^ Productivity ^ [Effecacy Efficiency Economy]

It’s time we let it flow again.

Raise levy, nOt stOp free buses

Why deprive non-gambling patrons?

Letter from Quek Soo Beng

ONE of the Government’s rationales for granting licences to the two gaming operators was that they would build integrated resorts where the majority of amenities and services would be non-gaming in nature.

For example, Resorts World Sentosa has the Universal Studios theme park, numerous shops and food outlets.

Aren’t the IRs multiple-service destinations?

So why the hang-up about Singaporeans enjoying the free shuttle bus services?

It was reported that the majority of bus passengers surveyed were heading not to the casinos but the other amenities within, and even without, the IRs.

The shuttle bus is an excellent customer service.

It seems illogical to contend that the prospect of saving a couple of dollars in bus fare would induce a significant number of people to patronise the casinos considering that a hefty $100 entry fee is still payable. If more gamblers do use the bus service, the pertinent question then is whether the entry levy is high enough.

Gamblers intent on getting to the casino will do so, free shuttle bus or not.

Why then deprive the non-gambling majority of the transport privileges just because some think it is politically correct to “appease” public opinion?

But who exactly is the prohibition of shuttle bus services appeasing?

Surely not the IR customers or people enjoying the free rides to and from the city.

The authorities should not interfere with FREE enterprise efforts to enhance customer service. It is good news if more shopping malls, cinemas, clubs and restaurants start to provide similar complimentary services.

This wOn’t stOp gamblers

Letter from Raymund Koh Joo Guan

I REFER to “RWS withdraws heartland shuttle buses” (Sept 10). There are those who claim the free shuttle service will lure gamblers to the gaming tables. How naive.

The fact that Singaporeans are already paying $100 for a return trip to Genting Highlands is an example of how far gamblers will go.

Do the authorities think that gamblers will not go to the casinos without the shuttle service?

If I were one, I would just take a taxi there. There would be no need to wait for the bus or to look for parking space.

The free shuttle not only brings business  to the integrated resorts, it also caters to poorer families [SMRT bus fare UNaffOrdable] and reduces congestion at the Sentosa Gateway.

Regulatory council for educational the-rapists needed as well

Letter from Dr Noel Chia Kok Hwee

Passing the Bill will give the proposed Allied Health Professions Council as a regulatory body the mandatory power to oversee therapists’ conduct and practice, discipline errant therapists, maintain a register of qualified therapists, and accredit training programmes and providers.

Such a proposal is long overdue.

While the council will focus on physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech-language therapists first, other allied health professionals such as dental therapists, radiotherapists, podiatrists and clinical psychologists should also be included later.

However, we must not forget also the need to consider a similar Bill for the allied education professionals such as educational therapists, special needs therapists, special education teachers and allied educators. This is more so for educational therapists who also happen to fall in between allied health and allied education professions.

Educational therapy offers individuals with learning and behavioural challenges a wide range of intensive, individualised interventions designed to remediate or cope with learning and behavioural difficulties.

It also demystifies learning and behavioural problems and raises clients’ awareness of their strengths so they can use those strengths to best advantage to overcome or compensate for areas of weakness.

Educational therapists create and implement an intervention programme that utilises information from a variety of sources including the client’s social-cultural, emotional, psycho-educational and neuro-psychological context.

There are more and more people in the allied education field calling themselves educational therapists and claiming to be able to provide learning and behaviour support services to individuals with such special needs. However, many of them are either not properly trained or poorly equipped to provide quality professional services.

In the United States, educational therapists are highly trained and qualified professionals registered with the Association of Educational Therapists.

This professional body sets stringent criteria to ensure its members have undergone thorough postgraduate and/or specialised professional training to meet the practice standard and conduct.

We need a similar professional body or, better still, an Allied Education Professional Council like the one that has been proposed for allied health professionals by the Health Ministry.WITH reference to the report “Errant therapists may not be a pain any more” (Sept 9), the Health Ministry and Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan should be applauded for the effort to push for the Allied Health Professions Bill to be approved by Parliament.

Aussie churches ban Sinatra’s My Way —

MELBOURNE

Sports anthems and popular songs such as Frank Sinatra’s My Way have been banned from funerals at more than 200 Australian churches after new orders from Melbourne’s archbishop.

