The Foreign Labour Dilemma

Although I am not an employer, like many of them, I too feel that Singapore need all these foreign labour. There was a time when I was in charge of a department which was always in need of staff. Every time we put up a ad for staff, we get applications from mainly foreigners. M, said the same thing too. Whenever she has an opening to fill, she always get applications from Filipino and in recent years even Australia and New Zealanders even though she was just looking for conveyancing clerk!

My friend who runs a chain of retail outlets employs mainly Filipino because he said he can't get Singaporean or even Malaysian. Nobody want to work in the retail line because of shift work.Some of  my clients also complained about the same thing. Singaporean don't want to dirty their hands and want to be supervisor and manager immediately upon graduation! 

And I can imagine the look of horror on parents face if their children were to said they want to work as construction workers or cleaners! Hell, even I couldn't want my kids to be in retail, food and beverages  or any sort of work that requires menial labour.

So employers got no choice but to turn to foreign labour right?

Get rid of the old farts and 拍马屁

I used to have this thinking that the PAP will never loose a GRC but it has happened and now I am more than convinced that come the next general election, be it 2016 or earlier, the PAP is going to lose at least 1 more GRC, if not more. 

It is not just the fact that the PAP is not listening to the public; not the 6.9 million population fiascicsso or the inept handling of the transportation, housing and other policies. What I believe is going to happen to cause the PAP to lose more seats, be it GRC or SMC, is the misinformation that the PAP government is getting everyday which will cause them to read the grounds wrongly, come up with a wrong strategy and volia.... a defeat that they should but never see coming, like what has happened in Aljunied and Punggol East.

 How did I come to this conclusion? 

I was at a lunch hosted by an ex-minister over the Chinese New Year period.  The lunch was attended by a number of his grass roots leaders. I walked around and could not help but "eavesdrop" on the conversation of these grass roots leaders. Most of them are in their fifties and sixties. Without fail, almost everyone of their conversation was centred on how sad and unlucky that the ex-minister had lost in the GE. . They were whining and going on about how the PAP has lost despite the "good feeling" on the ground. And this is coming, like almost 2 years after the election!

On another occasion, I talked to someone else who was working in the town council and know both the MP and the grassroots well. His opinion was that they had lost because the old farts who were always surrounding the MPs in their walkabout, at the MPS were not telling the MP the truth. Like the eunuch in old China, they thought they were protecting their "bosses" from bad news.

Many of us are also familiar with the sight of cleaners scouring and cleaning up a neighbourhood whenever a Minister comes visiting. The old farts likened it to cleaning up the house before a guest come visiting. But the way they went about it, they literally camouflage every blemish, every speck of dirt so much so that whatever the Minister or MP see is a beautiful perfect world, not the litter infested place. There was one time I was at Redhill and I saw these cleaner scrubbing the floor tile with a tooth brush on the floor outside the RC Centre. Unable to resist my curiosity, I asked him why he was doing that and he said his boss had asked him to do so because MP coming!

Another friend, who is a helper to an MP, told me what goes on at those dialogue sessions whenever Ministers comes around. He said the helpers will enlist a few people to ask questions. These questions have to be submitted before hand for screening. And during the questions and answers time, the helpers will only pick these people so that there will be no "surprise" questions for the Minister.

Last but not least, another friend once worked part time in a organisation under the PA. His job was to monitor the movement of all the Ministers attending grassroots functions and mobilise sufficient "participants". This is to ensure that whatever the Ministers appear, there will always be a big crowd to welcome him.

So my point is, with all these old farts hiding the truth and our main stream media not daring to write the truth, how does the PAP know the actual feeling on the grounds? With these type of "generals" helping them to fight the war, I certainly have no doubt the PAP will lose more seats come the next election. With "friends" like these, the PAP certainly don't need any enemies!

So for the next GE, if the PAP wants to stem the loss, they first thing they need to do is to get rid of these old farts or 拍马屁 and turn to the younger more internet savy people for help.