Former Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) and Workers’ Party (WP) politician Yee Jenn Jong took to his Facebook on Monday (22 June) to address a number of important issues that Singaporeans would question and concern about.
Among the issues, Mr Yee mentioned about the raising of GST rate after the election, job opportunities for local retrenched PMETs, HDB 99-year lease, migrant workers dormitories and others.
He wrote, “Much Ado About Nothing,” hinting the people are excited on the things “that is not really important” as compared with the important issues facing by Singaporeans nowadays.
Mr Yee raised a list of question on his post:
1. After a super generous GE-year multiple budgets, how do we intend to finance our future budgets? Remember, GST will be raised to 9% after a COVID–19 delay, and we need to pay back $22 billion loaned to use in the COVID-19 budgets.
2. How do we keep on growing our economy which has become so hooked on low wage migrant workers? We have foreign workers reaching nearly 40% of our workforce. How do we hire them more productive and efficient so we do not need so many? How do we make jobs that we have grown to rely on low wage migrant workers viable for Singaporeans like in other developed economies?
3. How do we lift up the lot of Singaporeans left behind in our economic progress?
4. How do we cope with the growing number of retrenched PMETs or PMETs unable to find jobs suited for them with the many disruptions to jobs? We want to create 100,000 jobs – how many will be meaningful permanent jobs?
5. How do we grow competitive and innovative global Singapore companies?
6. How do we tackle the HDB 99-year lease time bomb? No longer can we be assured that the value of our HDB flat will continue to rise. With the current arrangements, it has to go to zero when 99 years are up.
7. How do we develop our youths to grow up truly creative, innovative, adaptable, hungry and able to cope with diversity?
8. How do we raise TFR (total fertility rate) which is now one of the lowest in the world? How do we sustain a Singaporean core?
9. How in the world did we end up with such explosive number of COVID-19 cases? How did a ‘gold-standard’ country end up with such a mega spread in the foreign workers dormitories?
At the end of his post, Mr Yee said the list will continue to grow and Singaporeans “surely want to know these”.
While Singapore’s political parties and candidates are gearing up for the upcoming General Election, perhaps Singaporeans will also concern whether these issues will be adequately addressed after the election.