The edict follows a study that found the signature song for Australian Rules Football team Collingwood was one of the top requests at Melbourne funerals, along with My Way and the Bette Midler version of   

The Wind Beneath My Wings .

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said sports songs were not appropriate for a service which emphasises the solemn nature of death and is not designed as a celebration of the deceased’s life.

“Secular items are never to be sung or played at a Catholic funeral, such as romantic ballads, pop or rock music, political songs, football club songs,” Archbishop Hart wrote in the new guidelines.

“At the funerals of children ... nursery rhymes and sentimental secular songs are inappropriate because these may intensify grief.”

The move in Melbourne has received a mixed reaction, a spokesman for the church said.

One parish priest, Father Bob Maguire from South Melbourne, said the move would make it harder to balance the needs of mourners with those of the church.

He told Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper he preferred to see funerals as “family affairs attended by clergy, not a clergymen’s affair attended by family”. AFP

Mr Oakeshott said his decision to back Ms Gillard had angered some parliamentary colleagues and he knew this would make it difficult to deliver the US$9 billion ($12 billion) package for rural Australia the independents had negotiated with her. — An independent Australian politician whose support was crucial to keeping Prime Minister Julia Gillard in power on Friday knocked back an offer to become a minister in her minority government.AFP

Let’s do our bid for a $2 COE

Sunday: 5th September 2010

Someone asked me:

 Will you bid for a certificate of entitlement (COE) if you see your dream car beckoning from the showroom?

Then I had a dream.

I dreamt of snagging a $2 COE and dashing over to get my metallic object of desire.

Why a $2 COE?

It has happened before - on a day in November 2008.

True, it happened amid a banking crisis-sparked recession. The COE price for Category A cars (up to 1600cc) crashed to $2.

As my colleague Christopher Tan wryly pointed out: 'On the afternoon of the freak $2 result, those monitoring the tender noticed that a crash might be imminent. Hence they went in with ultra-low bids.

'It was a confluence of many aligned stars: the world economy was tanking, people were losing their jobs, salaries were being cut, and last but not least, COE supply was near its highest.

'Plus, the car 'population' had become very young after years of abundant COEs. Plus, many people were stuck with cars bought at high loans, and were not able to trade them in for new ones.'

In other words, car showrooms were empty and it was mostly individuals, not the dealers bidding on behalf of buyers, who put in bids that fateful November 2008 day.

Maybe it was because I had recently seen the movie Inception, but in my dream, people bought into the idea that they should do their own COE bidding, skipping the car dealers' package deal.

Hence, the $2 COE for Category A was replicable, without most of those underlying factors my colleague cited.

In my dream, I first 'entered' the mind of the person who devised the scheme, to grasp the fuel-injected mechanics of the COE system. He or she must have had a devilish sense of humour and understood Fallen Man.

This person created a bidding set-up that tantalised would-be car buyers with a minimum $1 bid price yet set the actual bid price at the sum Bidder X will pay. Simply put, Bidder X is the price setter.

He epitomises you and me, who desire a 'low' COE but will pay up for a 'high' COE simply because you and I have already made up our minds to buy a car, and we see others rushing to the showrooms (the best shorthand here is 'kiasuism', or fear of losing out).

In my dream, this kiasuism was expunged from our human nature.

Instead, a number of bidders were prepared to become what I shall call 'suckers'. But that is not a fair label, because these people did want a new car but were prepared to wait many months for it. They were 'public-spirited'.

Remember, it was a dream.

You can go to the Land Transport Authority's website on how COE bidding works, or you can Google 'how COE works' for simple yet accurate examples.

I'll use a simplified illustration myself.

Supposing there are 10 Category A COEs for the current bidding round. Technically, everyone - say, 20 bidders - can bid at $1. But there is no price setter to enable 10 bidders to secure the 10 COEs. All 20 have 'lost' and the 10 COEs go into the next bidding round.

Bidder X comes into being, in this example, if 10 people had bid only $1 and the 11th bidder had put down $2. He is the price setter. The 12th to 20th bidders, together with Bidder X, secure all 10 COEs.

These others (apart from Bidder X) had all bid more than $2. Bidder No. 20 can even bid $1 million or more and still get his COE at $2.

