A Nation’s Shame

By Tan Keng Leng

It was reported in the Friday, 19/02/2010 edition of The New Paper that serial sex offender Khairulhizam Din Ahmad had been convicted of robbing a 15-year old girl, hence called “Mariam”, after tricking her into having sex with him. Khairulhizam, who had a string of previous convictions before this, including molesting an 11-year old girl in 2007, stabbing his wife in 1997 and drugging, molesting and robbing an Indonesian maid in 1990, had approached “Mariam” and promised to pay her $400/- for sex. After having sex though, not only did he fail to pay the girl, who cannot be named because of her age, he proceeded to rob her of her schoolbag, which contained valuables worth about $220/-.

So why did “Mariam” agree to have sex with him then? According to the report, it was because she was desperate to obtain money quickly so as to buy food for her siblings. Did this happen because her parents didn’t earn enough to support the family? Were either or possibly both of them dead or in prison? The report did not state the reasons for the family’s predicament, nor did it state if the family was on public assistance or had applied for it and were rejected.

This was not the first instance where an underage child had sold him/herself for sex. There had been a previous instance where a teenage boy, hence called “Charles”, had prostituted himself on a gay website to earn money to buy designer goods. 5 gay men accepted his proposal; they have since all been convicted for it.

Child prostitution and pedophilia will always be present in any society, even the most developed ones with the best social welfare programs. According to news reports, “Charles” did not come from a family in financial difficulties; he was simply materialistic. Khairulhizam’s victim on the other hand clearly came from a family in financial distress, otherwise she wouldn’t be desperate enough to sell herself to feed her family.

What Khairulhizam and the 5 gay men did, preying on young children, was shocking and disgusting. Far more shocking and disgusting though is the fact that unlike “Charles”, “Mariam” was not selling herself to buy designer goods her family couldn’t afford; she did it out of love for her family and desperation to feed her siblings.

This is something that shouldn’t happen in a First World nation like Singapore, but it did nonetheless. How many other families out there are in similar circumstances as “Mariam’s” family? Are such families on public assistance, or have they applied for it but were rejected? For that matter, are they even aware of the existence of such public assistance programs?

When PM Lee announced that GST will be raised from 5% to 7%, he justified it by saying that the money raised will be used for such public assistance programs. However, when PAP backbencher Dr. Lily Neo called for public assistance to be raised by $100/- per month from $300/- to $400/-, MM Lee curtly told her off and said that welfare programs will create a crutch mentality among the needy. When Dr. Neo, one of the few PAP MPs who show genuine concern for the needy and less-fortunate appealed to MCYS Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan to “at least ensure that the poor can afford three meals a day”, he condescendingly asked her “and where do they expect to eat their meals, in a hawker center, foodcourt or restaurant?” The amount was eventually raised by a paltry $30/- per month including 20% CPF deduction. Or in other words, the actual amount of money that the low-income families received was only $324/- per month after CPF deduction.

At $324/- per month, this will work out to $64/80 per person per month for a typical family of 5. Assuming that a typical month consists of 30 days, this works out to less than $2/20 per person per day. Given that nowadays, even the cheapest packet of fried noodles or vermicelli from an economic rice & noodle stall costs 80 cents, this means that a person will need a minimum of $2/40 per day to have three meals a day. This is assuming that the person eats nothing but fried noodles three meals a day everyday, something that scarcely constitutes a balanced diet.

Exactly how Dr. Balakrishnan, a medical doctor by profession came to the conclusion that $324/- per month is sufficient to ensure three meals a day for truly needy people is a mystery.

More unbelievably, while the government refuses to provide a comprehensive social security blanket for needy locals, Dr. Balakrishnan has a kitty worth $10,000,000/- dollars to help foreigners integrate themselves within Singapore. Why the government sees it fit to provide public assistance to foreigners to acclimatize themselves to the country when these people chose to come here of their own free will when it steadfastly refuses to provide anything more than the bare minimum to needy locals is something known only to themselves.

Nor is MCYS’ $10,000,000/- budget for integrating foreigners the only benefit they get at the expense of locals. For example, PRC scholars are provided with free English language lessons at taxpayers’ expense so as to bridge the gulf in standards between themselves and locals. Given that English is the fundamental building block of the local education system, this means that the PRC students must be struggling in school and are thus unworthy of their scholarships. Why the government is willing to provide free education to PRC students while doing just the bare minimum for needy locals is something only they can understand.

