Letters

Archives - 2001

Help Animals, Help Ourselves! - Dec 15
Local and Foreign Talent , be clear - Nov 11
Dial "6" for trouble - Oct 4
The Water Deal - Sept 14
On Ellis' Letter - Sept 1
Cool it on those IPO Prices - Aug 28
The Dragon Moves - Aug 27
American Learn Chinese? - Aug 26
Save Our Children - Aug 22
House-building - Aug 21
Cars as aid? - Aug 21
School Rankings: Govt should stay out of it. - Aug 21

Re: Will NZ-Aust merge one day? - Aug 21
A Not So Perfect 10 - Aug 2
Hey, You're Blocking My View! - Jun 14
Re: Media - A Gulf of Two Values - Mar 3

 

Help Animals, Help Ourselves!
Dear Editor,
I feel I must write to you about this.
Something I saw recently struck me how little contact our children have with domestic animals, and as a result their understanding is shrouded in fear and prejudice.
Two weeks ago when I was having breakfast at a hawker centre I saw a girl, no more than 12 or 13 years old, run away from a cat and hid behind her mother.
The creature was just walking across her path. She reacted like she saw a tiger on the loose.
It was ridiculous for a girl of that age to be fearful of a cat. Instead of explaining to her that there was nothing to be afraid of, her mother shooed the cat away which will not help her to grow up.
My daughter later told me this was not unusual. Many of her friends would react the same way when they encounter pets, including puppies.
Can't say I blame them. Singaporean kids are raised without any interaction with domestic animals because we are an urban society with limited space.
Here of course there are no farms only HDB estates which forbids pets. Many of them have rarely touched or cuddled a puppy in their lives.
Only a small number of people keep pets. They cost money and more important time and effort to look after.
That probably explains why the girl panicked when a cat came near her. The fact is our children have never been raised to love animals and I think we should.
This is so unlike children in the West, who are taught love to love animals and to keep pets, rabbits, white mice, squirrels - not to mention cats and dogs, which are treated as part of the family.
Worse still, this fear often spills over into hatred.
This is why we have so many newspaper reports about teenagers pouring with hot water on stray cats or throwing helpless puppies from high-rise buildings.
Some primary schools do a marvellous job of teaching by keeping their own pets' corners that include domestic animals including chickens and ducks. Children are taught to look after them and nourish them.
My friend's daughter once came home crying because one of the rabbits died.
This should be made mandatory as part of their education and growing up and should start from kindergarten.
Candice Hieu
Dec 15, 2001

"Local and Foreign Talent -
Let's Be Clear and Honest"
It seems there can possibly never be a last word in this "foreign talent" debate.
The debate has progressed only slightly despite explanation by the relevant Ministries. Meanwhile, the following points are made time and time again:
First, the need for a holistic analysis of the contributions of foreign talent.
Second, a direct comparison between the contributions of foreign and local talent.
Third, the difficulty in striking a balance between foreign and local talent.
Fourth, be wary of this debate escalating into a prejudiced and heated dispute with xenophobic undertones.
Fifth, never preach "greater understanding and tolerance of foreign talent" without ever clarifying assumptions and justifications made.
While the clarifications by the government have been helpful, it side steps the controversial content. The crux of this issue is simply this: In certain areas of life in Singapore, Singaporeans are simply not good enough, or good Singaporeans are simply not enough.
To adequately address this issue, this statement should be made, and be made resoundingly clear.
Thereafter, the following must be done:
One, identify and acknowledge specifically these shortcomings of our local citizenry.
Two, establish and define specifically the "gaps" where "talent" is needed, and where our locals are not up to scratch, or are insufficient.
Three, justify how they have ascertained these foreigners to be capable of filling up these "talent gaps".
Four, explain how, despite this policy, steps are being taken to ensure our locals are able to close these "talent gaps".
It's a bitter pill to swallow.
The time has come, given these concerns over the foreign talent policy, for Singaporeans to come to concrete terms with: what they have and what they lack. What they have so far not been capable of. What they may never be capable of. What we need to hire foreigners to do.
This reconciliation effort must be similarly reciprocated and guided by clear and honest statements by our policy makers.
Try we all must to reach consensus and reconciliation.
Over forty years of progress and prosperity has seen an electorate that is considerably more educated, vocal and demanding of explanation. This is a consequence inevitable in any progressive society.
A society mindful of the need to progress economically and culturally, and wary of the detriment caused by myopic concerns, must at the same time admit its weaknesses and ineptitudes, and take this admittance in its stride.
It is no bad thing. There is neither a loss of face nor even a smidgen of self-respect in doing this.
Realising in specific and concrete terms what we do not have, and what we must do, will spur us on to work - intelligently - harder towards more defined goals. This is a trait much needed in a modern society, and is especially vital when times are bad.
Assuaging public concerns can be simply a matter of revealing the truth. When there are too many doubts, the tendency is to fear the worst. Assuaging these fears makes for a restoration of public confidence - confidence badly needed when times are bad.
CHENG SHING CHOW
Nov 11, 2001

