geraldgiam.sg

I was one of the 127,000 commuters affected by the MRT breakdown on the night of 15 December 2011. I arrived at City Hall station at about 7pm, after knocking off from my work at Raffles City Tower, and found a huge crowd assembling on the station platform. After waiting for more than seven minutes to take the northbound train home, I decided to go up to station control to find out what was going on.

The station master told me that train service from Marina Bay to Braddell had stopped and it was going to be “a long, long time” before service would be restored. I discovered later from the news that I had missed—by mere minutes—getting on one of the four trains that got stuck on the northbound train. I ended up taking a big detour to Jurong East station and then north to my home in the north. It took me almost three times longer than normal to reach home.

My experience was a mere inconvenience. But for the 4,000 passengers who were stuck for over an hour in the four packed trains with no lights, air conditioning or proper ventilation, it must have been a thoroughly traumatic experience. At least two commuters were hospitalised because of this incident. One passenger had to break the train window just to get in some ventilation.

While we only hear of train breakdowns in the news when there are massive disruptions like this, regular commuters like myself will attest that there are many more “track faults” and slowdowns than are reported in the news.

Continue reading “MRT breakdowns debated in Parliament”

These are the questions which I will be asking the Ministers during the Parliament sitting on 9 January 2012.

——————-

1. To ask the Minister for Transport (a) whether LTA has to date exercised its power to impose conditions relating to the appointment, re-appointment or removal of MRT operators’ CEO, chairman or any of its directors; and (b) what criteria does the LTA use to decide when to impose such conditions.

2. To ask the Minister for Transport (a) whether other options were studied by the Ministry before it decided to build the North-South Expressway (NSE); (b) if so, what were the options and what were the reasons for building the NSE instead of pursuing these other options; and (c) whether the Government had considered the feasibility of adding a second level to the existing Central Expressway instead of building a new expressway.

3. To ask the Minister for National Development whether any consultation was done with residents and business owners before the decision was taken to acquire the HDB blocks, private properties and shops in the Rochor area (including Rochor Centre) to build the North-South Expressway.

4. To ask the Minister for National Development what is the compensation that the residents of the flats in the Rochor area affected by the upcoming land acquisition will receive if they choose not to relocate to the new flats in Kallang.

5. To ask the Minister for Health what is the average age of public sector doctors leaving for private practice and how this figure compares with that of ten years ago.

——————–

Source: Parliament Order Paper

This was the statement which Workers’ Party issued regarding the the Report on Ministerial salaries.

————–

1.  The recommendations of the Committee to Review Ministerial Salaries (“the Committee”) are a step in the right direction towards grounding political leaders with a stronger sense of public service and mission. We hope that Ministers and Members of Parliament (MPs) will see political office primarily as a noble undertaking which allows them to improve the lives of fellow Singaporeans, rather than as a career option to be weighed against high-earning individuals in the private sector.

2.  The Workers’ Party (WP) is of the view that the Committee’s proposal to peg ministers’ salaries to the 1,000 top income earners has created a flawed formula. These individuals make up just 0.06%^[1] of the workforce and are unrepresentative of the general population. The incomes of these “super-rich” Singaporeans generally rise much faster than the rest of the population, potentially escalating the salaries of ministers in subsequent years.

3.  The Committee’s proposed formula also assumes that political talent is found only among the top 1,000 income earners. This reflects an elitist mindset that earning power is the primary indicator of one’s ability.

4.  Rather than an approach that assumes top earners are also top talent, WP recommends a whole-of-government, people-up approach to determining ministerial salaries.

5.  WP has identified this approach in the way 12 developed economies determine their politicians’ salaries. The economies are Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In most of these economies, a minister’s salary is set at multiples of that of an MP, which is in turn set at the salary of a senior management grade in the civil service. This is the approach that Singapore should take, as political office is in the genre of public service.

6.  WP proposes that MPs’ allowances should be pegged to the salaries of divisional directors in the Civil Service (excluding the Administrative Service)^[2]. Civil service salaries are currently competitively benchmarked to general wage levels of Singaporeans. The salaries of ministers and the Prime Minister should be set at reasonable multiples of an MP’s allowance.

7.  WP is supportive of a variable component which takes into account both national objectives being achieved through a whole-of-government effort, as well as the individual performance of ministers. While the suggested National Bonus incorporates some indices, WP believes that the formula should reflect that some national goals are longer-term in nature, requiring an assessment over the term of a government, not annually; some bonus payments may need to be deferred. We also propose to do away with the Annual Variable Component as this is unnecessary, since there is already a National Bonus based on national economic outcomes. The sum of the total variable components should be capped at a reasonable number of months.

8.  WP further believes that the procedure for any review or change of the salary structure for political office should be transparent and subject to Parliamentary approval.

9.  WP’s MPs will elaborate and expand upon the above proposals during the 16 January 2012 debate on the motion in Parliament to adopt the Committee’s recommendations.

THE WORKERS’ PARTY
6 January 2012

^[1] 1,000 divided by the total Singaporean labour force of 1,712,600 (Singaporeans in the Workforce, October 2011).

^[2] This refers to the MX9 (Superscale) grade, which draws a salary of about $10,000 per month.

Recently, National Development minister Khaw Boon Wan announced that MND was reviewing the Lease Buyback Scheme to include 4-room and 5-room flats.

