your biggest worries?

Tharman speaks of three important challenges facing the Indian community

S RAMESH

rameshs@mediacorp.com.sg

SINGAPORE

Speaking at a national convention organised by the People’s Association’s Indian Activities Group (Narpani Peravai), Mr Tharman stressed that a key task is to bring the young into the various organisations and give them the space to pursue their own initiatives.

He said this would not displace the current crop of leaders as they would be needed to provide support and guidance to the younger generation.

The second challenge is for the community to rise above parochialism.

Mr Tharman believes that the community will still be very diverse 20 years down the road but he hopes that it will be one with a less sense of differences and one where language and culture is alive.

He said: “We have to keep up the momentum of overcoming the differences amongst us ... This is a real challenge. We have to ask ourselves — how do we preserve this\ strength of distinct cultural identities but with genuine respect and genuine desire to create bridges. We still have some way to go in this regard.”

The third area is helping families in need of assistance.— Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the Deputy Prime Minister and chairman of the Singapore Indian Development Association’s (SINDA) Board of Trustees, has spoken of three important challenges facing the Indian community in Singapore.

The improvement of productivity and service starts with competition

Letter from Ng Hui Hong Nicholas

I REFER to Lin Jiayi’s letter “Profit-driven isn’t better run” (July 16). One of the key benefits of privatisation is that private organisations are very much concerned about quality of service because it affects their profits. If their quality of service drops, consumers will look for alternatives. Hence, competition plays a big part in improving service standards and productivity.

Our public transport system is a privatised one but do Singaporeans who take public transport have alternatives? If we feel that the service standards of SMRT are poor, can we choose another provider for this same service? Because we have no comparable alternatives, our public transport system is a monopoly. Singaporeans have to accept poor service standards and price hikes.

The European system is a considerably privatised one and is able to provide alternatives with multiple rail providers like Eurostar, Thalys, CNL etc. Singapore, however, is unable to achieve the same economies of scale as Europe.

A profit driven company would strive to reduce costs and increase revenue. Hence, their best case scenario would be to run at full capacity. This meaning the maximum number of people squeezed into trains and buses. Whereas a non-profit organisation could have a different KPI, such as managing costs and improving service standards.

Singapore is where it is today because of strong Government initiatives that have been executed well.

With an average profit of, say, S$177 million a year (to use SMRT as a benchmark), a nationalised public transport system can afford a margin for error.

Even considering a scenario where this nationalised public system is less efficient and generates only a profit of S$100 million, this profit does not go to shareholders but to improving the transport system.

Educating all children – without exception

For the S’pore system to truly be for all, those with disabilities must not be allowed to fall through the cracks

Reuben Wong and Felicity Cr awf ord

scare spreads

in Japan

from ChIna

12 signs it's time to quit Facebook

Are you a certified Facebook addict?

Read our warning signs to see if you need to step away from your computer.

Skiving employee caught out on Facebook

Name-calling teacher asked to resign

Larger image

Microsoft

 

Massachusetts maths and science teacher Dr June Talvitie-Siple was asked to resign from her $90,000 a year job after Facebook outbursts concerning her pupils and their parents.

Dr Talvitie-Siple described her students as " germ bags" and the school parents as " snobby" and " arrogant" .

She defended her actions saying that her comments had been a joke, and that she'd been caught out when Facebook changed its default settings to be more open.

‘Shoebox’ trend a boon for developers and retailers

COMMENTARY

TA N CHIN KEONG

property@mediacorp.com.sg

One quirk of the current recovery in Singapore’s residential property market is the rising popularity of small-sized apartments, better known as “shoebox” units.

Since early 2009, when the current home market up-cycle began, private property developers have sold a number of projects consisting mainly of “shoebox” units. These include The Alexis, which kicked off the “shoebox” trend and Suites@, which probably Guillemardholds the smallest apartment at 258 square feet.

In fact, the percentage of non-landed private residential units with floor space of less than 650 sq ft (our definition of a “shoebox” unit) sold by private property developers has risen from 12 per cent in 2009 to 38 per cent year-to-date in 2011.

We also notice a downsizing trend in public housing over the last few years.

Based on data from the annual reports of the Housing and Development Board, the percentage of smaller flats (four-room and below) sold by the board went up from 46 per cent in the fiscal year ending March 2005 to 67 per cent in the year ending March 2008. This ratio further rose to 83 per cent in the year ending March 2010.

However, this trend is also driven by the rising popularity of four-room flats versus five-room and executive flats.

But it has to be noted that with floor space of around 970 sq ft, four-room flats are not really that small.

Time for action on home loan rates?

COMMENTARY

COLIN TAN

property@mediacorp.com.sg 

Home loan rates are back in the news.

In the latest move to maintain loan volumes in an uncertain market, at least two Singapore banks have reportedly been dangling some of the lowest rates, currently pegged at about 0.2 per cent to market benchmarks, on selected properties.

