Over 700 suggestions received on building eco-friendly Singapore

Over 700 suggestions received on building eco-friendly Singapore

By May Wong,
SINGAPORE: The government has received over 700 suggestions in less than a month on how to create a more eco-friendly Singapore.

The Inter-Ministerial Committee on Sustainable Development launched a website on July 29 to gather feedback from the public.

For Lee Swee Mein, he is hoping that the government can heighten the profile of a website that he founded to a national level. Called YouSwop, it allows people to exchange unwanted items such as shoes, clothes and books with one another via the website.

Mr Lee, a business development manager, said: “I have a swop corner, it’s actually a corner where I keep my unwanted and unused things, and exchange them for something that I need when the opportunity arises.

“I hope that one day, all Singaporeans will adopt this culture and save the environment by exchanging their unwanted items, instead of throwing them away. By swopping an item with someone who needs it, we are in fact reusing the item.”

Another suggestion from the public is to get rid of plastic packaging when selling items like cooking oil, so as to promote the use of refillable packs or bottles.

Arthur Yap, a logistics deputy manager, said: “To save the environment, we can have refillable packs for all the consumable liquids… Instead of buying a container of shampoo, we bring our own container and then they can fill it in for us. That way, we save on logistics cost, we save on containers, we save on plastics, and it’s a much more sustainable idea.

“We used to do this a long, long time ago when my parents went to the provision shop with a tin to buy kerosene or to buy rice, and I think it could make a comeback and we could really use much less materials for our daily needs.”

Various government ministries are now studying the feedback that they have received on the website. At the end of the year, some of the suggestions will be revealed at a public forum for discussion.
- CNA/so

Source : Channel NewsAsia  - 25 Aug 2008

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Consultants float idea of ’split pay’ for expats

Consultants float idea of ’split pay’ for expats

By WINSTON CHAI
HEDGING is used by companies to manage forex volatility but human resource consultants say the same principle can be applied to expatriate pay packages to help combat inflation and currency fluctuations.
HR consultancy ECA International says that a ’split pay’ approach should be adopted by businesses for international assignees. Under this model, the expat worker receives part of his salary in the host country’s currency, while the remainder is paid in the home currency.

‘Splitting pay is ideal since the host country currency pay can cover the day-to-day living expenses, or what is known as spendable income. On the other hand, the portion paid in home currency can then be allocated for savings, home housing commitments and other expenses,’ said Lee Quane, ECA International’s general manager for Asia.

According to Mr Quane, this approach can maintain an expatriate’s purchasing power in his country of work while managing gains from unsteady exchange rates. His remarks were made at an HR forum held last week to discuss the impact of current economic conditions on business planning and assignee management.

This split-pay model can be one of the HR strategies multinationals can use to help retain their international talent pool, along with other programmes such as training and career development. With a raging war for scarce talent, companies need to fine-tune their remuneration policies accordingly to promote employee retention, ECA said.
Russell Huntington, a panellist at the forum and Asia-Pacific director at Watson Wyatt, noted: ‘The economic slowdown is evidently affecting companies worldwide. If economic conditions continue to weaken, many companies will need to maximise employee productivity and ensure pay programmes are appropriately aligned.’

Ian Ridgwell, MD of ECA International, said: ‘IHR (international HR) leaders today face the complex task of reviewing existing practices and introducing new policies to meet current and anticipated conditions, demands and expectations. While there’s no single perfect solution, a manageable solution like split pay is something to consider.’

Source : Business Times  - 25 Aug 2008

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Exams, rankings, stress - isn’t there more to school?

Exams, rankings, stress - isn’t there more to school? 

YouthInk writers wonder what it will take to bring some balance into the school system 
  
If you think exams are stressful, just wait till you enter the real world, says an ex-student. — ST FILE PHOTO

Why must life be a competition?

I ONCE met a trumpet player from the United States and asked him which competitions his school band had taken part in. Stunned, he replied: ‘Not everything in life is a competition.’

