By Terry Xu Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced that the car loan restriction will be lifted for purchase of second hand vehicles from today, 6th April till 4th June, 60 days from now. This means that interested car buyers of the second hand vehicles can purchase the vehicles with the previous loan arrangement prior to the implement of the loan restriction during this period of time. The res ...

By Terry Xu Workfair Singapore released a press statement on the release of the four migrant Chinese bus drivers, Gao Yueqiang, Liu Xianging, Wang Xianjie and He Junling. The four were convicted in court on for participating in an illegal strike in November 2012, the first labour strike after 26 years since the last in 1986 . All of the four drivers has since returned back to China. Speaking on the offence ...

28 march 2013, HOME released a press statement disputing the report, "Crane protesters' claims false: MOM" written by StraitsTimes on the protest of the two migrant Chinese workers that happened on 6 Dec 2012. Below is the press statement by HOME.   Press Statement on the Migrant Chinese Workers who protested on top a crane We refer to the recent ST and TNP reports on the migrant Chinese Crane Proteste ...

By Terry Xu Are you aware that there can be a service charge in your telephone bill referred to as premium rate service (PRS)? A reader wrote in to exclaim her family’s astonishment when they received the charges in their bill. The bill charged the reader $75 for 15 messages and all the messages were just incoming short messaging service (SMS). They had tried to call up the company, ATLC to waive off the ch ...

By Jen I have seen a lot of bullshit surveys but the recent one claiming Singaporeans are the Happiest in Asia takes the cake for being the one with the biggest BS and a methodology that is laughable. Eden Strategy Institute (ESI) made a flawed claim that Singaporeans are the Happiest in Asia using a survey based on what people are saying on social media. The survey tracked the use of predetermined words by ...

By Terry Xu A news article writes - “Singapore is too fixated on producing professional, managerial, executive and technician (PMET) jobs for Singaporeans, and this mindset creates a problem”, said economics professor Linda Lim at a population-policy forum. I would like to ask everyone to think back to the days of schooling where the teacher discusses with their class on the professions available for studen ...

By Lim CJ I refer to Over 90% of fresh grads from 2012 cohort employed. The startling revelation of this news article was that their starting salaries were above $3000. While it might be true for graduates in pharmacy, law, medicine and architect, the reverse cannot be said for the students of the other disciplines. Each job vacancy can attract more than 50 applications and HR may shortlist about 10 people ...

By Terry Xu “Looking for any general, unskilled or skilled qualified workers? We do provide foreign workers based on your requirements mainly from China (PRC), Filipino, Indian, Myanmar and Bangladeshi. No charges at all (F.O.C. Services). And we are a licensed and trusted company approved by MOM to recruit People Republic of China (PRC) workers. We will handle all documentation procedures. We also provide ...

By Terry Xu On Sunday, 17th March 2013, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) released a media release on its response towards the introduction of a measure to block US funding to Singapore's Institute of Microelectronics (IME). The Ministry says that it is "deeply disappointed" by the Senator's actions and statements. US Senators. Max Baucus and Jon Tester, both who are Democrats, had introduced an amendment t ...

By Philip Ang I refer to asiaone.com article “New kit to stamp out loansharking activities” dated 10 Mar. It is disappointing that the government continues to adopt a ‘postering’ approach to tackle another chronic problem – loansharking. If this problem could really be tackled with more community involvement, then surely our 30 thousand plus grassroots members would have already done their job without more ...