I’m glad to hear this. It was a proposal that the Workers’ Party had made in our 2011 Manifesto (Chapter 8: Public Housing):

“The HDB’s Lease Buyback Scheme has seen a very low take-up rate since its inception. The eligibility criteria for the Scheme should be reviewed to extend it to more households who may be in financial need. It should be extended to lessees of 4-room or larger flats so that more elderly will benefit from the scheme. In addition, HDB should provide better public education on this complex scheme so that there will be a higher take up rate among the elderly.”

This morning, 17 Workers’ Party candidates in the General Election 2011, together with a few candidates from the PAP, NSP and SDP, witnessed the destruction of the ballot papers from the election.

Under Singapore law, after an election, ballot papers must be sealed and stored in a secure vault in the Supreme Court for a period of six months, in case there are any disputes in the election results that require a recount. After the six months, they are to be destroyed so as to ensure that the votes cannot be traced back to individual voters.

Continue reading “Destruction of GE 2011 ballot papers”

This Parliamentary Question that I asked the Health Minister on 21 October 2011 relates to a point that I brought up in my maiden speech on 18 October, concerning the healthcare burden that low income families have to bear. It is an issue of great concern to me, which I will continue to raise in future Parliament sittings.

———-

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister for Health what percentage of Singaporeans currently draw from their adult children’s Medisave accounts to pay for their own healthcare expenses. Continue reading “Use of Medisave Funds to pay for Parents’ Healthcare Expenses”

This was another Parliamentary Question I posed to the National Development Minister on 20 October 2011 regarding the building of subsidised rental flats.

—————

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister or National Development (a) how many subsidised rental flats would need to be built to meet the current high demand; and (b) when does HDB plan to build these flats.

The Minister for National Development (Mr Khaw Boon Wan): Mr Speaker, Sir, as I said yesterday, currently, there are 44,000 households living in HDB rental flats. Another 1,600 applicants are on the waiting list and the average waiting time for a flat allocation is now six months.

Continue reading “Building of Subsidised Rental Flats”

This was a Parliamentary Question (PQ) I asked the National Development Minister in Parliament on 20 October 2011, and my supplementary question following the Minister’s answer.

——————–

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister for National Development what are the reasons for the lower application rates for smaller (2-room and 3-room) Built-to-Order (BTO) flats and Sale of Balance Flats (SBF) as compared to larger (4-room and 5-room) flats in recent HDB flat sales exercises.

Mr Khaw Boon Wan: Sir, in last month’s launch of Build-to-Order (BTO) flats, the application rates for 3-room, 4-room and 5-room flats were 1.8, 1.6 and 2.4 times respectively. No 2-room BTO flats were offered. For the Sale of Balance (SBF) flats, the application rates for 2-room, 3-room, 4-room and 5-room flats were 0.9, 8.2, 11.9 and 11.1 times respectively. As the Member has correctly observed, the larger flat types tend to attract higher application rates.

HDB provides a range of flats to cater to Singaporeans with different budgets and life-cycle needs. In planning the supply of the various flat types, HDB takes into account changing demographic profiles, as well as housing needs and propensities. The bulk of the new flats supplied are larger flats to meet first-timer households’ needs for space, to cater to their growing family size. At the same time, we also need to provide a good number of smaller flats to help lower-income households become homeowners and second-timers right-size. The smaller flats will also be needed for our ageing population, allowing more seniors the option to move into smaller flats. Although the application rates differ at the time of launch, all the flats eventually get taken up, as they are completed.

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: Mr Speaker, I have three supplementary questions. First, there has to be a reason why there is a lower application rate at that time that flats were launched. Is it because firstly, the poor are not able to navigate the application process, which involves a lot of online submissions and receiving alerts when the launches are eminent? Or secondly, is it because the price of these smaller flats is still out of the income range of these applicants? And thirdly, if the answer to the second question is “yes”, would the Minister consider lowering the price of 3-room and smaller flats in order to make them more affordable to the lower income?

Mr Speaker: Minister, you have one minute and thirty seconds for your reply.

Mr Khaw Boon Wan: Let me try, starting from the last. Making 3-room flats more affordable compared to larger flats – the answer is “yes”. In fact that is so. Yesterday, I gave Members some illustrations about the affordability of 3-room, 4-room and 5-room flats. Generally, the BTO prices less the housing grants equal to about five years of annual salary. But for 2-roomers, it is less than three years of annual income, after all the grants. Members can see there is a clear difference between the pricing of smaller flats compared to bigger flats. As to the Member’s first question about the lower application rates and what could be the reasons: well, the application rate is a function of several factors such as how many units are put onto the market, how many people apply. And you cannot get it precisely matched. It is very hard to do it, such that you get an exactly identical application rate for all the different room types. I think that would be quite impossible. Even if you are able to project to such precision, that also cannot be the way we do things because when we design the housing estate – let us say in existing Tampines — we have to know what is the current housing distribution in Tampines and take that into account. But as I said, regardless of the different application rates, at the end of the day, no units get wasted. They will all be taken up finally. As to whether a lack of IT skills was a deterrent for the lower income applicants, it should not be. At HDB Hub in Toa Payoh, we have staff there to assist, if needed.

Mr Speaker: Order. End of Question Time.