This contradiction becomes even more pronounced when one considers that Dr. Balakrishnan actually told a university student at a forum that foreigners are absolutely necessary because otherwise in 20 years time, locals will need to pay significantly higher taxes to provide just such a social security blanket for the elderly. The question that the students should have asked him at the forum but failed to do so is this: why should locals pay significantly higher taxes for the government to provide a comprehensive social security blanket when they have steadfastly always refused to do so because “it would create a crutch mentality”?

Actually, by increasing public assistance by $30/-, this works out to an expenditure of $900,000/- per month more, assuming that there are 30,000 families on public assistance. This will work out to a total of $10,800,000/- more per year, a sum the government can easily afford without having to raise taxes. At the very most, the Prime Minister can always abolish such redundant posts as Senior Minister, Minister Mentor and 1 Deputy Prime Minister. After all, these posts didn’t exist before, proving that they’re entirely unnecessary. This will save $9,000,000/- per year, meaning that the actual increase in expenditure for public assistance programs will be only $1,800,000/- per year.

So what exactly was the money collected from the increase taxation used for? Probably to pay for cost overruns on the two integrated resorts; it was definitely used to fund massive pay increments that the government awarded itself.

Adding insult to injury, in this year’s Budget, it was announced that GST may rise up to 10% and ministers given a pay increment of up to 8.8%. So what will the extra money be used for, besides increasing their own salaries? According to Finance Minister Tharman Shanmuguratnam, some of the money will be used to retrain locals “to improve their productivity”.

Obviously nobody told him that all the retraining in the world is worthless when one cannot get a decent paying job because of low cost foreign workers.

The obvious solutions to problems like “Mariam’s” lie in comprehensive social security blankets and poverty alleviation programs. Yet these are the very things that the government refuses to implement because “it would create a crutch mentality among the poor”. This is even more ludicrous when one considers the government openly encourages locals to donate to private charities when this will also create the same sort of “crutch mentality” among them. One cannot help but think that the real problem isn’t the government’s fear of creating a “crutch mentality” among needy locals, but rather their plain refusal to help them.

P.M. Lee once said “no Singaporean will be left behind” as long as he is the Prime Minister. He also said “Singaporeans will always come first” for him.

One cannot help but wonder if “Mariam’s” parents still believe him after what happened to their daughter.

 

Other articles by Tan Keng Leng:

1. 10 reasons why Singaporeans will never come first in PM Lee’s administration

2. Open letter to PM Lee expressing unhappiness at his pro-foreigner policy

The Singapore Government’s pay scale explained

By Tan Keng Leng

Faithful readers of the Temasek Review have got one common grouse: why does a tiny country like Singapore have the highest-paid ministers in one of the most bloated cabinets in the world?

To be fair, most Singaporeans don’t mind paying their cabinet ministers really high pay, provided they can deliver a double-digit economic growth every year, with the average Singaporean worker earning US$5,000/- to US$6,000/- per month.

If they can deliver such an economy, and keep inflation below 3%, very few people will complain about their massively overpaid salaries. Unfortunately, they have failed to deliver even an improved standard of living, let alone the hypothetical one just outlined.

So how then do they justify paying themselves so much? Perhaps a close analysis of their income as outlined in the presentation below will explain everything better to the laymen.

The above, in a nutshell, is the justification for the Singapore government ministers’ salaries. Singapore supposedly being a knowledge-based economy, one would reasonably expect that those who possess greater knowledge should earn more. However, one should never forget that PM Lee views things in negative terms, such as how Temasek Holdings made negative profits of $48,000,000,000/-, and how foreign workers provide a negative buffer against retrenchment for locals. Because of this, he values negative knowledge, negative wisdom, and negative competence above all else, which is why his cabinet is made up entirely of people who possess negative ability.

P.S. Does anybody know why PM Lee finds it necessary to order “mee siam mai hum”? I mean, since when does anybody serve mee siam with hum, anyway????!!!!

10 reasons why Singaporeans will never come first for PM Lee’s administration

By Tan Keng Leng

Recently, PM Lee declared that “Singaporeans will always come first” for his administration. Predictably, this announcement was met by a storm of protests both from the pro and anti-government factions of netizens.

