Problems that the million-dollar ministers are not solving

[LITTLEREDDOT]

#1
Low-birth rate

Forum: Even more needs to be done to encourage having babies

The writer fears Singapore faces an existential threat from a low fertility rate. Last year, the total fertility rate was 1.14.ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
PUBLISHED NOV 11, 2020, 5:00 AM SGT

Low birth rates and even lower birth rates during the Covid-19 pandemic are not happening only in Japan (Pandemic set to worsen Japan's dismal birth rates, Nov 8).

It is a phenomenon that is unfolding elsewhere, and Singapore, whose total fertility rate (TFR) dipped to an abysmal low of 1.14 last year, may be more adversely affected than most.

It is estimated globally that in 183 out of 195 countries, fertility rates are below the replacement rate of 2.1 and catastrophically, by 2100, many nations, including even China, will have their populations halved.

In other words, there won't be population reinforcement coming from anywhere any more.

While Singapore's total live births ticked up marginally from 2014 to 2018, to 39,279 last year, this number still reflects a TFR of 1.14, a statistic which, even if maintained, will put Singapore at risk of under-population.

I pessimistically predict TFR will drop lower still this year.

The fertility problem here lies in the young not marrying or procreating.

While the Government has rolled out package after package of baby incentives, perhaps even more maternity and paternity leave should be granted, childcare subsidies comprehensively enhanced, tax incentives intensified and extra employment rights magnified.

Singapore will spend $100 billion to combat the Covid-19 scourge. We also need to spend more on the existential threat of a low fertility rate.

Otherwise, we may end up with a scenario where Singapore's population will mainly be made up of the elderly infirm, with no youthful vim and vitality in the workforce, septuagenarians or octogenarians cannot retire, and there won't even be enough firm hands on deck to care for them.

Yik Keng Yeong (Dr)

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

#2
"...there is no evidence that the elderly person is injured."
If LKY can arise from his grave if he thinks there is something wrong with Singapore, why can't an elderly person with dementia step forward and ask for help?
You die, your business.

Forum: Elderly neighbour with dementia is a victim of abuse and needs help
PUBLISHED 5 HOURS AGO

I have been seeing an elderly person in a neighbouring block being abused for a few months now. I have made several police reports, but each time the officers who checked on the matter left saying they cannot do much as there are no visible injuries.

From the update given by the police, it seems the main caregiver explains away the incidents saying the elderly person is hard of hearing and is a dementia patient.

I wrote to a family service centre to ask someone to check on the elderly person. But the reply was for me to check with another centre and that officers could not do anything unless the person concerned came forward to ask for help.

I'm perplexed. How does a person with dementia who is the victim of abuse report a case?

There are ads everywhere advising neighbours to come forward to help and stop abuse from occurring in their neighbourhood.

Why can't something be done before it's too late?

Mumtaz M.A. Wahab

 

[Confuseous]

Throwing a few thousand bucks here, a few thousand bucks there over the years did not help.

So long as the overall environment in the country is not exactly certain (things like arbitrary price increases/taxes/uni fees etc
PLUS the fact the parents may not be gainfully employed within a decade, how to have more babies? Only the brave, the
naive or the very rich will have them.

 

[congo9]

I think so too.
As long as the job market is not stable and the costs of living is not being controlled properly. We will have a problem down the road.
Giving piece meal bandage solution is like kicking the can further down the road.

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

#3
Telco scam calls. SingTel makes so much money, can't even allocate some money to protect its customers.

Forum: Make telcos verify legitimacy of phone numbers to tackle spoof calls
PUBLISHED 6 HOURS AGO

There has been an alarming rise in the number of scam calls and SMSes from spoofed numbers. On answering these calls, I will hear an automated message warning of some authority investigating a package sent to me.

What is extremely disconcerting is that the calls come from spoofed numbers that belong to regular Singaporeans, meaning that I cannot meaningfully block these numbers. At best the numbers will always change and at worst, the number I block belongs to someone who may, in the future, legitimately need to contact me.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) recently mandated that telcos add the "+" prefix to international calls, but this does not prevent scammers from spoofing local numbers, nor does it address the issue that the legitimate owner of the spoofed number may eventually be inconvenienced. I have had my number spoofed, and have had people call me regarding a missed call I never made.

Why has IMDA not mandated that telcos implement the Stir/Shaken authentication method - which combats caller ID spoofing - that the Federal Communications Commission in the United States has implemented?

The telcos should be required to perform simple verification that the number is not spoofed.

