us for not reproducing enough.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew has this to say when he addressed the crowd at Tanjong Pagar GRC and Radin Mas SMC Chinese New Year celebration dinner: “It is a choice Singapore cannot afford to make. Like it or not, unless we have more babies, we need to accept immigrants.” (Today 4 Feb).
Our question to the government is: What have they done so far for Singaporeans to help us reproduce more?
Nothing much actually…besides the baby bonus given to new births amounting to a mere couple of thousand dollars – they have not provide the country with any new ideas so that married couples will readily reproduce.
We all know how meagre our wages have being all along and during the past decade it has only grew a mere 0.3% whereas inflation ploughs on at an average of about 3% yearly.
Couples all love to have children but they know that they can’t afford to have more kids and the government is not ready to offer any tangible assistance.
Moreover, more significantly, foreign talents coming over to work here via the Employment Pass (EP) have competed head on with our local PMETs for jobs.
We also heard from many of our readers that bosses in MNCs tend to hire back their own people for simple jobs like secretaries and administrators – work that Singaporeans can also do.
In some extreme cases, our local workers were squeezed out of the work places by foreigners as ironically they form the minority workers in the work force and faced all sorts of intimidation tactics.
There are also several emails we received highlighting to us that foreigners are paid much more in salary remuneration even when the work duties are the same as the local workers.
This is upsetting as we see our foreign expats earning one of the highest salary package in Asia.
According to HSBC Expat Explorer Survey 2010, 45% of expats earned more than $265, 000 (US$200, 000) in Singapore.
According to the survey report, Singapore is ranked 1st by the proportion of expats who make more $200k USD a year. Bermuda is 2nd with 40% of its expats in the same income bracket. Hong Kong is 3rd with 36%, and Saudi Arabia a close 4th with 35%.
Besides the influx of foreign workers, we also want to speak out against age-bias discriminatory hiring practice which has forced many experienced well-educated PMETs to drive cabs or become property agents in order to ekk out a living.
The lack of a proper income for many middle-aged PMETs has indirectly affected marriages here resulting in a sky-high divorce rate.
As many as one in three marriages will result in a divorce.
We want the government to impose certain sanctions on companies who blatantly advertise for younger workers.
Lastly, we also want to speak out against the government’s slogan of paying top dollar for top talent.
We have seen recently how our two ex-chiefs working with SCDF and CNB were broght down in disgrace due to a sex scandal.
We agreed that top civil servants should be adequately compensated but not to a level that allows complacency and eliticism to creep into the system.
If you feel strongly about the mentioned issues, do come out and support our event.
We always believe that Singaporeans should be more united and this is a chance for you to show your solidarity.
We will also only organise such events quarterly now so don’t miss the chance to show to the government how you feel.
Singapore for Singaporeans!
Gilbert Goh
Event organiser
