We get what we deserve

It has been over a week since the case of food poisoning at a Rojak store in Geylang Serai that has led to 152 people being warded in hospital and led to three deaths, two adults and an unborn child that was miscarriaged.

I was generally ambivalent to this news, considering it just very bad luck, until someone wrote in the Straits Times Forums today that it should not be happening in Singapore.

I have been fortunate not to have been affected by unhygienic food preparation methods when I have been overseas. I have shared a meal with a friend in Malaysia, where I turned out fine, and he had a whole night’s worth of the runs. I survived northern India, while my traveling mate, a doctor, suffered the Delhi Belly.

I am a firm believer in “la sap jia, la sap dua” literally translated from Hokkien as “eat dirty, grow dirty”, which kinda means that you gotta expose yourself to germs and bacteria to build an immunity. I stifled a laugh when my fruit juice store lady collected money and gave me change in her gloved hand which she used to handle the fruits.

We read about it in the news from the U.S.A. of salmonella and E.coli killing people. We are fully aware that hygiene is not the only factor in food safety, as demonstrated by the San Lu melamine tainted milk situation in China. We even experienced it ourselves in the recent past with the Prima Deli case.

But apparently salmonella and E.coli are a different kettle of fish altogether. And with the rush now for cheaper food because of a tougher economic landscape, food safety should not be compromised.

Singaporeans have a perculiarity. They have absolute faith in their government. This will not happen in Singapore because there are too many checks and balances. Well, it has happened, twice. Tainted foods will never reach our shores, they will be checked. Guess what, you do not see AVA hiring thousands of people to check food, do you?

Where was the NEA? Why did they not prevent this? is the refrain now, since a hawker’s son wrote to the ST Forum to complain that hawkers were not as closely watched as they used to be. Perhaps the NEA is busy checking for duty unpaid cigarettes, in which case, whoever rerouted the manpower from guarding food safety to being the Singapore Custom’s sniffer dog should bear some responsibility.

Rule with an iron fist, and you rebel. Turn my back, and you are up to mischief. People get what they deserve.

“O” level grads make S$6000

Do you want to make S$6000 a month photocopying paper and making coffee? All you need is an “O” level certificate! It is true! It is happening. But if you are not likely to ever get such a deal again.

In a certain national university in Singapore, and I am sure in many other large organisations, there are these lab technicians and administrative assistants who are making in the neighbourhood of S$6000 a month doing simple jobs. And they have done it so long, and been there as long as the living memory of any of the other staff that they seem like fixtures in the campus. Adored for their familiarity, a kind grandmother, a doting grandfather. They are unionized salaried staff in their 40s to 60s. With low education, but they had the old deal.

The old deal was simple. You start work when you are young, you are overworked and underpaid. You put up with that because you know that you will be getting paid more while getting less work as your years pile on. The same deal that people have had for decades.

Then the old deal was broken. Companies ended up with public listings and many share holders, and they had to justify costs. Gone were the iron ricebowls, no more job security. A hence, the young refused to be overworked and underpaid, since they see no future of being overpaid and underworked. The older folk who benefited from the old deal, were also the ones rich enough to be share holders.

We are still reeling from this transition, apparently there are still workers out there with the old deal. We read a lot about older workers being retrenched first. Of course they would be, if a manager looked at their pay and their workload, they would try to retrench people with the old deal first too. That is not to say that they will be meeting the higher pay expectations of young workers. This leads to the young wondering why they want to work so hard? There is no end-game in sight.

Then the government decided to allow en bloc sales of old private housing estates, primarily to encourage run down estates to be rebuild, also to meet the growing need for private housing among the young. But the en bloc sales, besides making speculators multi-millionaires, ended up giving even more money to retirees. Now there are retiree millionaires out there buying HDB flats for close to S$800,000. This further marginalizes the young people wanting to own homes, private or otherwise.

Young people have gotten a realization, not just through reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but from what they see around them. Property is the only game in town. Wages have inflated maybe 100% in the last 30 years but property prices have inflated 1000% to 3000%. You can work your knuckles to the bone to make $2000 or you can be a multi-millionaire property speculator.

By allowing the older workers and citizens to make more money for the same amount of work, and to become ultra-rich because of a simple decision in their early years, erodes the work ethics of the young people. The massive layoffs of the current economic crisis is hurting Singapore more than some of its neighbours because a large proportion of our population is involved in the financial sector, or has dipped into the property sector. Both sources of get rich quick jobs during the good times.

If you are the child of a middle income parent and have grown up in a big 5-room HDB flat, condominium or a landed property, there is a very high chance that, regardless of how hard you work, you would never be able to own a bigger house than your parents. That means in one way, you are not able to give your children a better life than your parents did.

The government wonders about why young people do not have more children. Perhaps if they were not so stressed out by housing and job woes, and felt that they can give their children a better life than their parents gave them, that they might just be able to have happy homes with laughing children.