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With all the cultural baggage that surrounds sex work, it can be hard for many people to focus on the ‘work’ part of sex work. But sex workers, like any other wage-earner, also grapple with decisions and concerns about their job-related welfare.

This was the approach social worker Wong Yoke Leng took when she spoke about sex workers in Geylang during AWARE’s August 18 Roundtable Discussion.

Wong works for Project X, which was started in 2008 to improve the welfare of sex workers. Its volunteers work the ground at Geylang to provide assistance to sex workers in need of aid such as subsidies for medical care.

After the General Election (GE) in May this year, the Prime Minister convened the ministerial salary review committee to relook the pay cheques of ministers.

The issue has been a regular thorn in the government's side - even after its initial implementation in 1994 whereby salaries for civil servants were pegged to those in the private sector.

The prime minister himself, for example, is paid some S$3.76 million a year, making him by far the highest-paid head of government in the world.

Christmas is just around the corner. This could also mean that the size and the price tag of Christmas presents for your friends, family and yourself is pretty much determined by how FAT your bonus is and how much pay increment you are going to get. If you are a business owner your thoughts would center on how much you are going to give.

In a panel discussion last week, the Workers’ Party Youth Wing (WPYW) floated the idea of a youth parliament in Singapore, where young people with a stake in the future of their country come together to form an assembly of sorts and debate the issues of the day.

The panel members were David Chua Zhi Hon, 25; Executive Committee Member, Liane Ng Lijuan, 24; and Organising Secretary Sandeep Singh, 23. The forum was moderated by 26-year-old Secretary, Bernard Chen.