Dial "6" for trouble
In an interview aired this morning on Radio 93.8, the president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprise (ASME) complained that Singapore Telecom, in giving notice that all numbers of fixed-line telephones will have a "6" added in front by March next year, is not giving enough time for her member companies to make the change.
At a time like this when our economy is in a longer-than-expected recession, when the government worries that layoffs can exceed the numbers caused by the Asian economic crisis only three years ago, when companies worry about sales, margins, competition, foreign imports, shorter product cycles, survival, etc -- she spends time on this matter of the additional digit on the telephone number.
Where is her priority? Or is the association in a happy state of having so few important issues to grapple with that its president can find time to direct her energy on this problem?
She went on to say that ideally Singtel should give 12 months notice instead of the present five months.
If SME member companies need that much time for this problem, how have they been coping with the rigours of the marketplace? And how is the association helping them cope with the many other more pressing problems of staying in business without losing their reason for being?
Loke Koon
Oct 4, 2001

The Water Deal
The deal between Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Mahathir Mohamad stirs some discomforting thoughts.
1. I took offence with Dr. Mahathir's statement that there would be no cutting off of water to Singapore. This implies there would be the possibility of a cut had there been no agreement on the rates.
The Malaysians must be made to understand that water is a natural resource which must be shared among all human beings.
2. The Malaysians' demand for higher rate before the current agreement expires in 2011 means they're reneging on an existing agreement.Moreover the new rate that they're asking for represent a 15-fold increase from 3 sen (per 1,000 gallons.)
Even if one allows for a 100 per cent depreciating of the ringgit against the $-Sing this new rate cannot justify charging more than 6 sen.
If the opposite was true and it was the $-dollar which had dropped by 100 per cent, would they have allowed Singapore to halve the water rate? I'm sure they would not.
Since the Singapore government has agreed in principle to 45 sen, I think it is a very generous offer, although unsupportable in logic. We would just have to accept this compromise package.
The crux of this water issue has to be made clear: Water is a life-sustaining matter which should never be financially exploited by countries which have excess of it against those which do not.
One example is this: some 10 countries share the world's longest River Nile. Can the countries dam up the upper reaches to sell water to those nations on the lower parts of the river? Similarly, Canada which controls the source of all the rivers flowing into the USA cannot insist on commercialising this resource.
Ultimately, all humans are obliged to share this natural resource.Therefore the new condition that it be renegotiated once every five years after 2060 is unacceptable.
3. Dismantling causeway for a bridge.
Singapore has a moral obligation to agree in order to help Malaysia develop its Pasir Gudang Port. We should not impede their right to progress even if it means losing some PSA (Port of Singapore Authority) business to Pasir Gudang after the causeway goes.
4. Railway land. Malaysia has an obligation to to return the railway land in exchange for a prime piece of reclaimed land at Marina South. This arrangement also benefits KTM (Malaysian Railways), giving it a big financial boost for its modernisation. At the same time, we can also make better use of this narrow strip of railway land from Keppel to Kranji.
All said and done, this package will benefit bilateral ties and boost the Asean spirit.
Liu Jie Sen
Sept 14, 2001

