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Thứ Bảy, 31 tháng 8, 2013
FAS signs three-year sponsorship deal with Epson
The collaboration will see FAS being supplied with Epson products to utilise for footballing purposes as well as monetary resources to aid youth football development in Singapore
The Football Association of Singapore (FAS) has officiallly signed a three-year sponsorship worth about $1 million with Epson.
FAS president Zainudin Nordin was delighted to welcome Epson’s involvement in the sport, and said that such a move would only benefit the development of football within Singapore in a press conference at the Jalan Besar Stadium for the unveiling for the partnership.
“Today marks the day where we celebrate the partnership of two parties with a shared vision, that is to ensure the commitment to excellence and innovation. I am thrilled to welcome them [Epson] on board as an important partner in our pursuit to achieve football excellence in Singapore,” Zainudin said on Wednesday.
In addition to monetary resources, Zainudin also mentioned how Epson’s products will be provided for the FAS and that these equipment will revolutionise the football scene in Singapore, especially with the interactive projectors as coaches can use it to map out tactical strategies.
“Under the three-year sponsorship agreement, Epson will provide FAS with the latest office equipments to aid the development of local football in many areas, which include but are not limited to new E-learning boards in the form of interactive projectors and stadium projectors,” he added.
“I am pleased that coaches, players, as well as fans will benefit from this partnership. At FAS, we aim to provide the best environment possible to develop our young talents and this partnership with Epson will help us do just that.”
Epson Singapore managing director Koichi Endo shared that he was excited about Epson being a partner with FAS, as it may help them grow more renown as a brand and achieve their primary target of aiding youth football development.
“Today I am very proud to present Epson as we start this relationship with FAS,” he said.
“Epson has been closely involved in many sports sponsorship, as a way to improvement our branding, and to reach out to people through the excitement they (sports) bring.
“Therefore we are deeply honoured and grateful for this opportunity to assist in funding and applying our innovations to support the FAS in cultivating football excellence and nurturing Singapore’s next generation of footballers.”
Epson Singapore general manager Tan May Lin revealed that the sponsorship deal took only six months to be conceived and finalised due to the desire of both parties to further develop football at the youth level in Singapore.
“It was a meeting of minds, both Epson and FAS agree we have the same direction in terms of where we want to go, in terms of youth development,” she said.
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FAS signs three-year sponsorship deal with Epson
Indians are downsizing their travel dreams following a decline in the rupee
By
Maneesh Pandey
16:54 EST, 31 August 2013
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16:54 EST, 31 August 2013
The rupee is wrecking holiday plans. The declining value of Indian currency against the US dollar has begun to hurt the middle class.
It’s the money, honey, say one Delhi couple who have just seen their Indonesian honeymoon washed away by the paralysing effect of Manmohanomics.
The Kumars (name changed) had grand plans for a post-nuptial celebration in Bali as their honeymoon fell within their budget of Rs 1,25,000.
Impact: The decline in the rupee has caused middle-class travellers to rethink their holiday plans and opt for destinations closer to home
The Kumars had booked the trip three
months in advance. But because of the rupee’s free-fall, today they have
been forced to settle for the backwaters of Kerala.
“Their
budget has gone up by at least Rs 35,000-Rs 40,000. The middle class
travels with a fixed budget so they had to opt for a domestic
destination,” says Guldeep Sahni of Weldon Tours.
The current condition of the Indian rupee has forced many outbound
Indian travellers to change their vacation and travel plans over the
October to December period.
There
is already a 30 per cent dip in bookings compared to the business that
materialised last year in the same three peak travel months.
The worst affected are corporate incentive tours. Nearly 25 per cent have been postponed till the rupee improves.
Packages
Except for Australia and New Zealand, travel plans for destinations
where the US dollar and the euro are being quoted in holiday packages
are being affected, say travel agents and tour operators.
Alternative: Popular holiday destinations such as Goa have become a sought after alternative to Indians looking to get away from it all
“There are two categories of travel requests coming to those handling outbound circuits. One is from those who are sceptical about the future economic scenario and, wanting to defer their plans, have called for cancellations.
“I have got 12 such bookings cancelled, each having a family or a group of two to six persons or more,” says Sahni, adding, “The second is those who have not yet confirmed their plans. We’re calling them regularly… they’re closely watching the scenario and want the dollar-rupee situation to improve. There is an almost 30 per cent decline in bookings compared to what I got last year.”
There is worse still. Some travellers, who don’t have the option of getting their money back, are requesting travel agents to adjust their star category of hotels and reduce the durations of tours to make up for the rising travel cost.
This is true particularly of those who had planned to go to long-haul destinations; they are now negotiating with their travel agents to switch to cheaper destinations (closer to India) in Southeast Asia.
Manoj Mishra, who had booked a five-star package for Singapore and Malaysia worth Rs 75,000 per person for seven nights, had to settle for a four star package as that is what was available at the same price.
“I can’t change my family’s travel plans at this moment so I will settle for what falls within my budget,” Mishra said.
Travel agents have their eyes fixed on the currency converter. As says Raghuvinder Singh of D Pauls Travels: “Till the US dollar was hovering at Rs 62 booking and requests were coming. But once it touched Rs 65 to the dollar, they have stopped coming.
“We generally used to get a confirmed booking after three calls. Today, even after 10 to 15 calls, bookings are not materialising.”
Added Sahni: “The traveller is not clear. Blame it on the slump in the economy. Today only I got three calls, all different requests – one for South Africa asking me for a short-haul destination, another for Europe asking me to cancel and look for an Indian destination, and the third asking me to change the hotel star category to suit the pocket in a Far East destination.”
Affected the worse are the plans of corporate dealers and sales teams going for incentive tours overseas.
“Nearly 20 per cent to 25 per cent overseas corporate tours have been put on hold as these are large groups and their budgets, even if it goes down by 20 per cent, will cost lakhs of rupees,” says S K Dewan of Dewan Travels.
Rupee free-fall is boon for Indian hospitality industry
The flip side of the abysmal depreciation of India’s currency against the US dollar is that cash registers in the Indian hospitality business have started ringing with the sound of rupees.
Many middle-class Indians who have enjoyed holidays on foreign shores the past few years suddenly find the prospect of a vacation abroad unaffordable and are turning to the domestic option.
Hotel groups in India are happy with the surge in reservations by domestic tourists as well as from foreign visitors.
One Indian banker has cancelled a trip to Italy and will settle for five-star luxury in Goa. About 15 million Indians vacation abroad annually, says Reuters.
The free-falling rupee has helped along a 35 per cent surge in domestic tourism between January and June, according to industry body ASSOCHAM.
Travel companies in India see sense in mining this domestic surge. Thomas Cook’s over 800 tours within India have raised domestic enquiries for the winter by 15 per cent while other major players are also offering more destinations in the country as well as discounts.
The most popular tourist destinations – Goa, Agra, Jaipur and Pune – stand to benefit the most from the surge in domestic and foreign tourism.
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Indians are downsizing their travel dreams following a decline in the rupee
Foreign banks in Sarawak
by By Sharon Kong
bizhive@theborneopost.com. Posted on September 1, 2013, Sunday
Foreign banks have always had a long-standing presence in Sarawak, tapping into the many financial needs of growing industries and developing businesses here from days of long ago.
Banks such as Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Ltd (OCBC Bank) and HSBC Holdings plc (HSBC) – headquartered in London – had opened its first branches in Kuching way back in the 1950s.
Meanwhile, newcomers into the state such Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) – the world’s largest bank by market capitalisation and deposits – had just launched its first branch here earlier this year, serving as the East Malaysian regional branch in Kuching.
Another influential financial institution from China – Bank of China Ltd through its subsidiary Bank of China (Malaysia) Bhd – has also set foot in Kuching, Sarawak, but has yet to officially launch its operations to the public.
According to Investor Inside in its ‘Inside Sarawak 2013’ report, despite the stringent regulations that Sarawak employs for foreign branches, many overseas players play an expanding role in the state’s financial sector, which hosts local branches of 18 European, 10 Middle Eastern, 11 Asian and five North American banks.
With these locally-incorporated foreign banks opening up branches in Sarawak, one wonders what attracts these institutions to do so in the East Malaysian state.
