The Poor and Forgotten Nation Builders and Prime Taxi Cabbies' Dispute

Today I was reading the Straits Times and 2 interesting news caught my eyes. Firstly is the $100 million spending for APEC and the other is the dispute between Prime Taxi and its Taxi Drivers.

$100 million APEC Budget
The ruling party still cannot understand its citizens anguish and effect of the global economical crisis. I cannot understand APEC need $100 million budget for what? I believed that the suites that the CEOs that the APEC invited are paid by the organiser aka Singapore. How about the Presidential Suites by the head of states? Do these rich nations pay for their accommodations themselves? These are the many questions that I asked myself when I read the news.

If we use the $100 million to help 400 needy families paying them $400 each month, this will pay them $2.4 million for 1 year, enough to last about 41 years! But the poor in Singapore are of no economical value and a burden that the ruling party does not want to bear, its better to spend these money on those rich industrial nations so that they will be willing to spend money and invest in Singapore. According to Lim Swee Suay, its all about productivity and indirectly he is saying we need to cut cost for these MNCs and will need "Foreign Talents" because they are willing to do jobs that pay low wages only "Foreign Talents"will be able to do jobs that Singaporeans "do not want to do".

The poor elderly are really a forgotten generation and these nation builders became a burden. Perhaps this elderly woman need not collect old scrape cardboard paper to make a living if a drop of the $100 million is made available to her......



Prime Taxi and Cabbies dispute
I am not so sure into the story of the disputes over the $11000 supposing "bonus" but it was actually the security deposits paid by them for the 5 years contracts with the Prime Taxis. The $11000 is actually from the daily portion of the securitu deposits paid during the 5 years contact term. Although I am not sure who is trying to "pull a fast one", the Straits Times already "paraded" these drivers on page B5 by printing a rather large size photos of these cabbies. The article on the dispute is more than one quarter size of the entire page!


(Source: Strait Times 2 Sept 09, Pg B4)

I am not sure what message the ST trying to put across. Who is at fault now? Taxi company or cabbies who claimed ignorance of the $11000 "bonus"?

This remind myself of the SAF regular gratuities paid for ORD Regular servicemen. The gratuities are actually the lesser CPF constribution rate that are suppose to be contributed by servicemen compared to normal CPF rate. The SAF called it gratuities, but they are actually the servicemen's own money. These cabbies got any address of their disputes via the Taxi Driver Association? I do not think the Tri-Partie labor policy is applicable to them, this only benefits the company.