Chance upon an article
read what an ex-Singaporean write about Singapore.
About Wing Lee Cheong:
Raised by single parent in the slums of Chinatown in Singapore. Self taught artist and writer. Expelled from high school in 1963 due to poor academic performance. Too lazy then to study and too poor to buy textbooks. Started working at age 14 as an apprentice in a shipyard earning $25 a month. Immigrated to Canada and developed a successful career and business in USA and Canada. Presently retired with wife, Sally,in Sechelt, BC, Canada in a modest house I built with the help of contract workers. Firm believer of not wasting time to chase for more than we need when we could spend our precious time enjoying what we already have. There is more to life than material wealth.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 The Last of the Native Singaporeans.
Singapore with its highly publicized world rankings in having the best education, best healthcare, best welfare, best law and order, best country for business, the third richest country in the world, etc. etc., is the latest magnet for the rich and famous - the good, the bad and the ugly, - looking for low tax havens to park their money.
The two casinos in Singapore combined rank second in revenue after Macau and outperforming Las Vegas. Yet, few people wonder why two casinos in Singapore could out perform the combined revenues of 42 casinos in Las Vegas Strip especially when most of these casinos have the same or more gambling tables than Singapore’s two casinos. In other words, it means that two char kuey teow stalls do more business than 42 char kuey teow stalls combined. It is a remarkable feat that with less than 10% of Las Vegas Strip casinos workforce, Singapore’s two casinos have managed to do better. Macau needed 33 casinos to outperform Las Vegas. There is something questionable in the poll or fishy in the business.
Singapore was listed in Feb 2012 by Forbes magazine as the third richest country in the world with GDP (PPP) per capita of nearly US$56,700 (SG$71,200). Again, this ranking is questionable when the majority of the workforce in Singapore are getting less than S$2,000 a month. Perhaps the reason is that the billions of dollars brought in by the super rich to park in Singapore has raised the per capital income to a ridiculous and deceiving figure. The middle class is a dying breed in Singapore, you are either the super rich like the ministers who are paid obscenely by the millions or the poor working class who are paid peanuts.
When I visited Singapore last month, I was shocked by the large number of PRC FTs in the City. They seem to be everywhere, pushing, shouting plus exhibiting all the bad habits from China. I have lived and worked in China for more than ten years and have known lots of intelligent, well mannered and polite Chinese. Somehow, these Chinese FTs in Singapore are taken from the very bottom of the barrel. It looks as if China has deliberately released their undesirable people to Singapore to relieve it of its social burden. Very, very few FTs can speak English, Singlish or the basic Chinese dialects of Singapore. They speak their own Mandarin with heavy countryside accents. From my experience, these are the rough and tough Chinese I have seen in China who cannot be easily intimidated by police as they have nothing to lose. It would be a nightmare for Singapore police if these FTs decide to go on riots because of lack of jobs. The police cannot assume that it would be as easy as dealing with kiasi native Singaporeans. For example, I was physically attacked by a Chinese FT in Chinatown just for telling him not to ride his bicycle in the pedestrian path. These people have no qualm beating up an old man or anybody.
Native Singaporeans are losing out in every sector of the economy - jobs, housing, education, etc. to this huge influx of new immigrants. They take over most of the jobs in the service industries, i.e. hotels, food courts, retail centres, hawker centres, etc. and now native Singaporeans have to speak their language in order to get any service or anything done. Most local food are no longer authentic but blended with Mainland Chinese cooking flavor. Native Singaporeans are losing their identities, culture, local cuisine and very soon their Singlish and future.
Are these Chinese FTs, LKY said are smarter and more hardworking than Singaporeans?
In Chinatown, there were PRC women in their forties flirting with local old retirees. The Singapore consulate in China must be blind and daft to grant PR status to these women. What economic values can these middle age women bring to Singapore except to con those dirty old men of their retirement fund and hopefully cast a vote in favor of PAP? The government should check it out in Chinatown. If they bring in another million FTs as planned, the City is going to explode with overloaded infrastructures.
Instead of assimilating into the Singapore culture, the new immigrants from China are demanding that curry and sambal cannot be cooked in HDB estates because they stinks and they cannot stand the smell. They insult native Singaporeans by calling them "dogs", "pigs" and lately "chimpanzees". Just imagine if these Chinese FTs start to call Australians dogs, pigs and kangaroos in Australia. They would be packed and sent home. In Singapore, native Singaporeans were told by their leaders to reflect on themselves???
Former foreign minister, George Yeo once bragged that membership fee to be a Singapore citizen was $500,000. Now they are giving away citizenship free and in some cases even gave money and begged them to come. Singapore will go down in history as the only country in the world that surrender their country to foreigners without a fight. All the sacrifices and hard work by native Singaporeans over decades are going to be handed over to unappreciative foreigners.
What are the chances of the native Singaporeans having a decent and respectable living for future generations. From the looks of things, it is not good.
First, you have the vision extraordinaire senior Statesman, LKY, calling his own citizens daft and needed to repent despite bragging about having the best education in the world. He further insult his own citizens by saying that PRC immigrants are smarter and more hardworking than native Singapore despite bragging that Singapore has the best workforce in the world? Few ministers or new immigrants have any respect, sympathy or concern about the plight and welfare of native Singaporeans. Social problems like transportation, floods, housing, are dismissed as “unavoidable” or “once in fifty years”. or housing are “affordable”.
The plight of native Singaporeans would be left unheard as no one in power would plead their case. Former foreign minister, George Yeo once warned, “know your place in society before you engage in political debate”. If you think, it is bad now, it would be worse in the future.
The descendants of ministers with obscene multi-million salaries and those kiasi citizens who were in the 60% that voted for PAP would not be spared as new Chinese, Pinoys and Indian immigrants do not depend on their votes to win elections. It is a damn disgrace to give away the sovereignty of your country and become second class citizens in your own country. If this irreversible immigration policy was done by the opposition, the entire opposition would likely be put in jail for treason. With the present 1.5 million FTs and more coming, you do not need to be a genius to calculate that within two generations, Chinese FTs, Pinoys and Indians will outnumber native Singaporeans and they will govern Singapore. Sadly that will be the extinction of the once happy, hardworking and peaceful race - the last of native Singaporeans and like the Indian tribe, the Mohigans, they will be lost in history. Paradise gone for the native Singaporeans, betrayed and abandoned by their own MIW leaders who promised them Swiss standard of living.
Ironically, it would be left to the once despised diaspora ex-Singaporeans called the Quitters to tell this sad story