In fact, this kiasuism was understood by the devilish creator of the scheme, since a high bid ensures the bidder's success! It also, typically and across the board, ensures in the real world that COE prices are not freak $2 ones.

But should many be like the 20th bidder, and bid outrageously?

The ancient Chinese said, 'You may get what you wish for.' The $1 million sum may well become the price setter if bidders 1 to 10 bid from $1 to $999,999 and bidders 12 to 20 bid above $1 million.

If you have now truly grasped this Nobel Prize-worthy scheme, enter my dream world, and bid with me to get that $2 COE.

Indeed, and this is real, not from the dream, the LTA has been on our side, helping out by allowing real-time transparency. You can actually monitor the bids.

To repeat my dream scenario, individuals - not car dealers - did the bidding. Also, there were enough 'suckers' who bid $1 to enable Bidder X to set the price at $2. But who wants to be a sucker?

Think of it this way: Even with the current annual COE quotas, how many genuine car buyers will be thwarted from getting their new cars within a reasonable time?

Even if the wait is a year, remember, that COE will cost only $2!      *  It  is  defInItely  wOrth  it  !  *

Assuming there are 600 Category A COEs up for bidding (I use only one category to simplify my model), 599 people must bid more than $2, and only one must bid $2.

The rest (just one person if there are only 601 bidders) must bid $1.

As an alternative, only 601 people need to bid in this round, and plus or minus 600 in the next round, based on the actual available COEs each time. In this case, only one person puts in the $1 bid and the other 600 can put in $2.

Come on, we can do it.

Just hold back on your need for a car this round.

It's worth it, for a $2 COE. Haha.

The writer is The Sunday Times' copyeditor.

Pasted from <http://www.cpf.gov.sg/imsavvy/infohub_article.asp?readid={533534806-6311-3618128299}>

Past 62, you take the job you can do (ST 4 Sep)

Engaging hearts and minds ...

Education Minister throws down the challenge to teachers here

Zul Othman

zul@mediacorp.com.sg

SINGAPORE

But speaking yesterday to some 2,000 educators at the 5th Teachers’ Conference, where he also launched the Academy of Singapore Teachers, Dr Ng emphasised why Singapore “(has) to deliver on this promise”.

Singapore’s productivity drive will see its industries “undergo transformation so that most — if not all — good jobs will require high level of skills and education”, said Dr Ng.

“As a result, the price of failed education will rise and be translated into social drop-outs and marginalised citizens,” said Dr Ng, as he noted that “thinking of new ways to help learners across all academic ability achieve their full potential as well as to become life-long learners” would be one of the key challenges for teachers.

Another challenge: A better educated population which has changed the way teachers interact with students and parents. Said Dr Ng: ”Parents are able to discern specific areas of learning difficulties and often are eager to receive regular updates on their child’s progress.”

Dr Ng noted that “with a more complex and demanding school environment”, there was a need to deepen capabilities “across the board to produce strong competent individuals who can act independently and strengthen the profession collectively” — which was why the Ministry of Education gave the nod to the teaching fraternity’s proposals of setting up the Academy of Singapore Teachers, the Physical Education and Sports Teacher Academy, the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the Arts and the English Language Institute of Singapore.

Dr Ng, who is also the Second Minister of Defence, said the teaching profession could take a cue from Basic Military Training, which has moved from putting “constant pressure on the recruits all the time” to the current emphasis to “engage their hearts and minds and shape them though positive experiences”.

Said Dr Ng: “If such changes can occur in what is supposed to be a highly-disciplined, rigidly structured environment where learning outcomes are certainly more predictable than in educational settings, then we can expect schools to be impacted even more with a new generation of students, parents and teachers.”

Teachers, Dr Ng added, will also need new “engines” to achieve this increased professionalism “because we are flying at a much higher altitude”.

To that end, the new academy has been set up to lead and inspire teachers, and promote a culture of care and support for teachers’ well-being. “It will also drive pedagogical leadership and act as a focal point for teachers to gather and learn from one another,” said Dr Ng.

Among other programmes, it will set up a mentoring system for younger teachers and draw up overseas professional development programmes for teachers.