It was inconceivable to me that students would participate in school bands and other CCAs out of pure interest, and not for points.

It is a tragedy that many Singaporeans believe exams, rankings and stress are necessary evils on the long and winding road to success.

The mantra that ‘Your studies should be first priority’ is never far from our parents’ lips. ‘Don’t waste too much time on other activities’ and ‘This is a very important academic year’ are close seconds.

No wonder many students have a passion only for studying. Some try to get out of it, by looking overseas for their higher education.

This is a brain drain Singapore can ill afford.
Christine Chong, 22, is an honours student in literature at the National University of Singapore

 
So ironic, our parents

THE one thing I remember most vividly about my childhood was always having to go for tuition.

Academic excellence was the No.1 priority in my life, with enforced tuition underpinning that drive. That is the norm for my peers, not the exception.

The cause? Living, breathing ironies we know as parents.

On one hand, they complain to the Government about the pressures of our education system. On the other hand, they pack their children’s after-school timetable with tuition and extra classes, hence perpetuating the very system they are speaking out against.

Parents need to make up their minds as to what they truly want for their children, and the values their children should hold dear in life.
Justin Koh, 17, is a first-year communications and media management student at Temasek Polytechnic

 
That F word

TO MY peers, let me ask all of you - have you forgotten this thing called Fun?

Everyone is guilty of wallowing in self-pity over his or her share of accursed assignments, myself included.

But everyone has to do the same literature essay or calculus worksheet, and everyone wants to achieve the same academic excellence expected of us.

Doesn’t being around each other make the torture less excruciating?

There’s Fun, too, outside the classroom - the fellowship we enjoy playing cards during breaks or indulging in CCAs together.

We need to realise that Fun can coexist with the inevitability of exams, rankings and stress - just look to each other for mutual support.

As a song in Disney’s High School Musical goes: ‘We’re All In This Together…’
Nurul Asyikin Mohd Nasir, 18, is a second-year International Baccalaureate diploma programme student at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)

 
Parents can make a difference

PARENTS have more influence on their children than they imagine.

While there is only so much they can do to change the education system their children are immersed in, they can still control the extent to which this system affects their children.

It is the duty of parents, not the school, to emphasise other qualities such as independence and open-mindedness on top of academic excellence.

In junior college, some teachers opposed my unconventional choice of a music education, but my parents’ support gave me the determination to follow through with it. They helped me break out of the parameters of academic grades and see the worthiness of studying what I truly love.

That is why my drive to learn will remain long after the triumph of perfect grades has faded away.
Melissa Khong, 21, is a final-year music student at the Manhattan School of Music

 
School is only a prelude

NOW in my second year of national service, I look back on school as a particularly stressful time.

But it was myopic of me to complain about ’stress’ back then, for there is more lying in wait in the real world.

Every exam question has a clear-cut answer, and every school competition will eventually wrap up. But there are no clear-cut answers for many real-world problems.

There is the stress of choosing the right university course and career path, where decisions could have life-altering consequences.

There is the stress of worrying about spiralling costs at a time when I cannot expect to continue living off my ageing parents.

So peers, if you think school was bad, get real.

As for parents, please stop molly-coddling us. If we can’t learn to deal with stress now, how can we deal with life out there?
Eef Gerard Van Emmerik, 19, has a place to read law at the Singapore Management University

 
Source : Straits Times  - 25 Aug 2008

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Give up Singapore citizenship? Brothers must do Singapore NS first

Give up Singapore citizenship? Brothers must do Singapore NS first
 
Norwegian trio’s bids rejected. Only those who haven’t enjoyed privileges of citizenship exempted, says Mindef 

By Amelia Tan 
  
The Bugge brothers (from left) Frode, Ingvar and Thorbjoern - seen here with their mum and dad in 2002 in Alesund, Norway - cannot visit their parents in Singapore without risking arrest as they are considered NS defaulters. — PHOTO: COURTESY OF O.M. BUGGE

THREE brothers, born to a Norwegian father and Singaporean mother, want to give up their Singapore citizenship.
But the Ministry of Defence has said no. Not until they do their national service.

