It is deeply concerning to read that an elderly petrol pump attendant has been apparently cheated by a customer who did not pay. To give that customer the benefit of doubt, maybe it was a mistake.
What is even more disturbing to read is that the petrol kiosk is making the petrol pump attendant personally liable for the potential cheat!
In this case, the errant employer is Shell Station. While the potential cheat is of course the criminal here, it is utterly reprehensible that a profitable business is penalising the little employee for an honest mistake? It is bad enough that elderly Singaporeans have to work in the first place. It is even worse that an employer is punishing the weak when it is already making so much money for petrol! Let’s face it – it is unlikely that a petrol kiosk is not making money.
That’s the problem when you have a society where it seems endemic for those who have more to bully those who have less – and seemingly blatantly so.
Liew Mun Leong is a chief example of this – bulling his former FDW and causing her to live 4 years in limbo over false accusations.
Yet, at this point, the Government is still tight lipped over whether or not it would even punish Liew. Where are the priorities here?
Then you have the Singapore Police Force showing up in force to place Lim Tean in hand cuffs when he is neither a flight risk or violent but yet seemingly doing nothing about police reports that have been filed against those in power.
The message sent here by authorities (perhaps unwittingly) is that it is okay to bully others if you have the means to do so.
Flowing from that, is it really so surprising that Shell is forcing its lowly paid employees to be financially responsible for something that is not really their fault?
Of course the potential cheat that ran away ought to be arrested and punished. But beyond that, we also have to re examine our employment rights for employees like this elderly pump attendant. How can it possibly sit right that Shell has the right to dock the salary of a lowly paid employee for something like this? That’s exploitative and bullying to say the least!
People make mistakes. It’s not as if this elderly employee set out to cheat Shell. He was a victim too and yet he is the one with his pay docked?
Where is the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on all of this?
