A foreign scholar chap in NTU caught leukaemia and couldn't
afford the fees ... some chaps started a donation drive ..... but
many says they'll not donate .... would you ?. ...
A FIRST-YEAR Nanyang Technological
University (NTU) student is suffering from leukaemia and his
parents cannot afford his chemotherapy sessions.
So someone starts a donation drive
to raise money to help the ailing student.
Instead of rallying to help,
several Singaporean netizens pour scorn on the student on a local
online forum.
The reason: The student is not
Singaporean, but a Chinese national.
One netizen even set up a poll
asking fellow users to vote if they should support the donation
drive.
The result: Close to 80 per cent
of 120 users who responded so far said they would not
donate.
It began with a mass e-mail by Lim
Si Wei, the students' services executive of the NTU students'
union, appealing for donations for Mr Li Bingbing, 18, who was
diagnosed with blood cancer two weeks ago.
The e-mail made its rounds on the
Internet over the past week.
CAN'T AFFORD
TREATMENT
It stated that his parents, a
power plant worker and a housewife, cannot afford his chemotherapy
sessions, which are estimated to cost at least $150,000.
The family's monthly household
income is said to be about $900.
The NTU students' union decided to
help their fellow student.
The e-mail found its way onto
popular Internet forum hardwarezone.com, and there was an
outpouring of controversial comments regarding Chinese nationals in
Singapore.
Forum user 'gaul_ads' called such
students 'thick-skinned'.
'They've already used our money
for a scholarship. Do they still want to use our money for an
operation? It's ridiculous,' he said.
Another forum user named
'moonlight' wrote: 'Just order them to book the first flight out of
Singapore. They can just settle their problems somewhere
else.'
Some forum users adopted a
business-like stance.
'He just comes here to study and
uses Singapore as a 'stepping stone'. After that, he'll go back,' a
forum user called 'shawntyg' said. 'I won't donate. I admit I'm
selfish. But isn't he too?'
These forum users, however, said
that they would readily donate if the person in need had been a
Singaporean.
'We will help and donate to sick,
old and poor Singaporeans.
'But Ah Tiongs can forget about
it. They are good in exploiting and leeching,' a forum user called
'danny' said.
'Ah Tiong' is a common Hokkien
term for Chinese nationals here, not unlike 'ang moh' for
Caucasians.
However, not all the forum posts
were negative.
A forum user with the nickname
'diablo80' provided a more humanitarian response: 'Be it a
Singaporean or foreigner, if someone in need is in front of us, how
can we leave him alone?'
Miss Patricia Choy, 18, who also
posted on the forum thread, wondered if the student had medical
insurance.
'We should donate to someone in
need regardless of his nationality.
'However, it's hard to make sure
foreigners would not take advantage of the kindness and goodwill of
Singaporeans,' she said.
According to the circulated
e-mail, Mr Li was diagnosed with leukaemia on 29 Feb.
It said that 50 per cent of his
bone marrow had been infected.
The e-mail said that he may
require another $180,000 for a bone marrow transplant if his
condition did not stabilise after chemotherapy.
The NTU students' union has
organised a campus-wide donation drive, from yesterday to today, to
'help defray part of his medical costs'.
'This drive was organised with no
incentives whatsoever other than to help a friend,' a student from
the union, who declined to be named, said.
Miss Menal Prakash, a fourth-year
NTU computer engineering student, said she had seen students
queueing up to donate in the canteen yesterday
afternoon.
A spokesman for NTU's Student
Affairs Office verified that it had approved the donation drive and
said this wasn't the first time one had been held.
She said: 'To the school's
administration, every student is the same. If someone is in need of
help, we'll try our best to help.
'It's fine if people don't want to
donate, because these donation drives are always
voluntary.
'But it's not right if it's solely
because the student is not from Singapore.'
Undergraduates contacted by The
New Paper also had more charitable responses.
Miss Richa Ahuja said: 'I think I
would donate if I could. It doesn't matter to me whether he's a
scholar or where he's from.'
Mr Ben Teo, 21, agreed: 'It's
someone's life we're talking about. Of course, I'll donate if they
approached me.'
The New Paper could not reach Mr
Li for comment.
But some Singaporeans were
indignant about the forum users on his behalf.
Miss Ahuja said: 'I think they're
absolutely heartless.'
Miss Prakash, however, thought
that donating was a 'very personal thing'.
'It's up to the individual. I
don't think I'd judge them,' she said.
Miss Su Xiaoting, 18, who suffered
from lymphoma in secondary school but has since made a full
recovery, felt the benefits of such donations went beyond just
money.
'Such help is an indication of
moral support from friends and strangers,' she said.
Personal and family friends had
donated money to her. 'It was a tangible way of showing that they
were there for me and wanted to help me,' she said.
Mr Eugene Seow, executive director
of Touch Community Services, had this question: 'Is this student
not a fellow human being that we would like to help?
'Foreigners in our land are a
benefit to our nation whether they come as workers or people with
talents and expertise. We should treat them as people here to
contribute.
'Our treatment or attitude to them
reflects our attitude towards society as a whole,' he
said.
straits times link:
Would I donate ? ... personally, I won't, not because I'm not a
compassionate person, but because I think I should prioritize my
very limited charity dollars and think carefully about who I donate
to ....
there are plenty of poor Singaporeans who ran out of Medisave
and savings after contracting illnesses just as severe, in
Singapore, the land of high costs, the poorer Singaporean cannot
afford to fall sick at all ..... I'd save my charity dollars for
them ....
and I don't think Singaporeans are not compassionate, or
heartless, but this is simply a reaction and a gauge of the
goverment's "wide open doors and take in all and sundry" policy on
the ground ... Singaporeans are thinking that if they don't take
care of their own, no one else will, certainly not from the
goverment, who seems to treat foreigners better than her own.
the chap's here on a Singapore goverment scholarship ... I find
it hard to believe that the goverment didn't arrange insurance for
him as well, to "protect" their investment, or their were intending
to write him off as a "bad investment" ? .... why did it have to
come to the stage where they have to solicit for donations from the
singaporean public ? ....
I feel very sorry for the chap, and I'll pray for him, but I
won't do more, for my wallet is limited, and I believe in "taking
care one's own and home before venturing outside"... I think
certainly though, that if there wasn't such a strong discontent on
the ground for the goverment's "foreign talent" policy, things
would certainly have been different for this fellow ....
so before you flip open your wallet, take a walk around the
"class C" wards of any public hospital ... I am sure you can find
plenty of poorer Singaporeans, who've slogged and slaved here all
their lives, equally, if not more, in need of your money ...