NS regulations
WHO NEEDS TO DO NS
All able-bodied male Singapore citizens.

Those holding concurrent citizenship in Singapore and one other country, because Singapore does not recognise dual citizenship.

EXCEPTIONS
Those who emigrate at a very young age - the exact age is not specified by Mindef - with their families and have thus not enjoyed the privilege of Singapore citizenship. Such persons can apply to renounce their Singapore citizenship without serving NS.

PENALTIES FOR NOT SERVING NS

On conviction, NS defaulters are liable to be jailed up to three years and/or fined up to $10,000. The exact sentence will be determined by the courts.

Defaulters will also have to serve NS if they are still liable for it.
 
The Bugge brothers - Thorbjoern, 33; Ingvar, 31; and Frode, 30 - left Singapore when each turned 18 and have tried and failed several times for over a decade to renounce their Singapore citizenships.

They want to renounce their citizenship so they will be free to visit their parents - Mr O.M. Bugge, 65, and his wife Margaret, 55 - who still live here.

They cannot return here because they have been classified as NS defaulters and risk arrest on arrival.

They were all born here and are considered Singapore citizens. But they also hold Norwegian citizenships, like their father.

They first left Singapore when they were five, three and two years old respectively, and lived in Norway for 10 years before returning here.

But each left Singapore after their O levels, and just before they could be called up for national service.

Mindef sent them NS enlistment letters, but in turn, each brother ignored the call-up. Instead, they enlisted in the Norwegian armed forces for a 19-month national service term.

All three decided to renounce their Singapore citizenship when they turned 21, but Mindef rejected their initial bids to do so.

They tried several more times over the years, writing to the ministry, then-prime minister Goh Chok Tong and the late former president Ong Teng Cheong to explain their case.

Their parents have also met staff from Mindef.

But all their attempts have failed.

When contacted, Mindef’s director of public affairs, Colonel Darius Lim, said: ‘Only persons who have emigrated at a very young age together with their families, and who have not enjoyed the privileges of Singapore citizenship, will be allowed to renounce their Singapore citizenships without serving national service.’

He said the three men are Singapore citizens and are required to fulfil their NS obligations. Their requests to renounce their Singapore citizenships can be considered only upon completion of full-time NS.

The brothers said they were disappointed by Mindef’s position.

When asked, they maintained that they did not leave Singapore to avoid NS. They preferred to be in Norway, they said, and their enlistment there showed they were not shirkers of NS, they said.

Mr Frode Bugge is a career soldier with the Norwegian army and has seen action in Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Brother Thorbjoern is also a career soldier, while Ingvar is a postman.

For now, they will have to continue meeting their parents in Malaysia. Their mother spends six months in Norway each year.

Their father, a marine consultant, said he cannot afford to spend extended periods in Norway because his business is based in Singapore. He tries to visit his sons once a year.

He said: ‘My sons’ cases are about a choice of citizenship, and not a case of national service…They would like to get this matter cleared up and be able to travel to Singapore for a visit like any other Norwegian.’

He is hoping that the law will be changed.

‘My sons’ situations may seem unique now. But as more foreigners marry Singaporeans, there will be more of these cases,’ he added.

NS defaulters can be jailed up to three years and/or fined up to $10,000 if convicted.

Source : Straits Times  - 25 Aug 2008

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$1.8m sports hub opens in Singapore Bishan

$1.8m sports hub opens in Singapore Bishan 

Facilities for young and old include beach volleyball court, exercise corner 

By K. C. Vijayan 

QUESTION: What’s to be done when not enough babies are being born to fill a primary school in a housing estate?
Answer: Build a sports hub on the land meant for the school.

Result: A $1.8 million facility in Bishan Street 23 which provides a track for jogging and inline skating as well as courts for basketball and beach volleyball.

