http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/08/30/voting-away-your-childrens-jobs/
[h=2]Voting away your children’s jobs[/h]
August 30th, 2015 |
Author: Contributions
I worked in a financial futures company sometime in 2007. When I started with
the company, the managing director, heads of department, back office managers
were almost all local citizens with a few PRs occupying these posts. The staff
were mainly Singaporeans with a few Malaysians and Indonesians due to language
ability as the customer base of the company spanned the ASEAN region.
About 2 years later, the managing director was replaced by an Indian from
Mumbai. This new MD was mostly lost about what the company actually did and went
about asking all sorts of basic operational questions that set us thinking ‘what
the hell’? We know now that there was a high chance his academic qualifications
were fake although we did not suspect it at that time. In any case why would
someone from Mumbai get hired to run a financial company in Singapore, the
number 3 or 4 major financial center in the world after London, New York and
Hong Kong?
As months passed, all the local heads of department were replaced one by one
by Australians and Britons. The customers who had interacted with locals
suddenly found themselves up against the arrogant and racist outlook and
attitude of the new managers with their “take it or leave it “attitude, and the
local staff were often caught in awkward situations between their bosses and the
clients they served.
In the back office, the operations managers were replaced by Australians too.
Was this even necessary? The company looked like an ethnic cleansing zone. They
even employed this Caucasian to man the phone lines and he had to ask for help
whenever he picked up a call where the caller spoke Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin,
Hokkien, Cantonese and so on. This company ran itself into the ground in 2012
and is no longer in existence. Nobody in Singapore misses it, I would think.
When the esteemed (to some people anyway) Lee Hsien Loong pronounced that
foreigners create jobs, I tried to gel that statement to what happened in my
career at that time but failed. Foreigners come and do jobs that Singaporeans
cannot and do not want to do is another motherhood statement that cannot find
anchor in reality as far as PMET jobs are concerned.
This is just one company that I personally worked in that so blatantly
discriminated against local born citizens, and nobody could do anything about
it. If our elected representatives allow such systematic cleansing of the local
workforce in the local economy, why are we still voting for them? I know that
this is still happening in many companies in Singapore right at this moment and
there are many frustrated locals out there. If you have any such stories, I
encourage you to share them online in the lead up to 11 September 2015 so more
Singaporeans know how this government is ruining our job prospects and those of
our children’s. We need to let as many people as possible know how dire the PMET
employment situation is in Singapore, and the only chance to do something about
it is in our very own hands and on this day.
It is your call to live a better and more dignified life from now on in your
own country or wallow for the rest of your life here subject to discrimination
and lack of opportunities, and fade into depressive nothingness. You can choose
to be meek but do not subject your own children to a fate that you can help
prevent today!
Andrew Ho
* contributed by TRE reader
[h=2]Voting away your children’s jobs[/h]
August 30th, 2015 |
Author: Contributions
I worked in a financial futures company sometime in 2007. When I started with
the company, the managing director, heads of department, back office managers
were almost all local citizens with a few PRs occupying these posts. The staff
were mainly Singaporeans with a few Malaysians and Indonesians due to language
ability as the customer base of the company spanned the ASEAN region.
About 2 years later, the managing director was replaced by an Indian from
Mumbai. This new MD was mostly lost about what the company actually did and went
about asking all sorts of basic operational questions that set us thinking ‘what
the hell’? We know now that there was a high chance his academic qualifications
were fake although we did not suspect it at that time. In any case why would
someone from Mumbai get hired to run a financial company in Singapore, the
number 3 or 4 major financial center in the world after London, New York and
Hong Kong?
As months passed, all the local heads of department were replaced one by one
by Australians and Britons. The customers who had interacted with locals
suddenly found themselves up against the arrogant and racist outlook and
attitude of the new managers with their “take it or leave it “attitude, and the
local staff were often caught in awkward situations between their bosses and the
clients they served.
In the back office, the operations managers were replaced by Australians too.
Was this even necessary? The company looked like an ethnic cleansing zone. They
even employed this Caucasian to man the phone lines and he had to ask for help
whenever he picked up a call where the caller spoke Bahasa Melayu, Mandarin,
Hokkien, Cantonese and so on. This company ran itself into the ground in 2012
and is no longer in existence. Nobody in Singapore misses it, I would think.
When the esteemed (to some people anyway) Lee Hsien Loong pronounced that
foreigners create jobs, I tried to gel that statement to what happened in my
career at that time but failed. Foreigners come and do jobs that Singaporeans
cannot and do not want to do is another motherhood statement that cannot find
anchor in reality as far as PMET jobs are concerned.
This is just one company that I personally worked in that so blatantly
discriminated against local born citizens, and nobody could do anything about
it. If our elected representatives allow such systematic cleansing of the local
workforce in the local economy, why are we still voting for them? I know that
this is still happening in many companies in Singapore right at this moment and
there are many frustrated locals out there. If you have any such stories, I
encourage you to share them online in the lead up to 11 September 2015 so more
Singaporeans know how this government is ruining our job prospects and those of
our children’s. We need to let as many people as possible know how dire the PMET
employment situation is in Singapore, and the only chance to do something about
it is in our very own hands and on this day.
It is your call to live a better and more dignified life from now on in your
own country or wallow for the rest of your life here subject to discrimination
and lack of opportunities, and fade into depressive nothingness. You can choose
to be meek but do not subject your own children to a fate that you can help
prevent today!
Andrew Ho
* contributed by TRE reader
