There was this expat who lamented during a meeting that whatever the Singapore govt touches productivity would go south and he cited the figures that most are familiar with in recent years and then he made a curious remark that it went against the culture of the locals.
After the meeting I asked him what he meant by that and he said that Singaporeans were notoriously productive and he felt it was the govt that was screwing things up. He told me to go down to Harbourfront and checked out this shop - YG Mobilephone accessories on the ground floor and an Indian money changer next to it.
And I did today and what a magnificent show it was. There was this young girl in her early 20s, who I suspect is a Malaysian Chinese that was handling the sale of Sim cards and top-ups. She was multi-tasking and handling as many as 3 customers simultaneously. She was zapping passports and ID cards, using a shop mobile to do top ups and asking fresh customers to write their mobile numbers for top up on an exercise book. As she completed a top-ups, she used a pen and cancelled the number on the book and moved to the next number. She was also opening customers' phones to insert SIM cards and configure it. Most of the customers appear to be seamen and foreigners. I asked an Indonesian customer about the shop and he told me that it was the best and everyone in the Ferry fleet and cruise lines know about this shop. He said there was another shop on the same floor that would cheat the cruise passengers.
Popped over to the money changer who had a small booth nearby and he had 2 currency sorting machines which not only worked out the numbers it checked for fake notes. Asked him about it and he told me it was very expensive but worth every penny both for productivity and security. To make it clear, in his small booth he had not one but 2 expensive machines.
So I called the Expat and he told me that these sectors are not touched by the Govt and they do a better job. I had to agree.