This 24,000-sq m Bishan Active features a playground and an exercise corner for senior citizens and will be the new home and training ground for the Singapore women’s football team.

Score one for the ‘life-long fitness’ cause.

The sports venue is another move by the Government to promote a healthy, sporting lifestyle among the people, part of the sports industry’s initiatives which cost almost $500 million a year.

Yesterday, more than 1,000 Bishan residents showed up at the launch of the facility by Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen, MPs Josephine Teo and Hri Kumar. Central Singapore District Mayor Zainudin Nordin was also present at the launch.

All are MPs of Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC.

Ms Teo said that when a place provides such a range of facilities for both young and old, it will become ‘a focal point for Bishan residents to come together and enjoy the outdoors’.

She added that a sporting lifestyle should be cultivated from a young age, so providing easily accessible, integrated facilities would send a message to young people ‘that it’s up to them to integrate sports into their lifestyle’.

Asked why a beach volleyball court was added to the hub, Mr Zainudin said it is because the sport is ‘quite hip’ and is growing in popularity, given the Channel 8 TV series Beach Ball Babes.

For Bishan resident Khoo Kay Chai, 55, the hub means not having to jog along the footpaths around his block any more.

‘Now I can exercise in the hub and use the fitness stations, which is very good,’ he pointed out.

Source : Straits Times  - 25 Aug 2008

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More seeking aid from Muslim group - Singapore

More seeking aid from Muslim group - Singapore

By Lee Hui Chieh 
  
Dr Yaacob (left) and Mr Mohammad dropping a note into a donation box to launch the charity drive yesterday. — PHOTO: BERITA HARIAN

A GROUP which helps needy Muslim families during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan has received more requests for financial help this year.
About 2,500 new applicants have sought aid from the Tabung Amal Aidilfitri (TAA) Trust Fund, about 10 to 15 per cent more than last year.

Staying vigilant against chikungunya
‘WE HAVE not lost the battle against chikungunya…
‘Even though the numbers are increasing, we are keeping a very close eye, and we are aware that a large proportion are imported cases, not local cases.
‘So the virus has not really taken root… We must prevent that from happening.
‘I can tell you, the National Environment Agency is working very, very hard, and we try to stay ahead of the curve. Whenever there’s a small outbreak - even one or two cases - we send in our officers to clean up a 1 km radius around the site…
‘But I’d like to appeal to Singaporeans to also play their part. I know people go overseas for durian parties and everything else, but some of those locations, they have an outbreak, so we have to be very careful…’
Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim, on the chikungunya situation here. This year, 128 people here have caught the mosquito-borne disease. Of these, 61 were infected in Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka, while the rest were infected locally. 
The secretary of its executive committee, Mr Zainal Abidin Nordin, suggested that this year’s rising inflation could have triggered this.

Executive committee chairman Mohammad Anuar Yusop, agreed, adding: ‘What $150 could buy last year, it can’t buy this year.’

This was the amount given to successful applicants last year, and the committee is thinking of raising it.

It will meet next week to decide on the sum, taking into account the number of applicants who meet the criteria, including household income.

To make the larger payouts possible, the committee also hopes to raise more than $1 million this year, up from last year’s collection of less than this.

It has found new corporate donors. Besides its long-time supporter, retailing and property group Second Chance Properties, it has roped in drinks manufacturer Out of the Box, foot spa Kaki Kaki and carpet retailer Fotohi Carpet.

Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim also wants the committee to consider making the aid conditional, say, by getting the younger and more able-bodied recipients to go for skills training.

He cited as an example the ‘empowerment programme’ of the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, or Muis, which requires recipients of zakat or alms to go for life-skills training and skills upgrading so they can become more self-reliant.

At the launch of TAA’s charity drive at Tanjong Katong Complex yesterday, Dr Yaacob said: ‘People at the bottom - the homeless, the needy, the elderly, the sick - need to be helped over a longer time.

‘But able-bodied people or families with young children should be empowered so that they can be financially independent.’

