by Lim Tean
I grew up in an era where the expectation was that it took only a day, or at the very most two, for local letters to be delivered. Sadly that is not the situation any longer and I have noticed that it is quite normal these days for letters to be delivered up to a week or even 10 days after the date on the postmark! It has already happened several times this year for correspondence delivered to my office.
Now, I have learnt that my experience is shared by many Singaporeans. A business owner suffered a delay of 4 months in the delivery of an important letter relating to the renewal of a liquor licence.
The MSM will not highlight it, but I gather from various sources that a large part of the problem is down to the poor remuneration which the employees receive. A great many are on contract basis. SingPost now says it is enhancing postmen’s remuneration. It should have had better remuneration schemes in place in the first place.
And this brings me to the main point of my post. It is time that our government and corporate entities treat our workers with respect and pay them properly. Every employee is a profit creator. Never forget that! The problem with financialisation and Neo-liberalism is that the TOP people think that they are the real assets of the company and treat those below them with contempt and as mediocres. These people will always yell that they are not being paid enough but will not give others a minimum wage. In most instances, they themselves are not profit centers but are wealth extractors and rentiers.
It saddens me that for a country that touts itself as First World, we are seeing with our own eyes the breakdown of so many of our public services.
I suggest that a first step towards rectifying the situation is to pay our workers much better. Singaporeans should not be expected to survive on the wages of workers from Third World countries in a city that is the most expensive in the world and has been for the past 5 years.
It is time to put a stop to Government by Corporation, where the bottom line determines everything. We need a Government that will put the interests of the Singaporean worker first and not allow him to be disadvantaged because foreign labour is cheaper. We are not talking about just one worker. Behind him lies a family of spouse and children and even parents in many instances.
We need to make Singapore Our Home!
This was first published on Lim Tean’s Facebook page and reproduced with permission
