Maybe he doesn't hear too good. Maybe he has a wad of ear wax
the size of the blockage in the drainage canal that Yaacob Ibrahim
claimed was the cause of the Orchard Road flood. With Singaporeans
already seething with anger about the 1-in-3 proportion of
foreigners taking up train space, housing, school/university places
and good paying jobs in the market, surely 4-in-10 is not a ratio
to be proud of.
PM Lee Hsien Loong was rattling off statistics about the new wafer
fab facility, without a clue to the salt he was rubbing into the
wound of the festering xenophobic. Of the 1,200 workers at IM Flash
Singapore, 6-in-10 are Singaporeans and PRs, and 4-in-10 are
foreigners. Discounting the number of jobs that went to PRs (number
not disclosed), local born and bread make up only 5-in-10 or half
the employment force - or worse. Which means that when you walk
into the Woodlands plant, the likelihood of running into a
Singaporean face is 1-in-2, or less. That's what he means by
calibrating the influx of foreigners? Increase the number of
foreigners coming into the country instead of reducing it?
Top of everybody's bitch is not about foreigners, it's about rising
prices that seem to refuse to be curbed by the MAS strategy of
"deliberate appreciation" of the SingDollar. While acknowledging
that cost of living (issues) has been there a long time, his own
recollection is that it was not at the top of every body's mind in
2006. Hah! That explains why train fares, electrical tariffs, GST,
property tax ecetera were hiked after the 2006 election. Makes you
wonder who supplies him the rose-tinted-glasses he is gazing out
of.
Despite of being in the cabinet for umpteen years, all the man can
offer is that "We're doing what we can." Looks like the PAP newbies
riding coattails into parliament are not the only ones undergoing
on-the-job-training - at taxpayers' expense.
Suddenly, the words of Workers' Party's Low Thia Khiang sound so
very ominous:
"But if the PAP makes a wrong judgement, you get the wrong
person to be Prime Minister, we are all in trouble."