The anti-government factions denounced his declaration as just propaganda intended to divert attention from his administration’s staunchly pro-foreigner policies, while the pro-government faction denounced the anti-government faction as a bunch of ingrates who failed to appreciate everything the government has achieved.

So do Singaporeans really come first for the Lee Administration, and if so, how do exactly do they come first? To arrive at a correct conclusion to the answer, it would be best to count the ways in which Singaporeans are obviously coming in first for the administration.

1. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to die in war, because the foreigners and elites will flee the country. Of course, one cannot reasonably expect the foreigners to stay and fight for Singapore; after all, this is not their country.

In fact, it may even be better to get rid of them entirely, because if Singapore happens to be at war with their homelands, then they may well become a fifth column against the SAF. But what about the elite?

Of late, there have been a number of fatal accidents in the SAF. All the dead soldiers came from middle or lower income families; none came from the families of the elite. So what’s the reason for this?

Are children of ordinary locals actually being placed in dangerous frontline positions while children of the elite are placed in safe rear-echelon positions? After all, if children of the elite are facing the same risks, then one should reasonably expect at least a few of them to get hurt in training periodically, right?

No one expects the SAF to answer this question even if it was put forward to them. Even if they were to reply, it would just be the standard stock answer: Singapore is a meritocracy, and that it just so happens that the elite children are the best. But of course, if this was truly so, then many of the fatal accidents could have easily be prevented in the very first place, since they would have planned for adequate safety procedures to safeguard against them happening at all

2. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to be retrenched in any recession, while job priority goes to the elite and foreigners. This isn’t just idle supposition; it is actually borne out in the current recession.

One would imagine that any CEO who lost $48,000,000,000/- in failed investments would be out looking for a new job the very next day, but in the case of Temasek Holdings CEO Madam Ho Ching, it was her successor Mr. Charles “Chip” Goodyear who found himself looking for a new job after just five months instead. Exactly why was never revealed, except that it was “due to strategic differences”.

A very important question that should be asked but never was is this: strategic differences over what? Selling-off of money-losing investments? Dismissal of non-performing scholars from politically-connected elite families? Diversification of investment portfolios instead of putting all of TH’s eggs into a few baskets? What?

Furthermore, as a supposed “meritocracy”, the heads anyone found responsible for these blunders should roll, so where were the announced dismissals? Or was Chip Goodyear’s head the only one to roll? If this is so, then the interesting issue would be why his head should roll when he clearly had nothing to do with the debacle since he wasn’t in charge of the organization at the time.

Madam Ho has since been restored to her position because according to Finance Minister Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, “she’s the best person for the job”. Of course, if this was so, the question of why her resignation was even accepted and Chip Goodyear appointed as her successor in the first place should be but was never answered.

One thing this bizarre incident did prove though was that the government failed to live up to its promises of “more good years”, since a prominent Goodyear did quit in a huff and leave over bureaucratic meddling in his job.

The current recession has also proven something else: contrary to the government’s previous pronouncements on the issue, foreign workers are NOT a buffer against retrenchments for locals. In fact, if anything, it is the locals themselves who are serving as a buffer for the foreigners. Thousands of locals have lost their jobs, replaced by foreigners. Presumably in the same way that Temasek Holdings earned “negative profits” of $48,000,000,000/- in the recession, so too are foreign workers a “negative buffer” against retrenchments for locals.

3. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to suffer pay cuts in a recession. The foreigners will only have their pay frozen, while the elites will get massive pay increments for being “talented” enough to come up with this solution.

At the start of the recession, the government was quick to implement pay cuts. However, as they failed to announce ministerial pay cuts as well, presumably they continued to receive their over-bloated salaries. True, they did announce no bonuses or pay increments, but then again, the same applied for the “lesser mortals”. And now that the economy is picking up once more, while the government did call upon employers to restore staff salaries, they are not enforcing it. And sooner or later, they will announce the restoration of their own bonuses etc.

And as for the foreigners, even if their salaries were cut, the very fact that their employee CPF contribution is only 5% means that they are far better able to absorb the impact of such cuts better than locals can, simply because foreigners earning the same basic salary as locals have a much higher take home pay.

4. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to receive priority in selecting the schools of their choice. This comes after all the best schools have been reserved for the elites and foreigners of course.