For Malaysian financial institutions, the attractiveness lies in the bullish prospects of long-term growth within Sarawak’s retail and corporate banking segments, according to Inside Investor.
“The result is that while Kuala Lumpur remains the strategic hub for the sector, Sarawak is where these institutes move to flex their expansionary muscles,” it explained.
The same could be said for locally-incorporated foreign banks, more so as they will likely be presented with a wider array of banking-related business opportunities in line with the development of the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) .
Notably, foreign banks such as OCBC Bank’s subsidiary, OCBC Bank (Malaysia) Bhd (OCBC Bank Malaysia), believe it is well positioned to serve SCORE with its current branches located in Kuching and Miri.
Healthy competition
The entry of foreign banks is not considered a major threat to the domestic banks in Sarawak, but more as a way to encourage healthy competition in the banking services market.
In fact, foreign banks constantly compete with top Malaysian banks such as Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) – headquartered in Kuala Lumpur – which maintain a strong and ever-expanding presence in Sarawak, according to Investor Inside.
RAM Holdings Bhd chief economist Dr Yeah Kim Leng once said that since Malaysian-owned banks had long been competing with the locally-incorporated foreign banks, opening the door wider to foreign banks should not pose a problem, although they would feel the competitive heat.
On whether foreign banks would take away Malaysian-owned banks’ market share, he said in a growing economy like Malaysia, it was more likely they would contribute to market expansion and add to the dynamism of the local banking industry.
“Besides generating jobs and demand for commercial space and other supporting services and facilities, the foreign banks could bring specialised services and attract talents to the Malaysian shore,” he added.
With that, BizHive Weekly takes a look at two foreign banks with branches in Sarawak and their future expansion plans within the state.
OCBC Bank serving the many industries of the state
OCBC Bank is the longest established Singapore bank, formed in 1932 from the merger of three local banks, the oldest of which was founded in 1912.
“It is now the second largest financial services group in Southeast Asia by assets, and one of the world’s most highly-rated banks, with an Aa1 rating from Moody’s.
“In addition, it was ranked by Bloomberg Markets as the world’s strongest bank in 2011 and 2012,” Jessie Lim, senior manager of the Kuching branch, for OCBC Bank Malaysia, highlighted to BizHive Weekly in an interview.
In Malaysia alone, OCBC Bank has a total of 41 branches – 31 conventional and 10 Islamic branches (through its Islamic banking subsidiary, OCBC Al-Amin).
“We are pleased to say that our Kuching branch remains one of the frontrunners in providing banking services to the Sarawak community,” Lim added.
After opening the Kuching branch, OCBC Bank progressively gained a foothold in the community for nearly 60 years.
In 2008, the Kuching branch was transformed to enhance its customers’ experience. This was in line with OCBC Bank’s nationwide transformation exercise.
Today, the bank is very much an integral part of Sarawak’s banking landscape. Its Miri branch became the second branch in Sarawak when it was established in 2006 as part of efforts to continue to serve the locals here through a full suite of consumer products as well as commercial banking services.
“Like Kuching, we saw and continue to see Miri as a community whose people are looking for more sophisticated products and services to help spur on their personal and business activities in order to achieve their aspirations.
“Beyond this, we recognised in Miri the potential to be another important hub from which to reach out to a broader community within the state of Sarawak,” Lim explained.
Generally, OCBC Bank sees Miri as a thriving locality. While it thrived mainly on the petroleum and timber industries in the 1900s, it has today diversified into other key sectors as well, such as agriculture – particularly palm oil – manufacturing and tourism.
“As such, we believe that with the bank’s presence here in Miri, it will help catalyse the growth of these industries through the provision of innovative financial services,” Lim opined.
With the opening of its branch in Miri seven years ago, the bank is now more accessible to both existing customers and those who have long wished to use its banking services, but might have found its Kuching branch a little far.
Beyond this, with the establishment of this hub, the bank sees itself serving an even broader community than that of Miri alone.
“For the immediate term, apart from Miri itself, we are looking to service customers in areas such as Bintulu, Limbang, Marudi and Sibu – previously considered too distant from us.
“The same applied for many years for Kuching, where we serviced other major towns from this base,” Lim said.
These areas are all populated by businesses with entrepreneurial and industrial vigour, in sectors ranging from oil and gas, oil palm plantation, and import and export.
As such, OCBC Bank is well poised to provide them with comprehensive financing solutions covering structured trade, equipment financing, working capital and operational services to facilitate their growth.
On the retail banking side, it hopes to continue to provide better payment and transactional convenience for its individual customers and introduce new lifestyle products to the masses.
Furthermore, with the expanding growth of the oil and gas and oil palm plantation sectors – coupled with the creation of new wealth – there is significant demand for wealth management solutions and services from the Miri community.
As a provider of wealth management services, the bank will now be better able to offer its full suite of products and services that might previously have been less accessible.
“In terms of specific numbers, our business loans base tends to be pretty much evenly divided between plantations, ship building and shipping, trading, manufacturing and services and as such, we will continue to focus on these areas,” Lim explained.
With the set-up of two branches, this allows OCBC Bank to reach out to its clients throughout the whole country by providing a seamless platform to cater to its clients’ financial needs and aspirations.
“Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE) is very exciting to OCBC Bank and with our current set-up (in Kuching and Miri) we are well positioned to serve the Corridor.
“The bank is always looking to grow with our customer base and we will continue to review and assess the prevailing opportunities,” she added.
Overall, Sarawak is deemed a competitive market where both local and foreign banks are well entrenched with their strategies and client bases.
The consumer base in Sarawak is very discerning, well-travelled and able to discern value, and values long-term relationships and as such, it is where OCBC Bank thrives.
“We are pleased to say that with our strong foothold in Kuching, the people who bank with us have now entered the second and third generations.
“Our bank has grown together with these clients and we are pleased to have been able to cater to their needs and will continue to do so,” Lim concluded.
ICBC Bank: Newcomer in the scene
Although in the past, Chinese banks in Sarawak have had difficulties in coping with competition and have mostly resulted in mergers and acquisitions, it is unlikely that ICBC Malaysia will suffer the same fate as its predecessors, given the fact that it is a wholly owned subsidiary of ICBC – currently known as the world’s largest bank.
ICBC, which was officially established in 1984, had been wholly restructured to a joint-stock limited company in 2005. Not long after, it was successfully listed on both the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK) in 2006.
How it came to be the world’s largest listed bank in terms of market capitalisation, customer deposits and profitability, was mainly due to its continuous endeavor and stable development.
“With a focus on the acceleration of operational transformation, the bank has realised capital-saving development and sustainable profit growth featuring diversified operation.
“In 2012, the bank had realised a net profit of 238.7 billion renminbi, representing an increase of 14.5 per cent over the previous year,” ICBC chairman Jiang Jianqing reiterated.
From its overseas institutions alone, the bank had achieved a 21.8 per cent increase in profit before tax, giving better play to the role of globalised operation in stabilising profit and dispersing risks.
ICBC’s presence currently spans over the five continents of Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and Australia, with operations in 39 countries and regions.
The bank provides comprehensive financial products and services to 4.38 million corporate customers and close to 400 million personal customers by virtue of its distribution network consisting of over 17,000 domestic institutions, 383 overseas institutions, and over 1,700 correspondent banks worldwide.
It also does so through its e-banking network, comprising a range of internet and telephone banking services, and self-service banking centres.
According to Jiang, the bank has to date, actively put in efforts to serve the economic and trade relations between China and the rest of the world, meet the financial demand of customers across the globe, and promote business development on a global scale.
By being the first amongst peers in China to finish the building of a globally integrated technology platform, and through strengthening the extension of key product lines and interactions between domestic and overseas operations, the bank has enhanced the localisation of the operation of its overseas institutions and the capability of its global services.
As such, this makes ICBC one of the few banks capable of providing comprehensive financial services across the entrie Asian region, with its group operations network covering Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, the Middle East and Central Asia.
In Malaysia alone, via its wholly owned subsidiary ICBC Malaysia which was established in 2010, ICBC currently has a total of five branches, including the Kuching branch.
ICBC Malaysia saw the first operation in Kuching as a gateway to further expand throughout the state and into Sabah.
