ForeignBunnyGirl on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 9:36 am 

Could TR follow up on this article?

Property consultants say Sentosa IR is scouting for rental flats for some of its foreign staff

VISITORS to the Universal Studios theme park in Resorts World at Sentosa (RWS) will soon be able to live out adventures seen in various movies. There will be zones based on films such as Madagascar, Shrek and Jurassic Park, to bring thrill-seekers to a make-believe world far away from home.

For some employees at RWS, being away from home will also be a new adventure. The integrated resort will be hiring a considerable number of foreigners, and it is said to be searching for hundreds of HDB flats to help them settle in. C&H Realty managing director Albert Lu said that RWS is looking for HDB flats to rent, and approached his firm a few months ago to find out about the rental market. RWS did not share many details then, but the number of flats is ‘in the hundreds’, he told BT.

Another property market insider who declined to be named also said that RWS has been ‘aggressively looking for flats to rent’, and is probably in need of ‘a few hundred’ units.

So far, there is no official statement on the number of foreigners that RWS could hire. Overall, it will employ about 10,000 people when it opens next year. RWS spokesman Robin Goh told BT that it remains committed in recruiting Singaporeans and Singapore permanent residents.

A media report in June noted that RWS had hired 600 workers, of whom 80 per cent are locals. Assuming that the local-foreign ratio stays constant, its headcount from abroad could reach 2,000.

Going by HDB rules, one- or two-room flats can each be rented out to at most four people; three-room flats to at most six people; and four-roomers or bigger flats to at most nine people. Assuming that RWS hires 2,000 foreigners and all of them rent four-room flats, it would need to find at least about 220 units.

Mr Goh said that RWS started looking for ’suitable accommodation’ for foreign staff early this year, with help from a ‘reputable service provider’. He did not specify the types and number of housing involved.

‘To help reduce their stress and anxiety of relocating overseas, we assist our foreign team members in addressing one of their basic needs – accommodation,’ he said. ‘We make sure that they settle down comfortably as well as enjoy working and living in Singapore.’ And it is important for RWS to keep its employees happy because that could enhance their work performance and in turn, visitors’ experience at the integrated resort, he said.

Mr Goh added that RWS considered several factors in choosing accommodation, including the place’s accessibility and proximity to amenities such as convenience stores. ‘The locations we have chosen facilitate good interaction between the local community and foreign talent,’ he added. BT understands that units at Tiong Bahru and Toa Payoh have been found.

C&H Realty’s Mr Lu said that he believes that RWS would want flats in areas near Sentosa, such as Telok Blangah. But he pointed out that the supply of rental flats in such central locations is tight, and RWS might have to broaden its search to estates near MRT stations.

Rents of HDB flats in the central region rose between the second and third quarter of the year. For instance, the median sub-letting rent for a four-room flat in the area increased from about $2,000 to $2,200.

HDB’s website shows that up to the third quarter of this year, the agency has granted 11,235 sub-letting approvals. The bulk of these – 3,978 or 35 per cent – were for three-room flats. Another 3,593 approvals were for four-room flats.

Also, looking across all towns and flat types, median sub-letting rents have remained relatively steady from the first to third quarter.

Dennis Wee Group director Chris Koh observed that the HDB rental market is ‘more stabilised’ compared with the period when collective sales were rife and many displaced residents were looking for lodging. His firm has seen more rental enquiries direct from foreigners working with RWS.

Marina Bay Sands, the other integrated resort due to open next year, has not engaged property agents to look for accommodation for its foreign staff. ‘Housing arrangements will take into account the needs of the prospective foreign employees,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘At this time, Marina Bay Sands is giving priority to attracting and selecting Singaporeans and permanent residents for our job opportunities.’

Source : Business Times – 28 Nov 2009

Italian Big Sausage on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 10:43 am 

I wonder is MM the 1st to admit the Flaw in its bilingual policy set decades ago?

Is he the only person inside the parliament to voice up this concern?

If so, i would be disappointed.

1. There is the MOE.
2. There are 80 odd highly paid Part Timers as well as fulltimers who are even more handsomely paid and paid.

Why now? My question is directed to all except the MM, our most longest working civil servant in parliament.

Jeremy Chua Lee Bai on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 11:02 am 

Its good that TR bring up the Word of Caution :

“Singaporeans had better prayed hard the government will not admit its mistakes in today’s policies in a few decades’ time, especially its liberal immigration policy.