On Ellis' Letter 1/9
Dear Editor,
This is in response to Eric Ellis' recent letter about globalised and liberal Australia.
Mr. Ellis says Australia has embraced the global game much more than Singapore. (entitled Will NZ-Aust merge one day? 4th point) To prove his point he implies that Australia has a fairly open foreign investment regime. He says the "Sydney Morning Herald, even if it wanted to, could not arrive and set up a competitor to the Straits Times in Singapore" and through clever choice of phrase goes on to suggest that in case SPH group tried to take over an Australian newspaper they might find a level-playing field, though not in so many words.
Nothing could be further from the truth. First, let us take the broader foreign investments regime.
Buying a house in Australia or buying land for the purpose of building a house (not an apartment block) is not easy for foreigners, unless you want to develop the land almost immediately. Buying middle-class landed property or small piece of land by foreigners in most parts of Australia is practically impossible.
There are so many restrictions and that Australian lawyers tell me it is just not worth even trying. Though it is true that for foreigners inner city apartments and multi-million dollar homes are and have always been relatively easy to purchase.
Foreign corporate investments can be even bigger headache unless you know the true Australian meaning of the words "national security". Earlier this year, the oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell made a takeover bid to buy up a bigger majority interest in Woodside, Australia's largest independent oil and gas company in which it already had a 34% stake. Indeed, Shell had help start Woodside and built the company to where it is today. Shell's contribution to Australian economy is probably at par with biggest Australian companies and it remains one of biggest corporate taxpayers in Australia. But all that was forgotten in the name of "national security".
On the contrary, Singapore welcomes people like Mr. Ellis with open arms if they want to buy a house or a piece of land with the purpose of building a house on it one fine day. It is in Singapore where land is scarce, not Australia. And Mr. Ellis might take note that our Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong will never block the sale of one of the many oil refineries in Singapore to an Australian investor on grounds of "national security" even though Singapore has no natural resources like oil or gas and has a fairly large oil and petrochemical sector.
As for media investments, Mr. Ellis might recall that in the late 80s, a Malaysian company, MUI, was thwarted in its attempt to buy the Perth daily, The West Australian, even though it was paying top dollar for its controlling stake. More recently, in the mid 90s Canadian tycoon Conrad Black was unable to increase his minority stake in the Fairfax group.Black sold the Fairfax stake in 1996 to Brierley Investments, a company controlled by Malaysian tycoon Quek Leng Chan. Brierley too was unable to raise its stake in Fairfax and was forced to sell it to an Australian trust. It's not just Canadians and Malaysians who can't seem to make much headway in media investments Down Under.
Rupert Murdoch, one of Australia's own sons, who was forced to acquire U.S. citizenship and give up his Australian passport because the law required it, still can't own a TV network in Australia even though he has made a huge contribution to Australian economy over the last few decades. This despite the fact that Australia has since changed its immigration rules and it is now legal for a person to have dual Australian and U.S. citizenships. Mr. Murdoch has said he wants to apply for one, if Australia would treat him as an Australian citizen. Or in other words, let him invest in a local TV network.
Globalised Australia, liberal foreign investment regime and Australian media industry's open access to foreign controlling shareholders are mere ideas, still as far fetched as anything.
Yours Sincerely,
Fair Dinkum
Sept 1, 2001

The Dragon Moves
Dear Editor,:
Singapore's economy is turning from bad to worse. Take a look at the latest factory production figures put out by the Economic Development Board.
Industrial Output fell for the fourth month running in July -- down a whopping 13.2 percent year-on-year. Production in the electronics industry, which makes up half of Singapore's manufacturing, actually dropped 32.7 percent in July from a year earlier, compared with a 26.2 percent decline in June.
Yes, read that again, down 32.7 percent.
That means most factories that were 100% of capacity are now running 67%. Since most electronics factories were on average actually running at around 70 to 75% of capacity last year, this fall means that idle capacity in Singapore electronics sector is today more than half.
Imagine, one of the most efficient producers of electronics manufacturing running at less than half of capacity! Little wonder then that companies like 3Com and STMicroelectronics are either shutting down all their plants in Singapore or scaling back dramatically.
What's gone wrong? It's easy to point fingers at the ultra-speculative tech bubble which we all know "had" to burst and the huge inventory overhang in Electronics sector that must be run down.
Those are factors that Singapore has to worry about, no doubt. But a bigger problem is that huge Dragon called China that is adding electronics capacity -- everything from semiconductor assembly to chip packaging as well as more sophisticated foundry work -- so fast as if there is no tomorrow.
Unlike Singapore or Malaysia, China has a huge internal demand for these components -- it is already the biggest cellular phone market in the world and second biggest market for PCs in the world not to talk about TVs and othjer home electronics. Moreover, it can make everything cheaper.
The more capacity is added in China the less relevant Singapore's electronics industry and for that matter electronics sector in
neighbouring China will become.
The sooner Singapore and its neighbours wake up to China threat and do something about their economy the better it would be for the region and its people.
L.T. Chan
Aug 27, 2001