In fact, the establishment of the ICBC East Malaysia regional bank in Kuching is expected to further enhance the economic and trade ties between Malaysia and China.
Sarawak’s economic stability is one of the main reasons that attracted ICBC Malaysia to setup its East Malaysia regional branch here in Kuching that will oversee the Sarawak and Sabah operations.
ICBC Malaysia chief executive officer (CEO) Tian Fenglin foresaw Sarawak to be the next development centre in Malaysia by 2020 and remained confident the economic boom here would give the group a vast opportunity within the financing cycle.
In addition, he pointed out that there are many Chinese entrepreneurs in East Malaysia who have a lot of active transactions in China.
However, the bank is not limiting itself to just the capital of Sarawak here. While strengthening its footprint in Kuching, it is also eyeing to set up branches in most of the cities and towns throughout Sarawak and Sabah.
Overall, since the establishment of ICBC Malaysia more than three years ago, the group has reported steady growth over the past three years with products, services, loans and deposits all improving positively.
As at the end of 2012, ICBC Malaysia’s assets stood at over RM3 billion, while deposits and profits stood at RM800 million and RM20 million, respectively.
Gauging the increasing presence of foreign banks in Malaysia — BNM
According to Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) in the Financial Stability and Payment Systems Report 2012, the sizeable presence of foreign banks in the Malaysian banking sector has contributed to a more efficient and competitive market while enhancing the breadth and depth of the financial sector.
“In 2012, two new foreign commercial banks commenced operations in Malaysia, increasing the total number of foreign commercial banks operating in the country to 19,” BNM added.
On the whole, the Malaysian financial system has long been home to foreign-owned banking institutions, with foreign banks being pioneers in the development of the Malaysian financial system more than a hundred years ago.
According to BNM, the oldest bank in Malaysia was a foreign bank that was established to meet the financial requirements of the early European traders. Over time, other major foreign banks followed suit as the strong prospects for growth in trade drew keen interest in establishing presence in Malaysia.
The report also highlighted that since then, foreign banks have become key players that contribute significantly to Malaysia’s economy. Today, foreign banks account for approximately 27 per cent of market share in the assets of the banking sector.
Several foreign banks with a sizeable presence in Malaysia have also acknowledged Malaysia’s growth potential and connectivity with other economies, and as such, have positioned Malaysia as a priority market within the Asia-Pacific region.
Expansion flexibilities
In Malaysia itself, foreign banks have been accorded operational flexibilities to expand their network through electronic channels, agent banking and the establishment of a further number of physical branches.
“This has thus enabled the foreign banks to have an important role in the financial intermediation process and contribute to the functioning and growth of the economy.
“Moving forward, similar to domestic banks, foreign banks will be allowed to expand their branches more freely, while maintaining a balanced distribution of branch locations by all banks to support the needs of the underserved areas.
“This would be implemented with measures to further accelerate the development of alternative delivery channels which would promote greater convenience and efficiency in the provision of financial services to consumers,” BNM explained in the report.
Safety measures
With an increasing number of foreign banks entering the local financial sector, BNM has ensured that the pace of cross-border cooperation in surveillance and supervision has also subsequently intensified over the last few years.
According to BNM, Malaysia proactively collaborates with home country supervisory authorities to ensure that pre-emptive actions can be taken to preserve financial stability in the event of an imminent shock.
This includes developing arrangements for information exchange and supervisory cooperation through memoranda of understanding, as well as participating in supervisory colleges relating to these internationally-active banks.
Overall, these efforts are consistent with the broad principles recommended by the Financial Stability Board on cross-border cooperation in the management of financial crises.
Given Malaysia’s liberalised approach to its financial sector, it is only expected that we will continue to see an influx of foreign-owned banks in the coming years.
Foreign banks in Sarawak
Montgomery police ticket pedestrians obeying the law
Pedestrians
Montgomery police ticket pedestrians obeying the law
Montgomery County police are finally paying attention to the needs of pedestrians. But officers on the beat don’t seem to have gotten the message yet. Pedestrians have even been ticketed for crossing the street in a legal manner.
Photo by Kate Mereand-Sinha on Flickr.
In May, the county’s police department held their first “sting” targeting drivers who don’t stop at crosswalks. Just last week, when a student was hit by a fast-moving driver while crossing Veirs Mill Road, the police told TV stations that mid-block crossings are allowed at that location. This is a sharp reversal from the past, when the police would sometimes say a collision occurred outside a crosswalk without explaining that it’s legal to cross there.
But last week, a GGW reader in Bethesda spoke with an officer who was ticketing drivers making a forbidden turn into a residential neighborhood, but ignoring speeding violations on a street where many walk. Roads are made for cars, not pedestrians, she was told. The officer said that those on foot have a claim to safety in crosswalks only when drivers are kept away by red lights.
And earlier this month in Silver Spring, another GGW reader saw officers ticket pedestrians who were obeying the law. They were crossing Georgia Avenue mid-block between two intersections that don’t have traffic lights. This is perfectly legal, as long as the pedestrian yields the right of way to oncoming cars. The same officers ignored genuine violations by drivers, who failed repeatedly to stop for people walking in the adjacent unmarked crosswalks.
The Georgia Avenue sting took place on August 13 between Fenwick Lane and Planning Place. Neither of these intersections has a stoplight. Under Maryland law, unmarked crosswalks exist at both intersections, but motorists seem unaware of that fact. When drivers don’t know these crosswalks exist, and police don’t try to educate the drivers, there’s little reason for pedestrians to use them.
Green lines indicate marked crosswalks. Blue lines are unmarked crosswalks. The orange line is where ticketed pedestrians were crossing.
The distance between the nearest signalized intersections, located at Cameron Street and Spring Street, is 849 feet. The walk from halfway between the traffic lights to the signal and back takes 4 minutes. That is a lot of time to add to a short trip; traffic engineers consider an intersection “failing” when drivers are delayed by 80 seconds. Georgia Avenue is lined with offices, apartments, restaurants and shops, so many pedestrians take the most direct route, as is their legal right.
What’s the law?
Maryland law is very clear about where pedestrians can and cannot cross. And the Silver Spring sting occurred where it is legal to cross.
First, let’s look at how crosswalks are defined in Maryland. The Maryland Transportation Code section 21-101 includes definitions for the terms relevant to transport. A crosswalk is defined as
that part of a roadway that is:
- Within the prolongation or connection of the lateral lines of sidewalks at any place where 2 or more roadways of any type meet or join, measured from the curbs or, in the absence of curbs, from the edges of the roadway;
- Within the prolongation or connection of the lateral lines of a bicycle way where a bicycle way and a roadway of any type meet or join, measured from the curbs or, in the absence of curbs, from the edges of the roadway; or
- Distinctly indicated for pedestrian crossing by lines or other markings.
While the third point may seem obvious, the first point is important to note. Any place where a street with sidewalks intersects another street, those sidewalks “extend” across the intersection, whether or not the department of transportation has put paint down.
And while it’s not directly relevant to this discussion, Maryland law also defines “sidewalk”. It doesn’t have to be a paved area. Even when a traditional concrete sidewalk is not present, crosswalks still exist at every intersection.
But pedestrians aren’t required to cross only at crosswalks, either. Section 21-503 explains what their rights are:
- In general.—If a pedestrian crosses a roadway at any point other than in a marked crosswalk or in an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, the pedestrian shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle approaching on the roadway.
- Where special pedestrian crossing provided.—If a pedestrian crosses a roadway at a point where a pedestrian tunnel or overhead pedestrian crossing is provided, the pedestrian shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle approaching on the roadway.
- Between adjacent intersections.—Between adjacent intersections at which a traffic control signal is in operation, a pedestrian may cross a roadway only in a marked crosswalk.
- Crossing intersection diagonally.—A pedestrian may not cross a roadway intersection diagonally unless authorized by a traffic control device for crossing movements. If authorized to cross diagonally, a pedestrian may cross only in accordance with the traffic control device.
Let’s break this down. Pedestrians are allowed to cross at places other than crosswalks in certain circumstances. When crossing outside of a marked or unmarked crosswalk, pedestrians must yield the right-of-way to motorists.