The Academy will be governed and guided by a Teachers’ Council, chaired by Director-General of Education Ho Peng and made up of leaders and professional experts from the teaching profession.

The academy currently resides at Grange Road, and will be relocated to the former St Andrew’s Junior College at Malan Road next year before moving to the Goh Keng Swee Centre— Focusing on every child in the educational system is “a working aspiration for all school systems but rarely achieved in reality”, as Education Minister Ng Eng Hen puts it. for Education, in five to six years.

Our government is very kind to hint to you that :  the private property now is too expensive to buy, wait until 5 years later then buy......for now, just stay in HDB flat for only 5 years, and you can buy private after that, plse listen to our very good government's advice.

Empower teachers so that tuition becomes unnecessary

Letter from Ho Kong Loon

THE debate raging on the proliferation of tuition centres and, concurrently, the almost compulsive need for the “fix” (tuition), are the culmination of the excesses of an unmitigated push for academic excellence.

Extensive commentaries and viewpoints from opposing camps add to the confusion over the issue. At the centre of the vortex is the dynamics of classroom teaching and learning.

Teachers make the definitive difference to make learning far more enjoyable, interesting and meaningful. Empower our teachers to do so.

Trim the content and extent of the primary school syllabuses.

Most pupils benefit from a more leisurely pace of learning, and slow learners are encouraged heaps if understanding a topic comes in digestible bits, rather than meaningless chunks.

Extra lessons should specifically involve those who have learning difficulties, or those with a weak grasp of a topic. Exempt the faster learners.

Diagnostic testing to identify areas of weaknesses, rather than piles of worksheets, is a more effective bridging tool.

Patient and systematic follow up remedial teaching to iron out the crinkles would be more useful and effective.

There must be a determined, concerted endeavour by both parents and teachers to dampen the over-dependence on extra lessons in the form of private tuition, or even countless supplementary lessons.

The Ministry of Education can do much to rein in this crutch mentality with regard to tuition.

It could rework the professional measurement tool of teachers: Give much more emphasis to good classroom teaching, score more on sound pupil management and reward the ability to jell with the children.

The time spent interacting and bonding with the children must count more in teacher assessment. Teachers who make strenuous efforts to make learning more exciting, fun and enjoyable also deserve a higher premium in ranking.

Teaching is a passion and commitment. Requisite character traits like love of children, patience, empathy, creativity and good verbal skills outweigh high academic qualifications hands down.

Rushing to cover crammed syllabuses, burdening the pupils with worksheets galore (when their competency in the topics is less than satisfactory), mandatory supplementary and remedial lessons for all, even during school holidays:

These are the factors that lead to under-performing and stressed-out children, whose over-anxious parents usually turn to tuition to ensure they can make it in the pressure cooker.

property@mediacorp.com.sg  The writer is head of research and consultancy at Chesterton Suntec International.

they baffle scientists

WEekend today September 4 - 5, 2010

DONA LD G McNEIL JR

NEW YORK

Think of it, rather, as Cimex lectularius, international arthropod of mystery.

In comparison to other insects that bite man, or even only walk across man’s food, nibble man’s crops or bite man’s farm animals, very little is known about the creature whose Latin name means — go figure — “bug of the bed”.

Only a handful of entomologists specialise in it and, until recently, it has been low on the government’s research agenda because it does not transmit disease.

Most study grants come from the pesticide industry and ask only one question:

What kills it?       But now that may change.

This month, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a joint statement on bedbug control. It was not, however, a declaration of war nor a plan of action.

It was an acknowledgment that the problem is big, a reminder that federal agencies mostly give advice, plus some advice: Try a mix of vacuuming, crevice-sealing, heat and chemicals to kill the things.

It also noted, twice, that bedbug research “has been very limited over the past several decades”. Ask any expert why the bugs disappeared for 40 years, why they came roaring back in the late 1990s, even why they do not spread disease and you hear one answer: “Good question.”— Don’t be too quick to dismiss the common bedbug as merely a pestiferous six-legged blood-sucker.

DESPITE ICK FACTOR , THEY’RE CLEAN

“The first time I saw one that wasn’t dated 1957 and mounted on a microscope slide was in 2001,” said Dr Dini Miller, a Virginia Tech cockroach expert who has added bed bugs to her repertoire.

