Singapore Democrats
Five men went on a violent rampage in Kallang gruesomely killing one, hacking off the hand of another and slashing another two – all for a few hundred dollars. Six men wearing ski masks punched out two money couriers and robbed them of more than $215,000 at an HDB block at Dorset Road. Two teenagers were slashed at Ang Mo Kio by three machete-wielding men, apparently for no reason other than one of the victims being a Caucasian.
All this in just the last two weeks.
Then there is the break-in to a high-security MRT depot allegedly by a Swiss national who had spray-painted colourful graffiti on a couple of the carriages.
Vice is also catching on. The business of high-end prostitution is booming because foreign professionals and businessmen are hiring escorts to “accompany them to business meetings and casino games at the IRs.”
This is over and above the roaring trade that goes on in the “economy class” red-light district of Geylang. In 2007 the police arrested 5,400 illegal sex workers in Singapore, an increase of a whopping 25 percent from the previous year. Many of them were from overseas.
And where prostitution flourishes, so does pimping. With pimps come gangs and with gangs come drugs. In 2007 the use of heroin exploded by 600 percent.
All these are the consequences of the PAP’s policy of flooding this island with two million foreign workers over the last several years.
But of course, the Government has a masterplan in place to cope with all the added people coming in. Or not. In 2009 when there was a heated debate over setting up a dormitory for foreign workers in Serangoon Gardens, Mr George Yeo’s constituency, the Minister shocked everyone when he said a masterplan was needed to give “some idea of how many foreigners we can accommodate in a sustainable, organic way”, he said.
Shouldn’t a masterplan have been in place before the floodgates were opened? This is the kind of planning that we have been getting from this Government. The Singapore Democrats have warned before that such an unscrutinised and ill-considered policy will result in painful consequences for the people.
When the infrastructure and societal arrangements are not equipped to handle the sudden and massive expansion of the population in a tiny island like ours, something has to give. Are we seeing the beginnings of the blowback? Is this what the future of Singapore is going to look like where violent crime becomes increasingly commonplace, and where sex, drugs and gambling dominate the social scene?
We have said it many times before: Singapore must open her doors to foreigners and foreign talent (FT), and they must remain open. We are not a nation of xenophobes. By highlighting the ills of the Government’s FT policy the Singapore Democrats do not want to demonise foreign workers in this country because the vast majority of them are decent folks who simply want to earn a living.
But bad policies have consequences. And it is the locals who are on the receiving end of the FT policy. Apart from seeing foreign workers being brought in to suppress wages and drive up the price of housing, we are now seeing criminal activity escalate.
The fact of the matter is that Singaporeans do not object to foreign talent coming to our shores. But what upsets us is that the PAP is exploiting cheap labour from the region to suppress local wages so that it can increase revenue for itself and profit for its GLCs. It can then tell all and sundry that the GDP is growing, that so many jobs are being created and then the ultimate – that it is a First World government.
In the meantime, Singaporeans will have to continue to make the sacrifices so that the PAP can continue to make these claims.