Paragraph C is also important. It’s illegal for pedestrians to cross a street when both adjacent intersections are signalized. Otherwise, it’s okay to cross, so long as you yield to drivers.
The stretch of Georgia Avenue where Montgomery County police ticketed pedestrians does have two stoplights, at Cameron Street and Spring Street. But between them are two intersections without signals, at Fenwick Lane and Planning Place. That means this stretch is broken into 3 blocks, and it is perfectly legal to cross any any point in this stretch.
As a counter-example, take the block of Georgia between Ellsworth Drive and Colesville Road, in front of the Discovery Channel headquarters. Both of those intersections are signalized, and there are no intermediate intersections. Therefore, it is illegal to cross mid-block there.
Law requires drivers to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks
There are a few other laws that are noteworthy. Under section 21-502(c), it is illegal for any motorist to pass a driver stopped at a marked or unmarked crosswalk to allow a pedestrian to cross.
Section 21-502(a)(2) deals with when drivers must yield. In Maryland, waiting on the sidewalk is not enough. A pedestrian does not assert his or her right to cross until they step off the curb into the crosswalk. However, once the pedestrian steps into the crosswalk, they have the right-of-way on that half of the street, and they gain it on the other half when they step into the adjacent lane.
That means that if I’m crossing Georgia Avenue from west to east in a crosswalk, once I step into the southbound parking lane, the two southbound lanes must yield. Once I step into the leftmost southbound lane, northbound traffic must yield. I’ve found that a handy way to remind drivers to stop without endangering myself, when I’m walking to the grocery store, is to reach forward and wave my shopping bag in the next lane, but wait until the car begins to slow before I walk in front of it.
However, section 21-502(b) does make it illegal for a pedestrian to step out in front of a vehicle whose driver would not have time to stop. So although you ordinarily have the right-of-way at marked and unmarked crosswalks, you must let drivers pass first if they are too close to stop.
These laws set the basic framework for walkers, cyclists, and motorists to share Maryland roadways. With diligent and even-handed enforcement, we can have safer streets and more livable neighborhoods.
Montgomery police ticket pedestrians obeying the law
Delhi gang rape: Court finds juvenile guilty of rape and murder
Eight-and-a-half months after a young paramedical student was gang-raped in a moving bus here, the first punishment was handed out when a juvenile court ruled that an 18-year-old, who was claimed by the police to be the ‘most brutal’ of all the six accused, be confined to a reform home for three years. The youth, who was then a minor but turned 18 in June, was not named. The first judgement in the case, however, left the family members of the victim angry, who said they wanted harsher punishment for him.
The maximum punishment that can be awarded under the Juvenile Justice Act in India is three years. The Juvenile Justice Board, presided over by Principal Magistrate Geetanjali Goel, pronounced the verdict and convicted the 18-year-old for gang rape, murder and other charges. The board, however, acquitted him of some of the charges for which he was booked. Details were not disclosed as media was not allowed inside the court. The minor was also acquitted from attempt to murder charges of victims’ male friend and the sole eye witness of the case.
The prosecution has called the minor, as the ‘most brutal of the six’. He was the one who had called the victim and her male friend to the bus on Dec 16 night by giving them wrong information. He along with five other men had gangraped the girl in the moving bus and had then thrown both of them out – without clothes – on the streets in the cold December night.
The police had said that apart from sexually assaulting the 23-year-old physiotherapist trainee, the minor had also ripped out her internal organs with a rod. The girl died later. The brutal gang rape sparked massive protests in New Delhi and other cities, with people demanding death for the accused persons. The board refused to reveal all the charges for which the minor accused had been convicted and acquitted. After the order was announced, the victims entire family – father, mother and two brothers – said they were happy.
‘We are not satisfied with the verdict,’ the victim’s mother said with tears in her eyes. ‘If minors do such things and get away so easily, how will the law work? It cannot be done like this. We will move the higher court against the judgment,’ she said.
The father of victim also expressed his dissatisfaction over the verdict. ‘Our daughter has died and now after listening to this verdict we also have virtually died. This will only encourage the crime,’ the father said. ‘I was hoping that the juvenile accused will be given life imprisonment, but he was given only three years (in special home,’ said the victim’s father. ‘The court by giving a lighter punishment of three years has actually encouraged the other juveniles to commit crime. The law must be changed.
The board also said that a period of around eight months that the minor has spent in juvenile observation home will be deducted from his punishment of three years in the special or reform home. The minor’s lawyer said his conduct at special home will be observed and the sentence would be reviewed. ‘The board will observe his conduct during his stay in reform home and can review its sentence order and there is a possibility that he could come out early,’ Rajesh Tiwari, advocate of juvenile, told reporters. As the gang rape had hit international headlines and raised concerns about women’s safety in the country, the area around the board was packed with media persons, onlookers and activists. More than 150 media persons from national and international newspapers and television channels had gathered from early morning to cover the case.
The board was to pronounce its verdict at 10 a.m. in the morning but it came only at 3.30 p.m.
After the order was pronounced, some protestors raised slogans outside the board and sought death penalty for the minor.
Shouting ‘hang the rapist’, the protesters expressed their displeasure on the ‘lighter punishment’ they thought the minor has got.
But child rights activists said the minor should get a chance to re-integrate with society.
Shireen Vakil Miller, director of Save the Children, said: ‘The most important step is to ensure that there is a comprehensive rehabilitation package for the juvenile that includes counseling, and a provision for vocational training. This would help the juvenile to re-integrate into the society once he has completed his sentence.’
A native of Uttar Pradesh, the minor had moved to Delhi at the age of 11 and was doing odd jobs. He was arrested after the incident from Anand Vihar in east Delhi as he was trying to flee to his village in Uttar Pradesh.
Six people, including the minor, were arrested in the case. While accused Ram Singh, Mukesh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Thakur faced trial in fast track court in Saket in south Delhi, the juvenile’s case was heard by the board.
The case against Ram Singh was dropped after he was found dead, hanging in his cell in Tihar Jail.
Meanwhile, a special fast-track court dealing with the trial of the four men accused in the case is hearing the closing arguments and the verdict is expected soon. The fact that the juvenile gets only three years in a reform facility will surely cause outrage but that’s the maximum penalty for juveniles but the SC ruled that there was no question of reducing the juvenile age.
The reason behind this is that the age of juvenile in India is set at 18 years by the Juvenile Justice Act of 2000 to conform to the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. This would mean that all juvenile offences would be tried by the Juvenile Justice Board and not the regular courts. This is done because juvenile criminals were often treated as harshly as adults and would turn into hardened criminals. This act looked to end child labour, reform marriageable age and improve the lives of children throughout the country. The act was passed only after consulting psychologists, legal experts and others but it seems that it has failed us badly. The law left many loopholes which would be exploited time and again. (Is it time to change our juvenile laws?)
While the SC has considered a PIL where the plea is to grant discretionary powers to trial judges to transfer a minor’s case to regular courts after considering the nature of the crime, civil and child rights activists warn of repercussions if the law is modified. ‘Sending to prison minors who commit crimes because of the circumstances they grow up in would only turn them into hardened criminal,’ Flavia Agnes of Majlis told TOI. ‘It is no solution to reduce crimes against women. We must examine the issue dispassionately and be kinder as a society and considerate towards children.’
Delhi Gang Rape Timeline
Dec 16: A 23-year-old physiotherapy student is brutally raped in a bus in Delhi. Victim admitted to Safdarjung Hospital by the police.
Dec 17: Bus driver Ram Singh and two others arrested.
Dec 18: Public sentiment boils over leading to huge demonstrations as protesters clash with police at various places. Fourth accused arrested.
Dec 19: Doctors treating the girl comment about her unstable condition though she manages to communicate with docs by writing.
Dec 20: Students of various universities protest outside CM Sheila Dixit’s residence
Dec 21: The fifth accused, a juvenile is arrested and one of the culprits is identified by the victim’s male friend in Tihar. Delhi Police starts search operation in Haryana and Bihar for another accused. Sir Ganga Ram Hospital chairman offers victim free intestinal transplant, an offer which is considered a publicity stunt by many since the victim’s not stable enough for one
Dec 23: Delhi High Court sets up fast track court
Dec 24: PM Manmohan Singh requests people to keep calm and suffers a major faux paus as he’s heard off-camera asking people Thik Hai?