The offered mortgage rates are pegged against two commonly used benchmark interest rates.

These are the Singapore interbank lending rate (Sibor) and the swap offer rate (SOR). The three month Singapore dollar Sibor has been at a record low of 0.438 per cent since January, while the three-month SOR has moved between 0.189 and 0.3 per cent since April.

It now stands at 0.21 per cent.

The fact that these deals have not been offered to the rest of the market yet and with the marketing kept low-profile, suggests that the banks themselves recognise that it would be counter-productive to engage in an open mortgage war at this time.

However, it may not be too long before this happens, given the global economic situation where at a recent meeting of the United States Federal Reserve, policymakers discussed “Quantitative Easing Three”. And Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday that further stimulus might be needed to help the US recovery.

Quantitative easing is a tool to try to revive the US economy by expanding the money supply via huge purchases of government bonds. If this happens, foreign investors are likely to head back to our region in a big way as they switch out of developed markets, such as the US and Europe, which have recently been spooked by concerns of slowing growth.

India inflation rises, rate hike likely this month

NEW DELHI

The wholesale price index rose 9.44 per cent last month from a year earlier, quicker than May’s 9.06-per-cent increase but well below consensus market expectations of a 9.70-per-cent rise.

The government also sharply raised April’s inflation reading to 9.74 per cent from a provisional 8.66 per cent. Final readings for most older data are being revised higher, raising worries that inflation may in fact already have entered the double digits.

Persistent inflation is likely to push the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to continue tightening monetary policy, even if that slows economic growth in the short term.

“If need be, we will live with slightly lower growth in order to have sustained long-run growth,” India’s Chief Economic Adviser Kaushik Basu said.

“Inflation needs to be controlled, there are no two ways about that.”

Mr Basu said inflation will remain high in the next few months before beginning a slow decline. He expects the inflation rate to decline to slightly more than 6 per cent by the time the fiscal year ends in March.

Most economists expect the RBI to raise its policy rate by 50 to 75 basis points by March, including a 25 basis-point increase at its next meeting on July 26.

The policy rate now stands at 7.50 per cent.

— India’s inflation accelerated in June due to rising prices of food, fuel and minerals, the government said yesterday, adding to expectations that the central bank may increase interest rates later this month.DOW JONES

but she has to pay fine

SINGAPORE

Pan Hongling, 25, was fined the maximum S$15,000 after the Chief Justice allowed her appeal.

She represented herself in the appeal hearing and argued it was her employment agent who handed her an accountancy diploma for her S Pass application.

Mid-level skilled foreigners — for example, technicians — may apply for an S Pass to work here.

Pan signed the application form, which was submitted to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), declaring that the particulars of the forged academic certificate were accurate.

But subsequent verification with the Dalian University in China revealed that the academic certificate was forged and Pan had not graduated from it.— A Chinese national, who forged her university certificate in her employment application, yesterday escaped the benchmark four-week jail sentence for such crimes.

His experience in Government and politics will be invaluable to the current and aspiring leaders and policymakers who make up the student body of our school and also to our faculty who are conducting research on political leadership and policy-making,” said a spokesperson for the think-tank.

IMEL DA SAA D

23 firms went the extra

mile for older workers

Limit transport providers instead

Letter from Kelvin Seah Kah Cheng

I refer to SMRT’s and SBS Transit’s recent application to the Public Transport Council to adjust fares and the letter by Wee Jun Jie Aaron “How is fare hike justified when …” (July 14 ).

It is unfortunate that commuters now face the prospect of higher bus and rail fares given SMRT’s and SBS Transit’s recent applications. While both operators cited cost like rising manpower cost

[# ENSURE that there is only ONE  GENERAL and NOT MORE #  ]  and fuel prices as reasons for the proposed adjustments, some such as Workers’ Party MP Gerald Giam have questioned the need for the fare hikes in light of both operators’ healthy profits in the last financial year.

While determining whether these profits represent a normal rate of return in economic terms [WHY  nO  COnsIderAtIOn is gIven to cItIzen's  savIng  depOsIt  Interest rAte  nOrmal ecOnOmIc  retUrns ? ? ? ?] is debatable, what is certain is that the structure of public transport system is in need of some reform.

One measure that has been suggested is to nationalise public transport by setting up a National Transport Association to oversee and run major transport services.

Rather than driven by profit, it has been proposed that such an association operate under a cost-recovery basis.

The start-up of you

Why today’s graduates have to approach career strategy the way an entrepreneur goes about a start-up

Whatever you may be thinking when you apply for a job today, you can be sure the employer is asking this:

Can this person add value every hour, every day — more than a worker in India, a robot or a computer?

Can he or she help my company adapt by not only doing the job today but also reinventing the job for tomorrow?

And can he or she adapt with all the change, so my company can adapt and export more into the fastest-growing global markets?