Banyan Tree executive chairman Ho Kwon Ping has been voted
as the most influential thinker in Yahoo!'s Singapore …
Singapore has room
to wean itself away from reliance on cheap foreign labour in
construction and other industries, top local businessman and hotel
magnate Ho Kwon Ping said in an interview on Tuesday.
"I think we have a
dichotomous society," said Ho, who was recently voted as the
country's most
influential thinker in Yahoo!'s Singapore 9
project. "In the high knowledge-based industries we are
competitive, but in the local industries such as construction,
skill levels and productivity are quite low."
However, the
founder and executive chairman of Singapore-listed Banyan
Tree Holdings was also quick to caution against
Singaporeans turning "xenophobic".
Ho was speaking
to Yahoo! Singapore about his reactions to the
National Day Rally Speech of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong,
freedom of speech in the Internet age and the competitiveness of
Singaporeans.
Renowned for
launching the Banyan Tree global chain of luxury spa and hotel
resorts from a single troubled hotel in Phuket that his family
built, and having once owned a construction business, the 59-year
old understands the construction industry very well.
Ho noted that in
Australia, a builder gets a salary several times the salary of a
construction worker in Singapore, although both countries have
about the same per capita income.
"We've had
construction development experience in Australia, New Zealand,
Thailand and so on. When we built our hotel in New Zealand we were
shocked because the number of workers we engaged there was about 10
percent of what we would get in Thailand -- because they are well
trained," he said.
"We haven't bitten
the bullet here. We are still addicted to cheap foreign labour in
industries like construction," Ho pointed out.
"Our low-skilled
workers are at a disadvantage today because salaries are quite low
with the influx of foreign workers, so I think we need to ratchet
that up a bit," he added.
He recalled that
in the 1980s, Singapore was a low-cost, low-wage economy, but the
government then pushed wages up high. That prompted many low-cost
industries to leave the country, but the policy also attracted
younger Singaporeans to join higher technology industries.
Now, the
phenomenon of several thousand semi-skilled young women from
Malaysia working at electronics factories in Singapore is gone,
and, as PM Lee cited in his speech, the city-state can now produce
the machines that manufacture semi-conductors, Ho noted.
The executive
stressed that he is not saying Singapore should close off the
construction industry to foreigners but that the costs and skill
levels for workers should be raised.
"If you are a
foreigner, if you have XYZ skills, you should be allowed in, but we
should phase out the unskilled labourers, largely from South Asia,"
he said. "There will be transitional pains and should be phased
over even a decade, but we must have targets so that our firms can
prepare themselves."
Reactions to PM Lee's speech
Touching on the
government's plan to raise the bar for employment passes, Ho said
the move would bring temporary relief to Singaporeans, but the
longer-term answer would lie in making citizens more competitive
and productive.
"I think the
policies announced in the National Day Rally are very responsible
because they have responded to the sentiments on the ground -- and
if they did not it would have smacked of arrogance -- but at
the same time they did not give in to populism," said Ho, who is
married to former Nominated Member of Parliament and prominent
businesswoman Claire Chiang.
Regarding
the 'Singaporeans-first'
policies unveiled in housing and education, he noted that
the PM has had to tread a very thin line on the "explosive" issue
of foreigners, which many political leaders around the world have
to grapple with.
"Any serious
person will tell you that the advanced economies are not going to
be able to grow or be able to get the talent they need if they are
going to listen to the purely populist notion of protecting your
people only," he said.
"On the other
hand, you have to be aware of populist sentiments and make people
feel their concerns are being addressed," he pointed out.
He agreed that
issues such as overcrowding on buses and trains need to be tackled
and corresponding policies rectified.
Nevertheless, Ho,
who is also chairman of Singapore
Management University, the country's third national university,
warned that it is "very necessary for Singaporeans not to be
xenophobic".
His view is that
diversity in itself is a plus point and benefits everyone,
including the majority. "If SMU students did not have the benefit
of foreign students, they would be such a narrow bunch of people,"
he said.
In his NDR speech,
PM Lee said that places for Singaporeans students at local
universities would be raised by 2,000, the equivalent of another
SMU, by 2015.
There is currently
a 20 per cent quota of foreign students at the national
universities, but some members of the public have questioned why
some Singaporeans students should be turned away at all to allow
foreign students in.
Ho acknowledges
that there is a legitimate economic argument to putting a cap on
the number of foreign students at the universities. "Our schools,
our universities are heavily subsidised, so it's justifiable that
taxpayers' money should go towards the children of taxpayers," he
said.
Yet, he believes
that there is a qualitative argument for retaining a significant
number of foreign students at the schools. "A society that does not
welcome diversity is going to be a very brittle society," he
said.
Beyond the
policies, Ho observed that the PM was trying hard to connect with
young people.
"You can see from
the examples he gave, the little things like the young guy who took
photos of the flats, the Bowen cafe. I think he was trying to tell
people that there are many ways for them to take initiative, to
have a sense of ownership in Singapore," he said.
"Young people
nowadays in this generation won't find fulfillment just by joining
the civil service and feeling empowered by writing policies that
will affect millions of people. They want to do things that affect
people's lives directly, and PM has tapped into that sentiment" he
said.
Freedom of speech
As a former
student activist and journalist who had been detained under the
Internal Security Act in 1977 for articles written for the Far
Eastern Economic Review, Ho also acknowledges that the Internet has
allowed much wider access to information than ever before.
"No one controls
knowledge any more," he said. "But technology by itself is
apolitical. It is simply an enabler of processes, so I think we
have to see the Internet in that perspective." He cited how
Blackberry phones were equally used by dissidents in the Middle
East as well as by criminal gangs in London.
While social media
led to the Arab spring revolution, the lack of control of knowledge
also has its negative side, he pointed out.
"No government in
the world, including China, can control knowledge, but does it mean
it is going to lead to a flowering of democracy or that the
Internet is only good for the world? That's not the case.
Paedophilia has risen enormously now because paedophiles all over
the world are now connected," he said.
Asked whether it
would now be futile for governments to control the Internet or the
flow of information therein, he said he agreed with what former
Foreign Affairs Minister George Yeo once said: "That even if we
know it is futile, it is important for a society to come together
and decide what we accept and don't accept."
"I think it is
important to have values in the society and these values should be
expressed through positive encouragement as well as negative
sanctions," he argued.
"For student
groups you shouldn't cut down on them, but for paedophelia groups
you should," he said.
In Europe, he
noted, it is completely normal to have anti-semitism outlawed
because they had gone through the Holocaust, but other than that,
religious hatred is tolerated in society.
"We have to
examine our own history, where we're coming from. Given our own
history, the freedom of expression about religion clearly needs to
be controlled," he said.
"If you don't have
negative sanctions, you don't create the boundaries for society nor
for young people when they grow up about what is acceptable or not
acceptable," he said. "But these negative sanctions should not be
simply dictated by a government; they should reflect the values of
the whole society and be widely debated."