Dec 26: Government decides to fly victim to Singapore for further treatment which raises questions about whether she would survive the journey and why she wasn’t taken to a better facility in Delhi like AIIMS which is just around the corner.
Dec 27: She’s airlifted to Singapore
Dec 29: She succumbs to her injuries at 4:45 AM
Dec 30: Her body is flown back to Delhi
Jan 1: Special task-force to deal with women’s safety in Delhi icreated
Jan 3: A case of rape, murder, kidnapping, destruction of evidence, and attempted murder on the male victim is filed against all the five accused in the case.
Jan 5: Her friend gives an interview to Zee News which documents their ordeal including public and police apathy to their plight
Jan 9: The accused demand legal representation; lawyer Manohar Lal Sharma fights their case
Jan 10: Sharma declares victims were responsible for their predicament.
Jan 28: The Juvenile Justice Board declares that one of the six accused is a minor despite no strong evidence to suggest it. Age-testing is ruled out.
Feb 3: The Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2013, with suggestions from the Verma Committee Report introduced.
Feb 5: The trial starts
March 11: The main accused, Ram Singh is found hanging in his jail cell that he shared with two other accused.
April 4: One of the accused claims Tihar guards harassing him
April 11: Vinay’s counsel claims two of the accused were not present on the bus
May 1: Defence harasses male friend by claiming he’s a womaniser
May 10: Vinay and Akshay’s advocate AP Singh asks for male friend to undergo polygraph test
June 4: Juvenile accused turns 18 according to school certificate
July 11: Juvenile board defers judgement till July 25 to decide whether to try the minor in the case as an adult or a minor.
July 18: Supreme Court refuses to reduce the juvenile age to 16
August 31: Juvenile found guilty of rape and murder.
Delhi gang rape: Court finds juvenile guilty of rape and murder
Road closures for this year"s F1 race will occur over 6 days
Road closures in preparation for this year’s Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix will take place over six days – a time frame similar to previous years, according to the race organiser and authorities.
- PHOTOS
A general view of the lighted circuit for the F1 Singapore Grand Prix night race in Singapore. (AFP PHOTO/FILES/ROSLAN RAHMAN)
SINGAPORE: Road closures in preparation for this year’s Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix will take place over six days – a time frame similar to previous years, according to the race organiser and authorities.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA), Singapore GP and the Singapore Tourism Board said in a joint statement on August 29 that affected roads will be closed from 12 midnight on September 18 to facilitate the set up of the night race.
The authorities have urged the public to use public transport during the period of road closures. For those driving, they can access the Marina Centre area through a single-lane road from Nicoll Highway and Temasek Boulevard at selected times.
During the race weekend, between September 20 and 22, train services will be increased to cope with higher demand, with operating hours extended until 1am. Operating hours for selected feeder bus services will also be extended to match the last train services.
When the race is completed, affected roads will reopen progressively, and all roads will be fully accessible by 5.30am on September 24. More information is available at the LTA and MyTransport.SG websites.
Details of roads closures for Singapore Grand Prix – LTA
(PDF 3.25MB)
Road closures for this year"s F1 race will occur over 6 days
How to Build out Your Startup"s Operations in Asia
Thomas Clayton has started and run numerous high-tech startups in Silicon Valley. He is currently CEO of Bubbly, a social media startup backed by Sequoia Capital, SingTel Innov8, and JAFCO. The company is one of the largest VC–backed startups in Southeast Asia, having raised over $60 million in funding.
This is the second part of a four-part series that will provide insight into starting, building, and funding a company across Asia. See part one here.
My first post in this series described how businesses should start when considering expansion into Asia, which is home to some of the largest and fastest growing markets in the world.
The inspiration for my second post came from the many CEOs and entrepreneurs who come to me knowing they want to go after Asia and are aware of their target markets, but unsure of the best approach to start building out their operations on the ground.
For example, should they hire in-market consultants, an expatriate based in a hub city, or partner with a local player? To best answer these questions I have highlighted six key pieces of advice for execs who are growing the operations side of their business in an Asian country or the region itself.
Hire the right people – local and entrepreneurial
A company cannot hire out of a hub city like Singapore and expect those individuals to cover Indonesia, India, Thailand, and the Philippines. A business cannot even realistically cover a subset of those countries from Singapore. Having people in-market and on the ground is key in each of these countries. Nothing gets done otherwise. Someone needs to be pushing things forward in-country day-in and day-out.
You also need true local expertise. It’s worth the investment to have one local person in each market rather than one person centrally trying to cover all of the markets. Moreover, given the salary differences across markets, one person in three of these countries can often cost about the same as one in Singapore or Hong Kong.
Another learning I’ve come across the hard way is to stay away from ‘sales consultants.’
I would say that 95 percent of consultants are not working full time for a company for a reason. I’ve seen so many Western tech companies burn cash on these guys with zero results. They’re often expats that move to Asia for the lifestyle or that were on holiday and decided to stay longer-term, and convince Western companies or regional firms to hire them on a monthly retainer to build out their operations.
The fact is that they simply don’t have the exhaustive relationships to really move things forward. The only reason they keep getting business is because their Western clients can relate to these guys culturally and communicate with them effectively, thus making their clients feel more comfortable. However, this is more of a luxury than a necessity.
The other typical ‘sales consultants’ are local players that claim some “very close” relationship with a key player at a target firm. These people simply cannot be trusted as far as you can throw them.
The best-case scenario for hiring any of these consultants is they don’t take your business anywhere and just waste your time and money. The worst-case scenario is that they will steal your intellectual property and cut you out of the loop (this is especially true in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, China, and Thailand) — I’m serious, watch out!
Important qualities to look for in those initial candidates on the ground are guys that are scrappy and very hands-on. In Asia, there are too many candidates with a few years of work experience that just want to “manage” and not actually do anything themselves. It gets worse with even more experienced candidates. Many of the most seasoned guys are used to having teams of people around them that do everything for them.
Making it worse still, recruiters in the region tend to only focus on the biggest branded companies for their candidates. That’s just lazy. Moreover, coming from Google or Cisco is an EXTREMELY different skill set and environment than the entrepreneurial, scrappy style that is required to build out a successful remote operation on the other side of the world.
One should simply focus on a track record of entrepreneurship and the ability to be a jack-of-all trades rather than experience with big brands. Recruiters don’t understand this, so try to be hands on with your own network and utilize services like LinkedIn when finding your first few key employees.
Be ‘local’ but don’t overdo it
Partnering with large local companies often results in the larger company wanting to “localize” your service. Most of them either take their localization efforts too far or focus on many of the wrong aspects.
For example, I’ve seen local mobile operators white-label mobile applications with a ridiculous brand and put them into the local language — which is not always necessary and can often have a degrading effect on your service, since many Asian consumers envy Silicon Valley brands and do not view operators as sexy brands.
Then these large companies, which are often the dominant players in their respective markets, will demand dozens of new customizations with a list that will grow until it seems endless.
Most of these will fall under the auspices of “localization,” but the reality is the partner is just trying to play ‘product manager’ and thinks they know more than you do. After all, they’re used to treating partners this way in their own markets. When they say, “jump” everyone always does.
This is obviously not sustainable. In short: be the master of your own localization strategy.
Start light and scale from there
In many northern Asia countries, especially Japan, large local players will want to set up joint ventures or new entities with lots of overhead. My recommendation is to shy away from this.
Joint ventures are a thing for large corporations. Keep it simple.
Also, there is no need to open a legal corporate entity until the company has sizable revenue and employees on the ground. Many entrepreneurs think this is the first thing they need to do when entering a new country. Lawyers will always tell you it’s only a few thousand dollars, but they’re not factoring in all of the overhead and ongoing accounting compliance that will come along with it.
In most cases, its an additional $50,000-$100,000 per year in overhead for the admin costs alone.
My advice? Wait as long as possible.
There is a large gray area in each country, but generally companies can wait until they have a few employees and over $1 million in revenue before they need to take that step.