The bugs have probably been biting our ancestors since they moved from trees to caves. The bugs are “nest parasites” that fed on bats and cave birds like swallows before man moved in.

That makes their disease-free status even more baffling. The bites itch, and can cause anaphylactic shock in rare cases, and dust containing faeces and molted shells has triggered asthma attacks, but these are all allergic reactions, not disease.

Bats are sources of rabies, Ebola, Sars and the Nipah virus. And other biting bugs are disease carriers — mosquitoes for malaria and West Nile, ticks for Lyme and babesiosis, lice for typhus, fleas for plague, tsetse flies for sleeping sickness, kissing bugs for Chagas. Even non-biting bugs like houseflies and cockroaches transmit disease by carrying bacteria on their feet or in their faeces or vomit.

But bedbugs, despite the ick factor, are clean. Actually it is safer to say that no one has proved they aren’t, said Dr Jerome Goddard, a Mississippi State entomologist.

But not for lack of trying. South African researchers have fed them blood with the Aids virus but the virus died. They have shown that bugs can retain the hepatitis B virus for weeks but when they bite chimpanzees, the infection does not take. Brazilian researchers have come closest, getting bedbugs to transfer the Chagas parasite from a wild mouse to laboratory mice.

“Someday, somebody may come along with a better experiment,” Dr Goddard said.

WHY DID THEY DISAPPEAR ?

That lingering uncertainty has led to one change in lab practice. The classic bedbug strain that all newly-caught bugs are compared against is a colony originally from Fort Dix, New Jersey, that a researcher kept alive for 30 years by letting it feed on him.

But Dr Stephen Kells, a University of Minnesota entomologist, said he “prefers not to play with that risk”. He feeds his bugs expired blood-bank blood through parafilm, which he describes as “waxy Saran Wrap”.

Dr Coby Schal of North Carolina State said he formerly used condoms filled with rabbit blood but switched to parafilm because his condom budget raised eyebrows with university auditors.

Why the bugs disappeared for so long and exploded so fast after they reappeared is another question. The conventional answer — that DDT was banned — is inadequate.

After all, mosquitoes, roaches and other insects rebounded long ago.

Much has to do with the habits of the bugs. Before central heating arrived in the early 1900s, they died back in winter. People who frequently restuffed their mattresses or dismantled their beds to pour on boiling water — easier for those with servants — suffered less, said the bedbug historian Michael Potter of the University of Kentucky.

Early remedies were risky: Igniting gunpowder on mattresses or soaking them with petrol, fumigating buildings with burning sulphur or cyanide gas.

Success finally arrived in the 1950s as the bugs were hit first with DDT and then with malathion, diazinon, lindane,

chlordane and dichlorovos, as resistance to each developed. In those days, mattresses were sprayed, DDT dust was sprinkled into the sheets, nurseries were lined with DDTimpregnated wallpaper.

In North America and Western Europe, “the slate was virtually wiped clean”, said Dr Potter, who has surveyed pest-control experts in 43 countries.

In South America, the Middle East and Africa, populations fell but never vanished.

One theory is that domestic bedbugs surged after pest control companies stopped spraying for cockroaches in the 1980s and switched to poisoned baits, which bedbugs do not eat.

But the prevailing theory is that new bugs were introduced from overseas because the ones found in cities now are resistant to different insecticides from those used on poultry or cockroaches.

Exactly where they came from is a mystery. Dr Schal is now building a “world bedbug collection” and hopes to produce a global map of variations in their genes, which might answer the question.

Experts say they have heard blame pinned on many foreign ethnic groups and on historic events from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Persian Gulf war to the spread of mosquito nets in Africa.

Every theory has holes and many are simply racist.

Pest-control companies say hotels, especially airport business hotels and resorts attracting foreign tourists, had the first outbreaks, said both Dr Potter and Mr Richard

Cooper, a pest-control specialist.

THE FUTURE IS GRIM

Whatever the source, the future is grim, experts agreed. Many pesticides do not work, and some that do are banned — though whether people should fear the bug or the bug-killer more is open to debate.

“I’d like to take some of these groups and lock them in an apartment building full of bugs and see what they say then,”

Dr Potter said of environmentalists.

Treatment, including dismantling furniture and ripping up rugs, is expensive.

