January 29, 2010 - Temasek Review
Written by Our Correspondent
The Housing Development Board (HDB) announced lately that
it is now considering introducing a separate ethnic quota for
permanent residents to prevent them from forming enclaves in public
housing estates.
However, it is too late as judging from the feedback from some
PAP MPs, ethnic enclaves may already have emerged in the HDB
heartlands.
In an interview with the Straits Times, MP Lim Wee Kiat from
Sembawang GRC related a notice he saw pasted on a wall in his
Canberra ward written entirely in Burmese.
It was from a real estate agent offering his services solely to
Myanmar permanent residents (PRs) looking for flats in
Sembawang.
He said there are some floors of HDB blocks in his ward where
more than half the residents are foreign.
“They are a mix of nationalities. So although there is no
‘ethnic’ enclave as such, there is a high concentration of
foreigners ‘to the point where Singaporeans feel threatened and
become a minority. When that happens, then it becomes an
issue,” he added.
Another MP Ho Geok Choo recalled a visitor describing her Boon
Lay ward as being so cosmopolitan that it felt like being overseas.
She felt imposing an ethnic quota will “make it more difficult for
PRs to artificially inflate prices in certain areas by all snapping
up flats there.”
“It would also assuage the concern of those Singaporeans who
feel besieged in their neighbourhood by new sights and smells. On
her house visits, every block throws up at least two or three
Singaporeans who voice their concerns about this,” she was
quoted as saying in the Straits Times.
Due to the ruling party’s liberal immigration policies,
foreigners now make up 36 per cent of Singapore’s population, up
from 14 per cent in 1990. Of the remaining 64 per cent who are
citizens, an increasing number are born overseas.
Foreigners are now ubiquitous everywhere in Singapore. Besides
Sembawang and Boon Lay, ethnic enclaves have emerged in Geylang,
Changi, Sengkang, Tampines and Jurong as well.
It is no exaggeration to say that one can find Chinese from
almost all the 23 provinces of China congregated in Geylang or
Indians from across the Indian subcontinent in Sengkang.
While PRs make up “only” 5 per cent of the buyers of resale
flats, many of them rent HDB flats which are not subjected to the
ethnic quota.
The root cause of the problem lies in the relentless influx of
foreigners into Singapore which shows no signs of abating despite
recent promises by PAP leaders to “moderate” and “slow” the
inflow.
At the rate the PAP is “mass-importing” foreigners into
Singapore, we may soon find little Hunans, Liaonings, Yangons,
Dhakas and Delhis emerging all across the island and it will be
Singaporeans who need to “integrate” themselves into a new
Singapore dominated by these newcomers instead of the other way
round.