Never assume rules are different and things must be done unethically
So many entrepreneurs ask me about the graft in countries like China, Indonesia, and Thailand. Yes, it’s there, but it is way overblown and it’s not necessary to get involved in order to build out a successful business here.
Moreover, graft has decreased significantly over the past decade and large players are usually above the table. I’ve been able to build out businesses in all of these countries leveraging hundreds of local partners without ever going down this path or even crossing into a gray area.
My advice is to draw a firm line and stay clean, which should not be difficult because as a foreigner, it is unlikely that you will ever even be approached to cross this line. If one of your local employees says it’s necessary, they’re trying to take the easy way out and you have the wrong people on your team.
Don’t underestimate the power of celebrities in these markets
It’s the sole reason companies like Blackberry got a second life in Asia, and it led to the initial takeoff of GREE and Line in Japan. Local players realize this and leverage celebrities heavily. Working with local talent agencies is a great way to get your foot in the door and start getting some stars to help get the word out.
Mobile operators still matter in the ecosystem
If you’re doing anything related to mobile, it’s imperative you understand that feature phone penetration is still well over 80 percent in most Asian markets, which amounts to over four billion consumers. Therefore, working with operators is still one of the quickest ways to reach the masses.
One key benefit that operators offer is easy and seamless billing, which can provide a significant boost since many areas across Asia lack electronic payments and have meaningless credit card penetration. However, prepaid SIM cards are ubiquitous and nearly every consumer has one. Digital ad revenues are still too small in most Asian markets to be a viable business model, so charging consumers via operator billing is still one of the most pervasive local models.
The above are just a handful of lessons that I’ve found to be invaluable for my businesses and those that I advise or sit on the Board of. I hope that it gives others a little color as they look to expand into Asia and a cleaner entrance into this exploding market.
Headline image via Thinkstock, other images via Thinkstock, Thinkstock and AFP/Getty Images
How to Build out Your Startup"s Operations in Asia
People power key to win
Great newspapers are all about their readers, not their journalists.
It’s a philosophy any editor worth his or her salt has to follow if they want to have any real degree of success. And here at the Herald on Sunday, a strategy we follow weekly has been rewarded with a prestigious international award win.
We were named the best Sunday newspaper at this week’s Panpa Awards, making us No1 not only in New Zealand but also Australia, the Pacific Islands, Singapore and Hong Kong.
What made us stand out and become just the second NZ Herald title ever to win at Panpa?
“A newspaper that has its readers at its heart. It reads, feels and looks like an authoritative voice. Great use of graphics and photos. Its current and future strategy is bold and impressive, and is based not on technologies, like so many others, but on a relationship with its community,” one judge said.
Another said: “The editorial team really seems to have understood their readers and the needs of the community. The beach campaign is a great example of that work. The layout of the pages are excellent and the writing as good as any other entry this year. With the NZ Herald, it is the perfect seven-day package.”
The third judge agreed: “I like this newspaper a lot. It feels right. It is not forced, or trying too hard. It knows it is a great paper, so it just is one. The entries this year were excellent.
“The Sunday Age is a great paper, too, but for me, Herald on Sunday edges out a great set of entries.”
It is vindication of the strategy we have followed – think Two Drinks Max, the campaign to pressure the Government over drink-drive limits; Beach Busters, the bid to clean up New Zealand beaches; Sideline Champs, the drive to improve behaviour at school sport matches; and Quitters, the new stop-smoking initiative dozens of readers have signed up to (see page 14 today).
Beach Busters won the environment award at Panpa, and Sideline Champs was finalist in the best marketing campaign category.
Yes, great journalism and story-telling is at the heart of what we do, and providing compelling lifestyle material through our popular Living magazine is also crucial. But in this day and age, if you’re not building community as well as reporting on it, a print product is going to struggle.
Personally, our win is a huge source of pride. Today is my last edition as the paper’s editor. I’m moving into a business development role with the NZ Herald titles.
After nearly 10 years as an editor, I felt it was time for a change.
You can be assured, however, the Herald on Sunday team will keep delivering for you. I’ve not worked with a more dedicated group, and acting editor Jonathan Milne is a driven man.
We face so many barriers to what we do, particularly the armies of PR spin doctors that inhabit so many of the institutions we report about. They outnumber the journalists, and some take great pride in blocking us in our work.
But they don’t often beat us and readers seem to know that – how else do you explain the paper having the best readership and circulation results in the country over the past three years?
My many thanks to your commitment to us, and to the hundreds of readers I’ve personally interacted with. You’re why we exist.
Bryce Johns
Editor, editor@hos.co.nz
By Bryce Johns
People power key to win
Liberal Education in Authoritarian Places
CLASSES are beginning at New York University’s new “portal” campus in Shanghai — the latest attempt by an American university to export its teaching and prestige abroad.
But there is no actual campus yet for the inaugural cohort of 295 students, half of whom are Chinese, and half from the United States and other countries. A planned 15-story academic building is still under construction. Classes are being held at East China Normal University, N.Y.U.’s partner in this joint venture. It’s an apt metaphor: a not-quite-real campus for a not-quite-real liberal education.
In April 2011, at a conference in Washington on “people-to-people exchange” between the United States and China, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state, praised N.Y.U.’s president, John Sexton, for his “vision to expand his university internationally while maintaining its reputation for excellence and academic freedom.”
But his meaning of “freedom” seems elastic. “I have no trouble distinguishing between rights of academic freedom and rights of political expression,” he told Bloomberg News later that year. “These are two different things.” This was a startling statement, coming from a scholar of constitutional law. And along with the controversy over a stand-alone campus that N.Y.U. opened in Abu Dhabi in 2010, it contributed to Mr. Sexton’s rising unpopularity back home: the arts and science faculty, N.Y.U.’s largest, voted “no confidence” in him in March. Both overseas campuses were financed primarily with foreign subsidies.
Mr. Sexton seemed oblivious to the experiences of Johns Hopkins University, whose School of Advanced International Studies has a longstanding center in Nanjing, China, that has faced restrictions on political discussion: the halting of an on-campus public screening of a documentary about the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989 and a ban on off-campus distribution of a journal started by an American student with articles by classmates.
Diplomats have good reason to encourage educational collaborations with strategically vital nations. And higher education is under great strain in the United States — witness President Obama’s plans to make colleges more affordable and accountable by rating them — so the temptation to raise money by expanding into rapidly growing (or resource rich) countries is understandable.
But if you look past their soaring rhetoric, you’ll see globe-trotting university presidents and trustees who are defining down their expectations of what a liberal education means, much as corporations do when they look the other way at shoddy labor and environmental practices abroad. The difference, of course, is that a university’s mission is to question such arrangements, not to facilitate them.
I’m no opponent of collaborative research programs in law, business, medicine and technical training in countries that are wealthy or authoritarian or both. Many students in those countries may want to broaden their social and political horizons as well as their career skills. But pretending that freedom of inquiry can be separated from freedom of expression is naïve at best, cynical at worst.
There is perhaps no better example of such cynicism than at Yale, where I teach. Its decision to create a new undergraduate college in a joint venture with the National University of Singapore touched off one of the strongest controversies in the 20-year presidency of Richard C. Levin, who retired this summer as Yale’s president — a year after a nonbinding faculty resolution expressed grave reservations about the project.
Yale promised that the newly hired faculty at Yale-N.U.S. would “rethink liberal education from the ground up” in a campus built and financed by Singapore — an authoritarian city-state with severe restrictions on freedom of speech.
“We must look at ‘liberal’ in the sense of broad, rather than free,” Kay Kuok, a businesswoman who leads the Yale-N.U.S. governing board, told the government-controlled Straits Times. “It’s freedom of thought; I’m not necessarily saying freedom of expression.”
Mr. Levin promised that students would be free to form associations “as long as they are not intolerant of racial or religious groups.” But the Singapore campus’s president, Pericles Lewis, said they would not be free to form explicitly political associations, much less stage protests of government policies, even on campus.
“In a host environment where free speech is constrained if not proscribed, faculty will censor themselves, and the cause of authentic liberal education, to the extent it can exist in such situations, will suffer,” the American Association of University Professors warned last year in a letter criticizing the Singapore venture. The letter posed 16 questions that Yale hasn’t answered; it won’t even disclose to its faculty the full terms of the Singapore deal.