Jonathan Boon

 

[millim6868]

They are all happily looking at their bank account,where got the heart to serve ,look at arrogant Jo, kee chew, laulan,buay gan etc, if look at at mah, cow ,all same

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

#4

Parliament: Smoking harder to catch than streaking, says Minister Grace Fu

Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said the frequency and nature of going in the buff and going for a puff were different.PHOTO: ST FILE

Justin Ong

5 JAN 2021


SINGAPORE - Investigating the offence of a person being naked at home cannot be compared to enforcing against smoking near windows and at balconies of homes, said Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu on Monday (Jan 4).

"One can smell smoke even without having sight of the smoker, or the ability to pin-point where the smoke is coming from," she explained in a written response to a parliamentary question filed by Mr Louis Ng (Nee Soon GRC). "But to impose a fine on the smoker, we need evidence to show the act of smoking, not merely the smell of the smoke.

"It will be challenging to track down the smoker or obtain evidence of an act of smoking being committed without rather intrusive methods given the current technology, affecting even the privacy of innocent neighbours."

"And such efforts may still be futile if the smoker hides behind a pillar, frosted glass windows or curtains to avoid detection," Ms Fu added.

"In contrast, a complainant would more easily pinpoint the location and capture evidence of a nude person exposing himself or herself to public view, to assist with investigation."

Mr Ng first called for a ban on smoking near windows or balconies at homes in early October last year.

He said then that while such a move might seem intrusive, there were already laws in place to police people's behaviour at home - like section 27A of the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act, where one cannot bare it all - even in private - while exposed to public view.

In a Facebook post at the end of October, Mr Ng wrote: "Being naked in your own home doesn't kill your neighbour but second-hand smoke could."

Public health experts have said that in Singapore, over 300 non-smokers die each year because of exposure to secondhand smoke.

But Ms Fu said the frequency and nature of going in the buff and going for a puff were different and should not be compared directly, while reiterating earlier responses in Parliament to Mr Ng on the practical challenges of investigating and enforcing not smoking in homes.

"A ban is not the silver bullet to this issue," she concluded. Still, Ms Fu assured Mr Ng that tackling secondhand smoke was a priority for her ministry, which is focused on encouraging individuals to practise greater social responsibility and facilitating conversations between neighbours.

"Furthermore, we are monitoring best practices globally and developments in technology and legislation," she said. "We will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of our efforts in protecting the public from secondhand tobacco smoke, and consider reasonable and practical solutions as they emerge to further strengthen these efforts."

Ms Fu also noted that smoking is today prohibited in over 32,000 locations, including covered common areas right up to the doorstep of homes.

This includes - increasingly - hawker centres, in view of a long-term plan to transition them into completely smoke-free spaces, she said in a separate written response to Ms Tin Pei Ling (MacPherson).

Since 2015, the sustainability and environment ministry has required newly-built and renovated coffeeshops to be smoke-free.

Ms Fu said that as of December 2020, the number of them with smoking corners has been whittled down to 27 out of 114.

For these remaining establishments, the National Environment Agency will engage the likes of hawkers' associations to progressively remove their smoking corners during opportunities such as repair and redecoration works, she said.

Ms Fu also noted that as of October, hawker centres undergoing NEA's Toilet Improvement Programme (TIP) could get up to 90 per cent funding if they remove existing smoking corners.

"I urge town councils to apply for the TIP to upgrade the hawker centre toilets and rescind smoking corners at the same time," said Ms Fu. "So that patrons can enjoy a pleasant dining environment at hawker centres."

 

[knnccb]

who say? the mass import of cecas is precisely to solve the problem

 

[mojito]

who say? the mass import of cecas is precisely to solve the problem

Sinkie should have arrange marriage too. Use less sinkie parent only know how to ask for moneys.

 

[nayr69sg]

Any of the Singapore MPs traveled out of Singapore for holidays?

Canada has many! Terrible.

So far I haven't read of any Singapore politicians doing that. So the quality of MPs in Singapore is top notch!

 

[kaninabuchaojibye]

when a hdb pigeon hole flat cost a million, who dares to have a baby?

 

[syed putra]

Each family should be entitled to a "one car" without having to pay COE and high import taxes. Its a disincentive if families are penalised as cars are essential in any family.

 

[rushifa666]

oh birth rates cannot be fixed. So its either you want to stay and be surrounded by garbage of asia or leave now before you regret it

 

[batman1]

Their job is to cho-bo-lan.61% voted for it ! Carry on cho-bo-lan huat !