By the time the mistake is finally realized, Singaporeans may end up being a minority in their own country.
”

This can serve as a record in public domain that people have raised up this concern this year.

Anonymous on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 11:27 am 

And Yes, we want Freedom of Information Laws for transparency and public accountability of all public policy issues – the implications of which is NOT just relevant to any incumbent party in power but for Singapore’s survival and future prosperity.

The reality is that no one has a monopoly of wisdom. We are sseing now the enormity of tragic consequences of past policy failures in education, population planning, economic survival and in the future, we will likely to see irretrievable tragic outcome of our ill-considered liberal immigration policy burdening all sectors of our economy and society.

Policy issues have to be frequently, openly and publicly debated and changes made where deficiencies are detected early enough.

It is fatal when one discovers 5th stage cancer affliction, is that not true, anyone???

Autocracy cannot offer any hope of our survival in this turbulent world – that must be humbly acknowledged by all, regardless.

We spoke recently of brighter economic outlook in 2010 only last week. And now the Dubai financial meltdown is sending tsunami shockwaves through global equities, currency and commodities markets – can autocracy of one man or a few men’ visions work in this kind of turbulence when opportunities and tragic failures heaped upon us in milliseconds???

We want a Singapore for future generations, not for us now.

cy on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 11:36 am 

in the age of crowdsourcing, it is foolish to keep ppl in the dark, harping the theory of “elites know best”.

instead it should be “elites may know more, but they still need to listen to the non-elites as they are not experts in everything”

Neil Bishop on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 11:37 am 

It never ceases to amaze me how profoundly racist Lee Kuan Yew is, even about his own race! The quote in the article and other comments he has made subscribe to the notion that Chinese are mindless, conformist drones who must be told what to do else chaos reigns. If any Westerner, Indian or Malay publicly stated such things he would be howled down for the sheer racism of the comment. But Lee Kuan Yew gets away with it.
The Singaporean Government can never be open because of the enormity of the mistakes made by the Lee Family. We’ve seen part of it with the publicly announced losses in Temasek and GIC but the truth is far worse. LKY and his son cannot afford for the full truth to be revealed because it would lead to chaos and to the end of the old man’s reputation for good government.
Chia Hern Keng’s comments are 100% correct but it’s not going to happen. The Lee Family needs secrecy. It has too much to hide… and too much to lose.

Natalis Rain on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 1:20 pm 

“Anybody who decides to take me on needs to put on knuckle dusters. If you think you can hurt me more than I can hurt you, try. There is no other way you can govern a Chinese society.”

And the lesson on knuckle dusters, especially when it is so openly announced & validated by some influential people within a society, will be passed from generation after generation and some society will have internalised that knuckle dusters, when all other possible better means fail to go their way, are the only best way forward to an end.

And as the story goes, certain society is still stuck in the primitive age of knuckle dusters and whoever can master the art of using knuckle dusters, more than anything else, shall prevail.

Anonymous on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 2:29 pm 

cy on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 11:36 am

…elites may know more, but they still need to listen to the non-elites as they are not experts in everything…

I really earnestly wish that statement above is true in ALL instance – at least on public policy deliberation. Just reading through bloggers’ comments on TR of utterances by “elites”, I, sometimes, almost fell of my chair and ROTFLMAO.

At other times, it is patently clear that hot air has been freely trumpeted either in the reckless or false belief of ALL others don’t know the truth or in the expectation of some conditioning of minds of the audience in the assumption of the lack of publicly informed knowledge of knowing truth.

But that is also how politicians survive – on a diet of rhetorics which the sane informed mind already knows is the cousin of blatant lies.

The Truth Be told on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 3:36 pm 

Neil Bishop

Your comments certainly reflect the character of LKY. This is a man of many moods and wears many faces expedient to the circumstances he is in. During the Japanese occupation of Singapore he acted as an “interpreter” (informer) through natural instinct for self-preservation.

After the Japanese surrender, he left for England to pursue his law studies and took up the name “Harry Lee” to reflect his Western Oriented Gentleman (WOG) appeal. Upon his return to Singapore and while campaigning for the municipal elections for self-rule in 1959 he quickly dropped the “Harry” prefix in his name and mingled with the Chinese crowd as only LKY, no Harry, no WOG appeal, but just another guy in the predominantly Chinese crowd – all done out of political expediency.