Reporters Without Borders this year ranked Singapore No. 149 out of 179 in press freedom — down from No. 135 last year. Faculty members at the Claremont Colleges, in California, and University of Warwick, in Britain, cited concerns about academic freedom when they rebuffed Singapore’s offers to fund liberal arts colleges there — before Yale accepted.
Academic freedom isn’t the only ideal at risk. In 2009, when the University of Wisconsin at Madison was invited by the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan to help create a biotechnology program, the Americans proposed instead to design a school for the humanities and social sciences, one inspired by “the Wisconsin Idea,” a progressive vision of labor rights and open government. Something very different was built: a $2 billion university, run by a consortium that includes the University of Wisconsin, and named for the autocratic president Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, who has a representative on the board of trustees. Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented extensive labor rights violations in the United Arab Emirates, where migrant workers, who make up more than 70 percent of Abu Dhabi’s residents but enjoy few legal protections, are still building the N.Y.U. campus on Saadiyat Island, a luxury tourist and residential site.
When authoritarian regimes buy American universities’ prestige and talent, they “shortcut a process that took centuries to create,” Harry R. Lewis, a former dean of Harvard College, recently wrote in the South China Morning Post.
Universities’ mad scramble to expand reflects not so much grasping, imperialistic overreach as fundamental weakness: not only financial and market pressures, but also a drift in purpose and mission. University presidents have bought into an incorrect premise, espoused by thinkers like Fareed Zakaria and Kishore Mahbubani, that countries that liberalize economically will also liberalize politically. Universities need to recover a more “missionary,” freedom-seeking approach to their host countries, pedagogically and even politically. Or they should follow the model of Columbia and other universities that have created learning centers with much lighter footprints, not full-fledged campuses.
At its best, a liberal education imbues future citizen-leaders with the values and skills that are necessary to question, not merely serve, concentrations of power and profit. Universities that abandon this ideal are lending their good names to the decline of liberal education; turning themselves into career-networking centers for a global managerial work force that answers to no republican polity or moral code; and cheapening the value of the diplomas they hand out, at home and abroad.
Liberal Education in Authoritarian Places
Are Singapore home prices about to ease, finally ?
With HDB buyers now likely to cut their budgets, David Neubronner, national director for residential property at Jones Lang LaSalle Property Consultants, expects the hardest hit by the new measures will be sellers of the largest HDB flats.
“Those are the most likely to buy the mass-market private condominiums. The effect will run through the private market,” he said.
But will permanent residents denied the HDB market seek out private housing? It’s unlikely, Neubronner said, noting that private mass-market flats are likely too expensive.
(Read more: Is the heat off Asia’s hottest property market?)
That also means the latest measure is unlikely to affect the high-end segment, he added, as the price differential between HDB and luxury homes is often in the millions of dollars.
Price correction?
Even before Tuesday’s measures, analysts were expecting Singapore’s property prices to take a hit from the government’s previous efforts, which included limiting mortgage sizes to keep borrowers at a total debt servicing ratio of 60 percent of monthly income.
“The last measure that was introduced is a killer” for the private market, Kevin Scully, executive chairman at NRA Capital, said before the new HDB restrictions were announced.
He was referring to the last round of measures announced in June which included increasing down payments for borrowers with more than one mortgage, limiting loan-to-value ratios and imposing additional stamp duties on purchases.
(Read more: Will Fed tapering erode Singapore’s appeal?)
Scully expects property investors will start looking overseas or seek more “bite-sized” investments rather than enter Singapore’s physical market.
“With the rise in rates globally, their financing cost will go up. It’s going to be hard for them to find buyers. That will lead to a selloff in the secondary market,” he said. He expected a possible 20 percent correction.
Still, not everyone expects the latest measures to have much impact. “These measures are likely to impact marginal buyers with little effect on overall resale transactions,” George Koh, an analyst at OSK-DMG, said in a note.
He expects the restrictions on permanent residents to send demand into the private residential market, either via rentals or purchases. “This bodes well for the private market over the medium term,” he added.
Are Singapore home prices about to ease, finally ?
Singapore Strike: The Full Story
By Chun Han Wong
This story of a strike by Chinese bus drivers in Singapore offers a close-up look at a major issue facing the Southeast Asian city-state today: The growing number of migrant workers who underpin Singapore’s economy and the social tensions that their presence can generate.
What happened over two days in late November 2012 rattled the foundations of Singapore’s economic success – its business-friendly governance and industrial harmony – and prompted a robust response from the government.
The strike, a rarity in Singapore, resonated across Asia, where other countries are grappling with a growing dependence on foreign labor, too. And it provided a window into ordinary lives seldom-seen: the migrants who fan out from China in search of a fatter paycheck abroad.
How to balance the need for new workers from overseas with the preservation of established ways, presents a major dilemma that policymakers and citizens will wrestle with for years to come.
Chapter One: Contours of Conflict
SINGAPORE—In the cool hours before dawn one Monday in November, this metropolis was at its calmest, its sleek skyscrapers and tree-lined thoroughfares drained of their daytime bustle.
Most of Singapore’s 5.3 million residents were still asleep. But there were signs of life at a cluster of austere housing blocks in the city-state’s northern suburbs, in a district called Woodlands. It was 3 a.m.
In cramped dormitories, Chinese bus drivers donned maroon shirts and black pants – the uniforms of employees of SMRT Corp., a state-owned public-transport operator.
Then the drivers gathered in clusters near the dormitory gates. Shuttle buses waited to ferry them to bus terminals dotting the island, part of the dreary pre-dawn drill that ensures Singapore’s commuters arrive punctually at work every day.
As the buses idled, the drivers chatted in their native Mandarin. But that morning, the talk was different from their usual early-morning banter.
AFP/Getty Images
He Junling said he came across an online advertisement that was part of the SMRT hiring drive in early 2011. He is pictured here on Feb. 25.
He Junling, a 32-year-old mainland Chinese driver, and others walked through the group, spreading the message that the drivers should refuse to work that day and the next, according to Mr. He and others.
Slimly built with short cropped black hair, Mr. He has a calm, unassuming demeanor. But after one-and-a-half years at SMRT, his sense of grievance had reached boiling point.
The day before, in an essay addressed to his Chinese co-workers published on an online forum, he had laid out his case for why the drivers should not go to work. Compared with drivers from Singapore and neighboring Malaysia, drivers from the Chinese mainland felt they were being discriminated against by the transport company.
“We’re all human, yet SMRT management treats us so differently,” Mr. He wrote, using an alias that was known to his Chinese colleagues. “Clearly, they think there’s so many mainland Chinese available that they could hire hundreds at a go and fire anyone who steps out of line.”
That morning, as he worked the crowd, Mr. He reinforced his message with an appeal to the drivers’ patriotism and sense of injustice, tapping what the drivers say is a reservoir of frustration accumulated over several years over issues such as pay and living conditions.
A total of 171 Chinese drivers – the majority of them from the Woodlands-district dormitory – complied with his plan. It called for drivers to take medical leave en masse to miss work, according to SMRT public statements and prosecutors’ documents later filed in court in a related case. The shuttle buses departed empty.
Soon company supervisors showed up to try to persuade the men to work. They refused to budge and demanded to see the chief executive, according to the drivers.
Officials at SMRT, which serves 25% of Singapore’s bus ridership, declined to comment on the essay written by Mr. He. They would later acknowledge certain shortcomings and take steps to address them. But they say the company didn’t discriminate against its mainland Chinese drivers and called the workers’ actions inappropriate.
The Chinese drivers’ act of defiance would have been insignificant almost anywhere else. But in Singapore, a labor protest is a high-stakes game.
For this tightly controlled city-state, famous for its ban even on the sale of chewing gum, the drivers’ actions threatened one of its most cherished assets: A long record of maintaining unflinching public order and efficiency.
Over the past 50 years, that reputation has been a magnet for companies and investors across the globe, turning Singapore into one of the world’s richest places – a manicured island of skyscrapers, eight-lane highways, luxury cars and fancy restaurants.
The bus drivers, too, had plenty on the line. Each had spent a small fortune and traveled thousands of miles for a chance to make a better living. Many were the sole breadwinners in their families. In Singapore, they became unlikely activists, but not ineffective ones.