 

[LITTLEREDDOT]

Debacle in managing the bike-sharing operators

Cost-free bike-sharing is unrealistic, says transport economist​

Dockless bike-sharing operators first arrived in Singapore in 2017, but many pulled out after the LTA imposed a licensing scheme in 2018.
PHOTO: ST FILE

Christopher Tan
Senior Transport Correspondent

Sep 6, 2021

SINGAPORE - The pitfalls of bicycle sharing - which go back more than 50 years - are not exclusive to Singapore.
The hefty losses to vandalism and theft have been well documented in Paris, for example, where 80 per cent of a fleet of 20,600 bicycles had to be replaced within the first year.
Singapore's first scheme was launched by outdoor advertising company Capital City Posters in 2000. In 2003, insurer NTUC Income took over the scheme, but folded it four years later because of poor usage and losses.
The first dockless bike-share system - where users do not have to return a bicycle to a designated spot - was started in China in 2015. From the get-go, observers had highlighted the need for better regulation as operators flooded cities with millions of bikes, many of which laid unused, cluttering up public spaces.
The exact same thing happened in Singapore when operators arrived in 2017.
After the Land Transport Authority (LTA) imposed a licensing scheme in early-2018, many of the firms started pulling out. One major operator, oBike, was suspected of having transferred $10 million - consisting largely of users' deposits - out of Singapore when it left.

Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) transport economist Walter Theseira said there was "a bigger story" behind the sudden exit of bike-sharing firms.
"It is an example of the failure of market forces to solve complex transport problems without proper oversight and regulation," he noted.
"Shared bicycles have been useful as a first and last-mile urban transport solution in many dense cities, but it has also long been known that they are expensive to operate and typically need sponsorship."
Prof Theseira said the LTA was aware of this, but made the mistake of assuming that the private sector had a "genius solution of having shared bicycles pay for themselves through the deployment of dockless shared bicycles enabled by technology".
Hence the LTA allowed scores of foreign dockless bike-sharing firms to proliferate here in 2017, abandoning its own plans for a docked bike-sharing system here.
"In reality, the shared bicycle companies were simply selling unrealistic dreams promising that technology would solve all of the well-known problems of shared bicycle deployment, such as difficulty in matching local demand and supply, poor utilisation, theft and maintenance, and so on," he said.
Investors, hungry for the next business disruption, were eager to write blank cheques, he observed.
The former Nominated Member of Parliament added: "The Government, happy to let private money and ideas solve a problem that otherwise would have required public funding, let shared bicycle operators expand at will."
Prof Theseira said expectations of bike-sharing had been unrealistic. "Shared bicycles were fundamentally unprofitable in many areas," he said.
"And there's a large public cost that had to be paid to improve public safety and order. There was also a large private cost because while these companies were here, they destroyed the livelihoods of traditional bicycle rental businesses, and some exited badly without paying stakeholders."
The lesson here, the transport expert reckons, is that "sometimes, there really is no free ride, no magic private-sector solution".
"Sometimes, it's better to assess the next trend more rigorously before jumping on it," he said. "Nonetheless, it is not realistic to expect that we have zero policy missteps in transport."
He suggests documenting the lessons learnt to benefit future policymakers. "Unfortunately, the nature of things is that we have no problem writing books about Singapore's transport successes and plenty of problems writing even a chapter about our missteps," he said.

 

[Confuseous]

It is clear as day that it is quite chaotic among the core 4G leaders and their supporting cast.
Remember the many-signatures memo to Sinkies asking for patience to solve their leadership
issues, as a response to Wooden's telling them to hurry up. Total lack of a clear Cock on Covid
results in minions making all sorts of talk cock theories in the newspapers everyday.

 

[Protector Cromwell]

So what if these issues aren't solved by the incompetent PAP year after years? The stupid Sinkies still vote them in once every 5 years!

 

[tanwahtiu]

1. Bicycle is a leisure product for the rich for exercise health.

2. Increase birth rate is for poor country and radio slience war and crisis situation.

 

[laksaboy]

The source of the problem cannot also be its solution.

A small, limited government is your only guarantee of liberty, prosperity and security. And if you haven't noticed already, the PAP government is neither small nor limited. All things considered, it's just a mini CCP minus the Great Firewall and 're-education' camps.

 

[laksaboy]

Forum: Even more needs to be done to encourage having babies

You don't need to do a lot... you just need to do something very simple.

Reduce the educational and career opportunities of females. For example, gender quota for university enrolments.

Every other 'solution' accomplishes nothing e.g. building more childcare centres, flexi-working hours, baby bonus incentives. Of course, those can be used by shameless career politicians to showcase that something has been done.

Appease the AWARE feminazi harpies, or commit slow demographic and economic suicide.

It's a very simple binary choice.