This statement may be an exaggeration, but not by much. Twenty years ago or so, the then-PM Lee announced the graduate mother priority scheme. In this scheme, children of women graduates who are married to other graduates would be given priority for schooling in keeping with his theories of the genetic intellectual superiority of graduate parents.

There are many major flaws in this theory: for one thing, if talent and intelligence are hereditary, then one would reasonably expect the children of Oscar-winning Hollywood stars to also be as talented as their parents, but many if not most are not.

For another thing, there are many geniuses whose parents came from modest backgrounds, most notably Professor Albert Einstein. Predictably, the scheme failed, because the graduate mothers who chose to register their children under the scheme quickly found themselves ostracized by their outraged friends. One can’t help but wonder about one very important point: if scholars really are so intellectually superior, then why did they fail to predict the outcome of this ill-conceived scheme?

As for the foreigners, there has been much controversy in the public and debate in government circles over whether they should be given equal opportunities as locals, notably sparked off by the arrogant, sense-of-entitlement letter written by Mrs. Sweta Agarwal.

The government is always going on and on about how to convince the PRs to become Singapore citizens, but really, this debate is a non-issue that proves that the elite scholars are anything but the best and brightest in the country. Locals should always be given privileges not available to foreigners, whether PRs or otherwise.

If foreigners have the same benefits as locals, then why should they adopt Singapore citizenship? Conversely, if locals have no advantages in anything at all over foreigners, then why shouldn’t they be “quitters” and leave behind a country that does not appreciate them and takes them for granted instead? Since any lesser mortal can realize this, then why can’t the elite scholars? Or are they so high up in their ivory towers that the rarefied air up there has caused them to hallucinate and become delusional?

Perhaps replacing them as policy planners with lesser mortals would give them a reality check if this is the case.

5. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to be called upon to donate generously to the less fortunate. Whether it is for foreign disasters, needy locals or whatever, the government is always exhorting locals to keep donating even though the salaries and living standards of ordinary locals have been steadily declining.

Given its huge reserves, the government can easily pay for these programs, but they refuse to. This is especially appalling when one considers that they have actually dipped into the reserves to pay for cost overruns in the two casinos.

The government is always saying that they have to take actions that are good for the country and not those that are necessarily popular. Applying this logic to the above, presumably they regard a crutch mentality among the wealthy elite as being good for the country.

6. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to be rejected for welfare or other benefits. A couple of years ago, the government raised GST, ostensibly to “increase Workfare assistance” to the needy, but when Dr. Lily Neo, one of the few PAP MPs who show genuine concern for needy locals appealed for assistance to be raised by at least $100/- per month, MM Lee curtly told her off for it.

After much debate, the government finally settled on a $30/- increment, with 20% deduction for CPF of course. This was then followed by a massive pay increment for ministers. This was then followed by an announcement at the end of the year that per capita income had gone up substantially, meaning that the standard of living in the country had improved.

What was left unmentioned was that it went up only for a few elite people, not the vast majority. Presumably this was how the GST increase was meant to benefit the needy: by using it to give themselves massive pay increments so as to raise per capita income with minimal increase in assistance for the people who truly need it, the poor.

From time to time, the government says that they are well on track to provide a Swiss standard of living for the country. What they obviously failed to mention was that by that, they meant a Swiss cheese standard of living for the country, with all the cheese, the good parts in other words, going to the elite and foreigners, and all the holes being left for ordinary locals.

The government justifies its refusal to provide welfare benefits because they claim that it will cause the poor to develop a crutch mentality, and yet at the same time, they encourage locals to donate to private charities (see #6 above) when this will also create a crutch mentality in them.

Further contradicting themselves, the government has also announced a series of programs to integrate foreigners with locals. So it would appear that the government doesn’t want to support locals with a crutch mentality, but is all too happy to support foreigners with the same crutch mentality. Obviously they have forgotten that locals from low income families pay taxes, serve NS and vote too.

Perhaps they should be reminded of it by losing a few GRCs.

7. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to bear the brunt of massive housing cost increases. According to several ministers, including MND Mah Bow Tan, HDB will always provide affordable housing for locals. The problem though, is that affordability is a subjective matter.