Source : Straits Times  - 25 Aug 2008

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Great show. Thanks, China

Great show. Thanks, China 

These Games have been an unparalleled and unforgettable Olympics 

By Rohit Brijnath 

SOME nights, I would amble through the massive plaza in the Olympic zone, where blue lights illuminated the stones below my feet, and it was akin to negotiating an obstacle course.
Stop, duck, sidestep. Everywhere you walked you were inevitably in someone else’s photograph.

Always the stadiums were the backdrop, the Water Cube glowing blue, the Bird’s Nest with a golden light caught between its intricate network of beams. And in this Dali-esque landscape, fathers snapped sons, daughters captured grandmothers, friends flourished peace signs.

Their faces were creased in joy, awe and pride, and their faces said this: These are our stadiums, these are our Games, this is our moment. It was one of the prettiest pictures of China.

China and seduction do not usually arrive in the same sentence, unless you are talking about Zhang Ziyi, but this Olympics has held visitors in its thrall.

Ni hao (roughly ‘How are you’), squeaked the girl at the reception every morning, ni hao chimed the girl at the door, the boy at security, the girl at the bus.

Not enough volunteers were fluent in English, but everyone smiled, and that language everyone understood. It was a smile so irresistible, that by the end of the Games, Australians, Spaniards, Zimbabweans, Indians and Koreans, in a variety of upsetting accents, had turned the Olympics into one big ‘ni hao’ nation.

But there was no need really to ask: ‘How are you?’, because we were mostly just fine, from the moment gymnast Li Ning, appropriately airborne, set the Olympics alight. On the outside, the stadiums gleamed; inside, the sports shone.

The fastest men in the world emerged on land and in water, though not everyone was quite up to speed. A Dutch football coach with a sarcastic bent, said brilliantly of a player’s lethargy: ‘He played soccer at the speed at which they fought the 80-year war.’

By the Games’ end, 43 world records had been set and enough tears had fallen to flood a small town. Hearts broke by .01 seconds and dreams came true by one centimetre in the long jump pit. History was made by the hour and the geography of sports was gently altered.

China offered their visitors respect but no mercy, and the No. 1 hit song of the Games was the Chinese national anthem. As the hosts picked up golds with a methodical efficiency, analogies about armies and conquering came quickly to mind.

The United States stuttered on track, Australia appeared less muscular, Britain surged. Panama won a long jump gold and Tunisia a 1500m swimming one. A global shift has begun.

In the 15 Games after World War II, the medal tally has been led only by the US or former Soviet Union. No more. In a sporting sense we are seeing what Fareed Zakaria explained in The Post-American World as not so much an American decline as ‘the rise of the rest’.

Crowds howled at China’s rise, but did not descend into the jingoism sometimes apparent at Atlanta 1996. Those from far were admired, some embraced.

One evening, a runner from Guinea-Bissau made her lonely way to the finish in a 1500m heat, almost a minute behind the victor, and the crowd told her, loudly, that they appreciated her effort.

China is too vast to be understood in a single visit, but this was made inadvertently harder because the Olympic zone is a locked-away universe.

Stadiums are bunched together for our convenience, but this means there is negligible interaction with Beijing and its residents. But on occasional visits outside, to a chattering market and the Forbidden City, a kindness was felt.

On the morning Lu Xiang’s hurt foot injured his nation, I spoke to a young man from Jiangsu. With a mobile phone saleswoman using a translation device in her phone to interpret, he eloquently said: ‘Liu’s problem is with his body, not his mind or his heart.’

I said thank you, and went to leave, but he signalled: hold on; dug a camera from his bag, sweetly put his arm around this stranger’s shoulder and asked the saleswoman to photograph us together. I smiled then, and through the day.

Many parts of China outside the Games remain incomprehensible, like the reported sentencing of two old women to a year’s ‘re-education through labour’ because they wanted to protest. Dissent remains alarmingly foreign to the nation.

But within the Games, China put on an unparalleled show of precision and organisation, and if you put your ear to the ground you could hear the gentle humming of this gigantic, well-oiled machinery. At an Olympics, sports should be the only distraction and it was.