Cool it on those IPO Prices
Dear LittleSpeck,
I take my hats off to SingTel's outgoing Chairman Koh Boon Hwee who made some bold and daring remarks the other day about the company's IPO nine years ago. Mr. Koh was quoted as saying that the IPO was done at very high valuations and has been the main reason why SingTel shareholders have seen mostly downside for their stock. I know some people are asking : Why did Koh take nine years to admit that? Why didn't he apologise to small shareholders who have loyally held on their SingTel stock all these
years?
But I guess all that is besides the point. I believe Koh's candour should be applauded. Singapore is a capitalist country and doing an IPO at inflated prices is and should be fair game.
SingTel shareholders who bought overvalued shares and stuck to them have only themselves to blame. They should have done their homework and found out years ago that the IPO was at too high valuations (p/e of around 55) and world's love affair with dominant telcos was long over.
If I am not wrong I believe a key objective of SingTel's IPO was to boost local retail participation in equity market and give Singapore citizens and permanent residents a stake in their own corporate icons.
Most of us received cheap loyalty shares. The government has no shortage of companies that it wants to list on the local bourse and I believe is indeed serious about increasing citizens stake in the corporate pie.
Moreover, government divestment will also help increase Singapore's weighting in MSCI indices and encourage bigger flow of funds from overseas.
The reason MSCI reduced Singapore's weightings in its global indices this year was that with Temasek owning such huge chunk of everything, the real free float of key stocks like DBS, SIA, Chartered Semicon, SingTel, ST Engineering, CapitaLand etc, in the market was very small.
But to me the big issue, highlighted in the aftermath of Koh's remarks, is ultimately retail investor's confidence. Stocks go up and go down. People lose money and make money in the market all the time. Unless retail investors have confidence in the system they might be less willing to bite the next mega IPO.
Many GLCs have done successful IPOs in recent years mainly because investor confidence was strong. When we bought a GLC
stock it came with a psychological copper-bottom guarantee. True, some of the IPOs were undervalued, others were overvalued. But then that's capitalism for you.
Companies do IPOs at levels that markets can take otherwise the IPO would fail and underwriters would end up holding the baby. It goes without saying that IPO subscribers have to be aware of what they are buying.
But on hindsight, investors like me just want to know from GLCs like Singapore Technologies: Was the Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing IPO in late 1999 overvalued?
Was ST Assembly & Test Services IPO early last year also overvalued?
Not that I believe it was wrong to do Chartered or STATS IPO at those prices. Just that I want to know if the directors feel they did well for the group by doing the IPO at fairly nice valuations.
I hear that there are other big GLC IPOs coming in the next 12 months. PSA Holdings --the second biggest ports operator in the world (after Hutchison) and Singapore Power are both ready to roll their IPO as soon as general market conditions improve. I believe that by ensuring more transparency over previous IPOs the government can entice more people to partake in the next few.
Are there other men and women at helm of Singapore GLCs willing to be as daring as Koh Boon Hwee?
Regards
Yours sincerely
"Ordinary Investor"
Singapore
Aug 28, 2001

American Learn Chinese?
I'm an American - an old guy, but I'd like to take a look at learning to read Chinese. Speaking chinese is of little use to me as there is vitutualy NO chance of me ever needing it.
I'm retired and so have limited funds. Is there a relatively inexpensive, but effective way I might learn at home?
Nat Hooper
Oxford, Arkansas
USA Aug 26, 2001
(Editor: Comment, you put many of us here to shame. Can anyone help?)

Save Our Children
Dear Editor,
Today, we read another newspaper story about a Ten-year old girl committed suicide because she was stressed with schoolwork.... On reading further...she scored a Band 3 grade ... for Higher Chinese and either Band 1 or Band 2 for other subjects.
A couple of weeks or months ago, I have read about an increasing number of younger patients (of schooling age) visiting pyschiatrists in Singapore.
Are these not the cracking signs that the students are facing much stress in our Singapore's education system which focussed almost complete dependence on examination grades. Do something before another one jump.
The national paper is (SIC) not doing much publicity for these types of accidents (self-censorship??).
As a parent myself, I have proficiency in Chinese Language which enables me to read a Chinese newspaper, Chinese novels and even the Chinese sword-fighting fictional stories, are is favourite pastimes.
However, studying of Chinese Language back then did not take on such a toll as being mandatory in applying to our national junior college and tertiary institutions.
The nation is definitely suffering from a policy which set off other concerns. One of which is that citizens are migrating overseas for the sake of their children's education, when they are young.
For those who are older, the option is to send them overseas for their O, A level and even University degrees. With the imminent shake-up of the education, a lot of well-known universities are launching e-learning which enables a student to have a combination of on-site campus education coupled with internet-based correspondence education.
So why our Government still pressurising and penalising our students on the language capability.
In my work in a multi-national company, I have worked with many other IT professionals who are not even articulate in the English Language but can make a good living in Singapore. So it is about time to focus less on academic standard especially in the Chinese Language arena.
Start saving the Children of Singapore!
Jimmy Yip
Aug 22, 2001
(Editor: The competitive system is one pressure point; parents, in general, is another. The lesson applies to both, I think.)