Rather than actively hunting for bugs, hotels and landlords often deny having them.

Many people are not alert enough.

Some people overreact, even developing delusional parasitosis, the illusion that bugs are crawling on them. “People call me all the time, losing their minds, like it’s a curse from God,” Dr Miller said.

The reasonable course, Dr Goddard said, is to recognise that we are, in effect, back in the 1920s “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” era. People should be aware but not panicky.

However, he added: “I don’t even know what to say about them being in theatres.

That’s kind of spooky.”

Well, he was asked — Can you feel them bite?

“No,” he said. “If I put them on myarm and close my eyes, I never feel them.

But I once got my children to put them on my face, and I did. Maybe there are more nerve endings.”

Why in the world, he was asked, would he ask children to do that? “Oh, you know,” he said. “Bug people are crazy.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Bedbugs may not transmit disease but the US authorities warn they are once again a big problem

If you bought a flat before Aug 30 ...

Letter from Lily Wong Jee Choo Deputy Director (Policy and Property) Housing and Development Board We refer to the letter “Nest egg delayed” from Mr Chi Han- Hsuan (Sept 1). Mr Chi mentioned that he recently bought a HDB flat with his wife and planned to invest in a private condominium for investment, but had to wait now because of the changes to the policy for Minimum Occupation Period (MOP).

We would like to clarify that the new MOP policy is prospectively applied on resale applications received by HDB on or after Aug 30, 2010.

Resale applications received by HDB before Aug 30, 2010 will be subject to the previous MOP policy where there are no restrictions on the purchase of private properties during the MOP of the nonsubsidised flat. We thank Mr Chi for his feedback.

Currently, 11 schools offer this through-train system.— Six years after the Integrated Programme (IP) was first introduced to Singapore’s increasingly diverse education landscape, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has announced it will be expanded with seven new schools coming on board and a new junior college to be built — bringing the total number of schools offering IP to 19.

MOE plans to hire more S’poreans and have 33,000 teachers by 2015

SINGAPORE

And Education Minister Ng Eng Hen says his ministry will be looking to hire Singaporeans.

Speaking on Tuesday, Dr Ng said: “There are educational reasons for that because as Prime Minister (Lee Hsien Loong) says, part of the educational outcome is to create a Singaporean identity, and it’s something that only Singaporeans can do well.”

Apart from increasing the number of teachers, the Ministry of Education (MOE) will also be stepping up their professional development.

Dr Ng said that, while remuneration would always be important, the MOE had observed that many Singaporeans looked beyond pay for job satisfaction.

Housed at the newly-named Goh Keng Swee Centre for Education, the four new teacher academies — namely the Academy of Singapore Teachers; Physical Education and Sports Teacher Academy (Pesta); Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the Arts (Star); and the English Language Institute of Singapore (Elis) — would provide more avenues for teachers to improve their craft.

The MOE said Pesta and Star would garner available skills from the National Institute of Education (NIE), tertiary institutions, schools as well as teaching communities abroad.

The two academies will also offer overseas attachment opportunities for art, music and physical education (PE) teachers.

One teacher told MediaCorp that the teaching academies were an exciting development, as they will provide further training beyond what teachers received from the NIE. He noted that teachers could also look forward to more post-graduate scholarships.

The recruitment drive will see the number of full-time PE and aesthetics teachers increase from 2,500 to about 4,500 by 2020.

With these additions, Dr Ng said the ratio in primary schools will go from 20 pupils to one teacher last year, to 15 pupils to one teacher in 2015.

In secondary schools, the ratio will go from 17 students to one teacher last year to 14 students to one teacher by 2015.— The hiring of teachers will be ramped up so that, by 2015, Singapore will have 33,000 teachers — about 10 per cent more than the current pool of 30,400.

Zul Othman

That is why ? ? ? ?

MerItOcracy  is  as  wOrst as  MedIOcrIty  ? ? ? ?

Street Smart  Nobel Laureates  frOm  Hard KnOck  Life UnIversIty

are  really  far  mOre  InnOvatIve  and  creatIve  than  Ivy League  UnIversItIes'  graduates  ? ? ? ?

The bid deposit for motorcycle COEs remains at $200.

MI LTON SAU