Watz Buzzing - 20 Nov 2012

Why Filipinos like to live and work in Singapore

 Have you noticed the growing number of Filipinos working in Singapore?

This site is just one example of online guides that encourage Filipinos to come and work in Singapore. It advocates how cheap and easy it is to apply for jobs in Singapore and promotes the fact that it’s easy to get PR and citizenship. They even say that they can bring their families along if they decide to stay:

Some of the responses are shown below:

“I had no idea it was so cheap to get from the Philippines to Singapore. (And equivalent flight in the U.S. would cost about double.) It’s an excellent city to be working it because of it order and high-tech.”
“Thanks for sharing this. Good news to everyone specially our fellow kababayans who dreamed of working in Singapore.”
“I suggest you book your roundtrip flights and hotel accommodations so no questions will be asked by the immigration officer. Also tell them you will just visit and tour around. I am also planning to visit there and job hunt this year. ”

Full post can be seen here.

read more

Jobs in Singapore for Filipinos 2012 | How to Get a Job and Work in Singapore

Are you one of the millions of Filipinos who dream to work and live in Singapore? Jobs in Singapore are waiting for you. You can job hunt, walk in personally by going to SG since it doesn’t require us visa or simply apply to the legit online websites that are hiring and offer jobs and available positions every minute. I have discussed the best ways on how to land a job in Singapore if you’re a Filipino in this page.

It’s 2012 and Singapore is still amongst the Top 10 Most Expensive Cities in the World to live in. For quite some time now, it’s also one of the favorite countries of overseas workers, expatriate, foreigners and locals. Filipinos, Indians, Americans, Malaysians, and some Middle Eastern workers dream to work and live in Singapore.

But why is that? It’s too expensive there, the rent, the food and lifestyle. Why do Pinoys still prefer working in Singapore? Some reasons I can think of are career opportunities, growth, the salary, cleanliness, close to home, nice weather and independence.

read more

Two thirds of jobs created went to foreigners

Lim Hng Kiang has quoted some numbers on jobs created over the last 5 years and how many of these jobs went to locals and foreigners. He said, ‘In the last five years, we have been generating something like 120,000 jobs a year, of which 40,000 are Singaporeans and we end up with 80,000 foreign workers. Going forward we have decided that this is no longer tenable over a long term.’

In summary, over the last 5 years 600,000 jobs were created and only 120,000 went to Singaporeans. Could the numbers be extrapolated backwards for a 10 year period and could the number be 1.2m jobs created with 400,000 going to locals and 800,000 going to foreigners?

How long has this ratio of employment favouring foreigner been going on that Hng Kiang now realised that it is unsustainable and must be stopped? He said that his ministry would now be more selective and stringent in the type of companies to bring in and the type of jobs that would be created. 

read more

PUZZLED WHY POORLY PAID WORKERS GET TO BECOME PRS

I WAS surprised that 10,000 permanent residents (PRs) are among the full-time workers who earn less than $1,000 a month ("Top 1% earn annual average of $700k"; Tuesday).

I was always under the impression that the PR policy is meant to attract, at the very minimum, middle-income professionals and skilled workers to supplement the local pool of professionals.

The presence of poorly paid PRs in our midst stands in stark contrast to this. 

read more

PAP Member of Parliament Alex Yam Ziming's words of wisdom versus Internet noise

ember of Parliament Alex Yam Ziming has entered the Hansard as the first MP to raise a point about Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) deaths on Fridays.

The point Mr Yam trawled up would be familiar to readers of this blog: Fatal Friday was mentioned a year 10 months ago in a post titled "Singapore Armed Forces training safety audit: SAF deaths from 2001 to 2010".

The January 2011 post said: "In the decade just past, 42 servicemen and women died serving their country.

read more

A Compass for a Lost Party: PAP IB Pwned

People being pwned on the internet is fun and entertaining drama, sometimes even better than watching cable TV. The recent news of stupid teenage boys who were inconsiderate to a breastfeeding mum  is one example as they rudely refused to leave the nursing room in Woodlands library. Hardwarezone CSI lads very free and very civic-minded, incited the mob after the identities of those 2 teens were dug up. Shame shame. The other exciting drama is a PAP IB group being exposed by the Shame blog!

Those in the PAP IB Facebook group must have been squirming like they were constipated and had a vibrating dildo up their ass when they discovered they were pwned by one of their own. Looking at the way the shit hit the fan for this PAP IB Facebook group, Compass, fingers are pointing at Bryan Ti as the main whistle-blower, a most unlikely character as he is the textbook PAP IB! Plot twists and sabo!

Unless all this time Bryan Ti was a 5th column opponent who pretended to be pro-PAP to get inside the inner circle of PAP trust! Makes me feel bad that we doubted his true loyalty for the past years if that was the case. Like Tony Leung's character in Infernal Affairs. Which makes sense if you look at it as some opposition are already smart enough to pretend to be so blindly pro-PAP that it makes these "supporters" and PAP look bad.  With such blind and support from PAP "supporters", "friends" worse than enemies. So complicated on who is real and who is bluff since PAP, WP, SDP and NSP all have their IB.

read more

Paying The Price For Safety

Quite a few years back, we were evaluating the Dalian shipyard in China for a VLCC newbuilding project when we ran into the representative from DNV (Det Norske Veritas), a leading international provider of services for managing safeguarding of life, property and the environment. How's the worker attitude towards safety, we asked him. The Norwegian rolled his eyes, and suggested we give them another five years to catch up. This was before the world heard of baby food adulterated with melamine. Safety is so intertwined with quality of life and environment issues that the discipline is now covered by HSEQA (Health, Safety, Environment and Quality Assurance).

You would roll your eyes too as the Assistant Political Writer of the Sunday Times shared similar disdain for safe practices. If you believe him, it's perfectly acceptable to ignore the seat belt at the back of the taxi, use the smartphone while driving, or dash across the road instead of walking the couple of metres to a pedestrian crossing. Just because it's done here.

The moral malaise, we read, is already endemic in the National Service training grounds: "the army seems to revolve around breaking the rules".  And he wasn't talking about the President's son evading dangerous field exercises by seeking refuge in a laboratory.

read more

YALE LECTURER DRAWS PARALLELS BETWEEN ISRAEL AND S'PORE

A political science lecturer at Yale University says that Singapore is the Israel of Southeast Asia, citing the Asian city-state's military background and power. 

In a column provocatively titled "Blame the Latest Israel-Arab War on... Singapore" in the Huffington Post, JimSleeper cited a world-wide survey published this month ranking Israel as the world's most militarised nation followed by Singapore.

The journalist and author also said that soon after Singapore's independence in 1965, then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew had asked Israel to help set up the city-state's military machine.

read more