For example, to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, a US$20,000,000/- mansion is affordable. To a middle manager earning Sg$5,000/- a month, this is an insane price to pay for a house. Likewise, to a government minister earning Sg$1,000,000 a year or more, a HDB flat costing upwards of Sg$400,000/- is affordable, but to a local couple whose joint income is Sg$4,000/- per month or less, they will need to slave away for 30 to 40 years to pay off their mortgage loans, with little if anything to support them in their twilight years.

The government claims that their calculations are based upon a per capita salary of Sg$7,000/- per month, or in other words, Sg$14,000/- per month for a married couple. Given that many if not most ordinary locals earn only a third of that amount, this of course means they will need more than three times as long to pay off their housing loans, not including the interest. This clearly shows just how out of touch with reality the policy makers have become.

But then again, what can one possibly expect from people whose idea of raising the standard of living in the country is to raise per capita income for the people in the country by giving themselves massive pay increments?

8. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to be given priority for dirty, low-paid, dangerous jobs such as road sweepers, toilet cleaners, construction workers etc.

This is because the best jobs are reserved for the elites while the good jobs are reserved for foreigners, “otherwise they won’t want to come”. In fact, the government has even stated that it. Exactly why was never explained.

After all, if it is really “in the strategic interests of the country for locals to fill these posts” as claimed, then shouldn’t it all the more be in the strategic interests of the country to employ only locals in the utilities industry, considering that trouble in this sector will result in the country being shut down and cut off from the outside world?

Furthermore, given the high accident rate in the construction and shipbuilding industries, are foreign governments actually threatening to ban their nationals from working in these industries unless industrial safety standards are tightened? Is this the real reason why it is in the strategic interests for locals to fill these posts?

There is another issue here. Given the government’s frequent claims that Singapore is a meritocracy, then why should jobs be reserved for anybody at all? Shouldn’t all jobs be opened to competition instead? Or are these elites and foreign talents so good that they can only perform when their jobs are secure and they are free from competition and under no threat of losing their jobs?

9. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to be blamed for such blunders as the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari or the Geylang Serai food poisoning debacle. In fact, several government ministers did say Singaporeans have become complacent, which is why these events occurred. How exactly ordinary locals are at fault for them though was never detailed.

Terrorist mastermind Kastari’s escape came about because the commander of the Whitley Road Detention Center (an elite scholar) where he had been incarcerated kept ignoring repeated reports of the danger posed by the design of the toilet he escaped from, while his Nepalese Gurkha guards left him unattended in the toilet. How ordinary locals caused this potentially catastrophic incident through their complacency and negligence when no ordinary locals were ever involved in it remains a mystery.

The Geylang Serai Indian rojak food poisoning case was caused unsanitary conditions within the market, and according to government officials, “failure of the victims to wash their hands after using the toilet”.

If this is so, then this would be the first ever known incident of people eating Indian rojak with their bare hands. How they are able to withstand the sizzling hot oil on the fritters or the scalding hot gravy they are dipped into without the use of a fork is an intriguing question.

A more intriguing question though is this: what were the Aljunied CCC and the NEA doing all the time before the incident that the market and food center should be in such unsanitary conditions, and why weren’t they ever publicly taken to task for it?

10. Ordinary Singaporeans will always be the first to get the spurs stuck into their hides for being lazy. No less than MM Lee had said this. He even went on to declare that Singaporeans prefer to spend time on sports and other enrichment activities whereas China nationals spend time in libraries.

Perhaps one should give him the benefit of the doubt here; he is an octogenarian after all. It’s only natural that he should forget that it is the government itself that demands that Singaporeans should participate in sports and other enrichment activities, and that their academic performance (and chances to be admitted into good schools) would be graded accordingly because the government wants locals to be all-rounded and not merely academics.

Curiously though, foreign students, in particular the PRCs, seem to be exempted from this requirement, which is why they can spend all their time studying and in the library. In fact, the government even provides them free English lessons so that they can bridge the gulf in English standards between themselves and locals.

Whether they can actually compete with the local students should they be equally encumbered with all these CCA requirements is a good question. The answer is, probably not, since they cannot even compete with the locals in English, the fundamental building block of the local education system, without CCA requirements and free additional English lessons. But then again, given that their positions in good schools have been reserved for them, they don’t need to care about such things either.