No great athlete was unmasked as a drug cheat (not yet, at least), though for a while it seemed that International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge was on something.

Nothing else can explain why the IOC boss, who should have been sterner on the issue of underage Chinese gymnasts, felt the overpoweringly absurd need to accuse the charming Usain Bolt of disrespect.

Triumph without feeling is akin to sports without passion, and who wants that?

But in our memory, Mr Rogge will be drowned by brilliant images. Forever people will debate Michael Phelps versus Bolt, though only dubious mathematicians, in this writer’s view, can make three golds somehow equal eight.

Forever we will remember Yelena Isinbayeva sleeping on a makeshift bed while everyone else pole-vaulted, then waking up and jumping over the moon.

Forever we will cherish the German weightlifter holding a picture of his smiling wife who died last year in his muscular hand.

Forever we will admire the Chinese woman judoka who fought through eyes so swollen that it was a miracle that she could see.

Forever Beijing will lie in the memory, a rewarding journey into an ancient land.

And after so many million words, written and said, just two must finally suffice. Xie xie, Beijing. Thank you.

Source : Straits Times  - 25 Aug 2008

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Needy will move to head of queue for Singapore HDB rental flats

Needy will move to head of queue for Singapore HDB rental flats 

Stricter rules being drawn up to prevent abuse of rental scheme 

By Goh Chin Lian 
  
Singaporeans in desperate need of a home will, from today, be moved to the front of the queue for HDB rental flats.
National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan announced this move yesterday and also gave a peek into new rules being studied to stop abuse of the rental scheme.
One of them is that the HDB will scrutinise the assets, including private property, of siblings and children of applicants to ensure they rely first on family, not on rental flats.

Another will require flat sellers to deposit part of their sales proceeds into their Central Provident Fund (CPF) accounts.

These likely changes are part of a government move to address the sharp rise in demand for rental flats, with many people joining the queue even when they have other housing options.

It is a worrying trend highlighted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his National Day Rally speech last Sunday.

Yesterday, Mr Mah told reporters at a community event in Tampines: ‘Our housing policy is premised on home ownership. Rental flats are there because we recognise that there is a small group of people who cannot afford to own flats.’

These are the destitute with no family and who cannot work.

He also pledged that ‘if you are staying on the beach, on the void deck, and you are a divorcee with five kids, we’ll find a way’.

They will go to the front of the 4,400-strong queue.

He also said the supply of rental flats will be raised by 20 per cent to 50,000 flats, in three years.

They are leased for two years at what he called ‘ridiculously cheap’ rent which has stayed the same for 30 years. It can be as little as $26 a month. This fuelled the trend he noted: an increasing number of old folk who want ‘to cash out of their flats and ask us for rental flats’.

Hence, he is hurrying the HDB to complete the review of the eligibility criteria as early as year’s end or at the latest, next March.

He identified three rules that may get the green light:
When owners sell, they will have to put into their CPF account the subsidy they had enjoyed when they bought their flat from the HDB. The amount could be about $30,000 to $40,000.
Now, they can pocket the entire sales proceeds and the fear is they may spend it all, be in dire straits and join the rental queue.

However, Mr Mah did not say if the rule was only for people applying for rental flats or for all sellers.

This rule has a precedent. Currently, those who receive a government grant of $30,000 to $40,000 when they buy an HDB flat in the resale market will have to put that grant back into their CPF accounts when they sell their flats.
Scrapping the current rule that allows a person to apply for a rental flat only if he has not sold a property in the past 30 months.
This rule, Mr Mah said, keeps those in dire need waiting, while giving the not-really-needy the impression that if they wait for 30 months, they are sure to get a flat.
The main measure of neediness now is a monthly household income of no more than $1,500. Soon, the HDB will also look into the applicant’s children’s ownership of private property and if the person’s siblings and children have the means to support him.
Source : Straits Times  - 24 Aug 2008

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