He has been playing this “race” card all along. There are many imperfection in his view of things, and he has made many mistakes in understanding the ground, one typical example of this is as follows :

In the early eighties he claimed that the western educated Singaporeans were more self-centred than the Chinese educated (this was a fallacy). This was his prelude to launch the Speak Mandarin Campaign. He failed to study the ground, that most of the voluntary charity work were done by and assumed by western institutions and the expatriate community. And the Chinese educated were very inhibited, a closed society at large. Their self-centredness even took on the linquistic form, eg. they don’t call Singapore by name, but by general reference as wo-guo (my country) as similarly done in China. And China is called as chong-guo (middle kingdom). Humility is far from being a virtue, to think that they are at the centre of the world ! And how do they call the Caucasians ? “Yang-ren” meaning goat people ! Self-centred and racist. Darkie toothpaste has been replaced by “Darlie” to remove the racist content, but the Chinese word on the product remains as “hei-ren” meaning dark person. LKY need to chew his own words and swallow them.

And there were many other mistakes, such as long hair policy was being looked upon as a sign of western decadence (the Japanese renowned musical genius Kitaro was refused entry to perform here because he had shoulder length hair), Formula
1 Grand Prix rejected because he could see no gain (he forgot the economic factor), the stop at two policy in family planning and asking for women to go for irreversible ligation, closing down Nanyang University saying Singapore did not need 2 universities (and now they are talking of starting a 5th university!), and many many more.

Trouble is, all these are being played down and swept under the rug by the state controlled media, while successful policies and their results are being touted day in and day out. And through this process of osmosis Singaporeans in general, especially the younger generation, come to believe that he is all God and all holy. This is the travesty of injustice here.

No One Will Be Left Behind -- http://news.asiaone.com/News/NDP+Rally+2007/NDP+Rally+2007.html on Sat, 28th Nov 2009 7:17 pm 

IS THE BELOW A POLICY ERROR?

———————-
Extracted from -
http://www.todayonline.com/Voices/EDC091126-0000059/Direct-lift-access-not-always-possible–HDB
Direct lift access not always possible: HDB

Letter from Chee Kheng Chye Deputy Director (Upgrading Programmes Management) Housing and Development Board (HDB) 05:55 AM Nov 26, 2009

WE THANK Mr Ryman Lim for his feedback on the newly-upgraded lifts (picture) at Block 340 Clementi Ave 5 (”Not wheelchair-friendly at all”, Nov 5).
The objective of the Lift Upgrading Programme (LUP) is to provide direct lift access to the flats for the convenience of residents. For most blocks, this has been achieved through the upgrading of existing lifts or the addition of a new lift. However, there is a small number of blocks where direct lift access is not possible due to site or technical constraints. Block 340 is one such block.

HDB has earlier explored various options to overcome the site constraints. However, the only viable LUP solution then was a “half-landing solution”. While this solution could not provide direct access to the flats, it would improve the existing situation by reducing the number of steps that residents have to climb. Hence, the solution was supported by the residents for implementation.

The blue stickers on the new lifts indicate that the lift car is wheelchair friendly as it comes with handrail bars, and the doors are wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. It does not suggest that full barrier-free accessibility has been achieved.

We empathise with Mr Lim’s situation, and seek his understanding on the LUP solution implemented for his block.

-No One Will Be Left Behind-
http://news.asiaone.com/News/NDP+Rally+2007/NDP+Rally+2007.html

And Now For MORE TRUTHS To BE TOLD ALOUD!!!... on Sun, 29th Nov 2009 1:04 pm 

Go to…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T8kInEYNYY

And please don’t gasp for breathe at Lim Swee Say’s “SAY” about his CPF which is 10s of times way above the present minmum sum of near to $120,000. And isn’t CPF-Life to LOCK-UP More of your CPF money by paying you back most slowly?…

My GOD… DO they have a LIQUIDITY PRBLEM… Or ‘not’!!!…

Think DEEP and SURELY SinGaPOOReans!!!… This last word IS FOR those who ARE Still GULLIBLE. And after watching that video… If you STILL ARE… may GOD HELP you!!!

A&E on Sun, 29th Nov 2009 11:47 pm 

In fifty years’ time, the ones responsible for today’s failed policies will be dead and buried. If you were pragmatic enough, you could put in place policies that boost numbers today but fail miserably in the more distant tomorrow. The short term credits will accrue to you; the mess, well, your successors will have to mop up.

Simple.