After a careful analysis of all the ways in which Singaporeans will always come first for the government, it appears that the pro-government faction is correct. Ordinary Singaporeans do always come first for the government exactly as they claim.

It just isn’t coming in first in a positive way.

 

Other articles by Tan Keng Leng:

>> Open letter to PM Lee expressing unhappiness at his pro-foreigner policy

Open letter to Prime Minister Lee expressing unhappiness at his pro-foreigner policy (Part 1)

By Tan Keng Leng

Mr. Prime Minister,

We are a group of concerned Singaporean netizens, and we are writing in to you to express our unhappiness at the direction the country has been heading towards since the last General Election.

As citizens, it is our birthright to decide the direction we want the country to take, to elect the national leaders who would lead the country in the direction we want, and to voice out our reservations if we are unhappy with the direction the country is headed. And now we strongly believe that the time has come for us to express our unhappiness to the government.

First and foremost, there should be an immediate freeze on the number of foreigners allowed into the country.

The country now has 5,000,000 residents give or take a few thousand, and the social infrastructure is now bursting at the seams.

Before taking in anymore foreigners, the country’s infrastructure such as public transportation should be upgraded at these new arrivals’ cost, not at locals’ expenses; if they want to come here to earn a living, then they should contribute something to improving the country instead of simply taking from it.

We are often told that foreigners are a buffer who will be the first to be retrenched in a recession. How true is that really? If anything, the reverse is true; tens of thousands of locals have lost their jobs, replaced by foreigners.

After all, in a recession, who would the employer retrench, the foreign scholar whose education he paid for, or the local who paid for his own education?

We are also told that it is in the country’s strategic interests that locals should work in such fields such as construction and shipbuilding instead of depending upon foreigners. Why is this so? Aren’t we always being told that foreigners do such jobs locals shun? And there’s a very good reason why locals shun such jobs too: they’re very dangerous, with high industrial accident rates.

Furthermore, why are foreigners employed in such a strategically vital field such as the utilities industry? Can anyone imagine what would happen to the country should disgruntled foreigners decide to shut the country’s waterworks down because Singapore got into a major diplomatic spat with their homeland? The entire country will grind to a halt from lack of freshwater if that should ever happen.

Next, the authorities should take a good hard look at the quality of the so-called foreign “talent” entering the country.

Nobody in his right mind would object to someone of the caliber of Professor Stephen Hawking being given a job as an NUS lecturer. However, it’s entirely another matter altogether when the country takes in foreigners to fill up posts that can easily be done by locals.

Why on Earth should the country take in HR managers from China, Malaysia or India when this is a post that any suitably qualified local can perform

Moreover, there have been many complaints from locals that these foreign managers discriminate against them at work; what guarantees do we have that they don’t discriminate against locals in favor of their own kind?

We are constantly being told that the country’s only resources are its people, so we should all continuously go for upgrading classes, almost always at our own expense.

Even retrenched people for whom cash flow is a major concern are told to upgrade their skills at their own cost to improve their marketability, but what is the use of skills upgrading when all the good jobs are going to foreigners?

Some of our national leaders have said that local professionals should seek their fortunes overseas as there are plenty of vacancies for them overseas, but good jobs available locally should be reserved for the foreigners as otherwise they would not want to come.

In the first place, doesn’t the government always claim that Singapore is a meritocracy? If it truly is one, then why should good jobs be reserved for foreigners, or even elite scholars for that matter?

Shouldn’t everyone compete for jobs on an equal footing instead? And for that matter, why should local professionals look for good jobs overseas so that foreigners can be enticed by good jobs that are reserved for them here?

Why can’t the foreigners seek their good job opportunities elsewhere instead of here? We are often told that we should allow our parents to move in with us to keep the family unit intact; doesn’t forcing us to seek better prospects overseas run contrary to this? Or are we supposed to uproot our parents from their friends and the land they call home to settle someplace they are unfamiliar with?

In the past, the government has often denounced locals who migrate in search of a better life elsewhere as quitters; that being the case aren’t the so-called foreign “talents” that the country is taking in also quitters? And why are our own people who seek greener pastures elsewhere being condemned as quitters when foreign quitters are welcomed with open arms, especially since it is government policies that are driving the locals out of the country?

 

Other parts in the series:

>> Part 2: Foreign scholars

>> Part 3: Foreign workers

>> Part 4: Accountability