As announced, the SDP will be in Toa Payoh to commemorate International Workers’ Day on 1 May 08. The May Day event is part of the Tak Boleh Tahan! campaign against rising costs in Singapore.
We will be asking residents of Toa Payoh to sign a petition calling on the Government to do something about the unbearable cost of living and to stop the exploitation of Singaporean workers.
Singapore Democrats and friends will be at Toa Payoh Central (next to the Toa Payoh Community Library) from 11 am to 6 pm next Thursday.
We will encourage Singaporeans to support the campaign by signing the petition (see below). The SDP will also visit the kopitiams and talk with residents about their difficulties in coping with the horrendous increase in prices.
We will also be distributing flyers showing how the ministers, all multi-millionaires, continue to make use of cheap foreign labour to suppress the wages of locals so that they can squeeze yet greater profit and revenue to feed their opulent lifestyles.
We will also be selling Tak Boleh Tahan! t-shirts and buttons. The aim is to turn the campaign into a national effort to stop the PAP from continuing its rapacious policies. Dr Chee Soon Juan’s books will also be on sale.
All in all, the occasion will be a meaningful one where we hope to raise the voice of Singaporeans so that the PAP will sit up and listen.
There is also the added factor that Toa Payoh is the constituency of Mr Wong Kan Seng. It is opportune to let the Government know that the Home Affairs Minister must be held accountable for his failures.
Whatever your reason, come down to Toa Payoh Central on 1 May to support the campaign and tell the Government: “Tak boleh tahan!”
The Tak Boleh Tahan! Petition
To: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
We, the undersigned, call on the Government to help the ordinary citizen cope with the crushing cost of living which is making life unbearable. The slew of price hikes over the past several months and the increase of the GST has caused inflation to soar to record levels.
Coupled with decreasing wages, many of our workers can’t even afford three square meals a day. Some can’t afford to pay for water and electricity. Many are homeless.
Given the dire circumstances, we call on you to:
1. Show that you understand our plight by not increasing your salary to such an exorbitant amount of $3.8 million a year. This works out to be more than $10,000 a day! Many of us will take a year just to make what you earn in a single day. Such an attitude is making the rich like you richer and the poor like us poorer.
2. Be more judicious in allowing foreign workers into Singapore. Our society and economy cannot sustain the indiscriminate influx of the so-called foreign talent. We cannot live on the kind of wages that foreigners can because, unlike them, we have to raise our families here.
3. Remember that many of our male Singaporeans have to serve National Service and thereafter return for reservist training for many years. Yet the foreign nationals, who do not have to make such sacrifices are getting all the jobs.
4. Release our hard-earned CPF savings. We are the biggest savers in the world and yet, we have the lowest retirement incomes compared to other countries. This is because you keep the HDB prices unaccountably high and then use all sorts of schemes to retain the little that is left in our savings. compulsory annuity plan is the latest scheme.
5. Make public the information of the billions of our dollars that you conduct your businesses with through the GIC and Temasek. While you invest for the “long-term” many of us cannot afford to live decent lives and afford the soaring healthcare costs.
In view of these, we urge you to govern democratically and return to us our economic and political rights. Your policies are not benefiting us, the people. We say to you: “Tak boleh tahan!” and call on you to make things right.
Signed,