The dramatic events they set in motion would cause upheaval at one of Singapore’s most prominent companies, leading it to review and revise its practices, and prompt intense public scrutiny of the country’s way of dealing with employment disputes.
The strike would also spur some changes that may make life better for the migrants who come in the future. Yet, for some of the drivers who refused to board the buses that November morning, those changes would come at a high price.
Singapore hadn’t seen anything like it in years.
***
The grievances felt by Mr. He and other Chinese bus drivers in Singapore are part of a broader drama unfolding in Southeast Asia’s financial capital.
Like many other rich nations, Singapore has come to count on imported labor from China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere to fuel its economic growth. Many of those imported workers do jobs that increasingly-affluent Singaporeans aren’t tempted by: Bus drivers, construction workers, hospitality staff, among others.
Foreign workers numbered 1.27 million as of December 2012, about one third of the labor force, up from 652,700, or about 28% of the total workforce, in 2002. This immigration surge boosted Singapore’s population by nearly 32% since 2000 and helped its economy grow at an average annual rate of about 6% in the past decade, but also contributed to rising living costs and stagnating low-end wages.
Singapore’s Gini coefficient—a measure of income inequality in which zero indicates that all income is shared equally and one represents complete concentration of income—rose to 0.478 last year from 0.442 in 2000, making it the second-most unequal economy in the developed world, behind Hong Kong.
“We face difficult choices: We need foreign workers to serve our economy and Singaporeans’ needs, and immigrants to make up for our shortfall of babies,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a televised speech on Aug. 8, the eve of Singapore’s National Day. “But we also worry about crowding and congestion, and maintaining our Singaporean identity.”
Foreign workers join a working environment where public dissent is muted and labor protest is virtually unheard of. Since it came to power in 1959, the People’s Action Party has enforced strict controls on public assembly, curbed union powers and rewritten labor laws to favor employers. Unions at the time were decimated; those that survived were mostly subsumed under the National Trades Union Congress, a confederation that is often led by a cabinet minister.
Under Singapore law, a union can only strike after obtaining consent from a majority of members through a secret ballot. Foreign workers on fixed-term contracts aren’t permitted to become full union members.
A strike can be deemed illegal, according to the law, if its participants pursue causes beyond a specific trade dispute, and if the action “is designed or calculated to coerce the Government either directly or by inflicting hardship on the community.”
Workers performing “essential services”– including health care, firefighting and public transport – must give 14 days’ notice before going on strike. Employees of public utilities including water and electricity services have no right to strike at all.
The result is what the PAP government calls “constructive and dynamic” industrial relations managed under a “tripartism” model linking workers, employers and the state, according to the website of Singapore’s Manpower Ministry, which regulates labor issues and workplace conditions.
Singapore’s last legal strike occurred in 1986 when workers at U.S. oilfield-equipment company Hydril picketed their factory for two days to protest the dismissal of several union leaders. Government officials had approved the strike in advance.
Authorities have since shown little patience for industrial action. In 2002 and 2003, when disputes between Singapore Airlines and its pilots’ union threatened to boil over, top government leaders—including Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister—weighed in with threats of punitive action, so as to head off full-fledged industrial action.
“We are telling them, both management and unions, ‘you play this game, there are going to be broken heads,’” Mr. Lee, then Senior Minister in Singapore’s cabinet, said in a December 2003 speech during one of the disputes.
“If we sit back and do nothing and allow this to escalate and test the wills, then it is going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in one, two, three months of nastiness,” Mr. Lee said then. “We are not going to have that.”
***
Reuters
A police van departed the dorms in Woodlands district on Nov. 26, 2012.
Even though Singapore is tiny compared to China – a population of just over five million versus 1.3 billion – the island state is enticing to thousands of Chinese workers. It is safe and orderly. Wages for basic jobs are higher. And it comes with a degree of familiarity: The majority of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese, whose ancestors started arriving in large numbers in the 1830s.
SMRT has been hiring bus drivers from China since late 2007 to help staff its fleet of more than 1,050 buses. Foreigners accounted for about 44% of SMRT’s 2,000 bus drivers as of the end of last year. Half of those – about 450 – were from China, according to SMRT. The other half were from Malaysia. Typically, the company uses recruitment agencies to find and transport workers from China to Singapore.
Mr. He, the driver who wrote the essay calling for drivers not to work, was recruited this way. He said he came across an online advertisement that was part of the SMRT hiring drive in early 2011. He was living in his backwater hometown of Qinyang, a city of 400,000 in China’s central Henan province.
He said he paid 25,000 yuan (US$4,080) to recruitment agents in China and passed a battery of driving tests before SMRT hired him. The job meant separation from his family for at least two years. But he figured the promised payoff would make up for it.
According to Mr. He, recruitment agents promised prospective drivers monthly wages of about 2,000 Singapore dollars (US$1,560) after overtime, or up to 10,000 yuan. That was more than double his salary as a truck and bus driver in China.
The terms of employment would become a central factor in the drivers’ dispute. Mr. He and others said that their recruiters had made inflated promises about their wages and working conditions in Singapore.
SMRT declined to comment specifically on Mr. He’s account, but told The Wall Street Journal it has reported the alleged misrepresentation by China-based agents to Singaporean and Chinese authorities for further investigation. Efforts to determine the identity of the agents and contact them were unsuccessful.
“I wanted to provide more for my family, especially for my child,” now five years old, Mr. He said in a telephone interview. “It was also a chance for me to gain fresh experiences, seeing and learning new things.”
But Singapore also would hold some unpleasant surprises.
***
Chapter Two: Simmering Feud
For the hundreds of Chinese bus drivers who migrated to Singapore in recent years to take up jobs at local transport companies, adjusting to the new surroundings was often harder than they expected. Many soon felt they were being viewed with the resentment that has been growing against the influx of foreigners in recent years.
Many Singaporeans say foreigners take jobs, push up property prices and add new strains to the infrastructure, especially its crowded subways. There is also a deep cultural divide between Chinese migrants and the local Chinese community, which comprised 74% of the resident population as of 2012.
Some Singaporean Chinese, themselves at least third- or fourth-generation immigrants from China, label recently arrived mainlanders as country bumpkins for their perceived social idiosyncrasies and weak grasp of English, Singapore’s lingua franca.
“We often felt discriminated against,” He Junling, one of the Chinese bus drivers, recalled in an interview. “Many of us had unpleasant encounters with ethnic Chinese Singaporeans, who looked down upon us mainlanders.”
To be sure, the problem isn’t unique to Singapore. As thousands of Chinese nationals stream overseas each year to find work, many have met with hostile reception from wary hosts.
Some 871,000 Chinese nationals were working abroad as of June, according to China’s Commerce Ministry. Many go to Southeast Asia, particularly places like Vietnam and Myanmar, where anti-mainlander sentiment has swelled in recent years into fiery public rhetoric and even mass protests.
In Singapore, where public assembly is tightly regulated, many citizens express their anger online, applying epithets like “PRC scum” and “foreign trash” to mainland migrants and asking them to return to China.
But their increasingly strident and xenophobic tones have worried the government, political analysts say. The government in the last three years has tried to assuage Singaporeans by handing them more social benefits compared to noncitizens, and slowing inflows of migrant labor. Prime Minister Lee last year urged citizens to be more tolerant of foreigners.
In any case, few of the Chinese bus drivers in Singapore interacted with locals outside of work, preferring to socialize within their small, close-knit cliques.
After working 10- to 12-hour shifts, six days a week for SMRT Corp., a state-owned Singapore transport company, they spent most of their free time relaxing in dormitories tucked away in Singapore’s industrial districts.
Facilities in the dormitories were basic, shared between hundreds, even thousands, of migrant workers of various nationalities and industries.
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Rooms usually housed eight people. Workers slept on double-decked bunks laid with thin mattresses and straw mats, drivers recalled.
Some invested in cheap television sets and laptops for entertainment. Many busied themselves calling family and chatting with co-workers over beer and cigarettes.
Occasionally, they treated themselves to a day out at a local park or mall. With most of their pay spent on remittances, debt and daily necessities, they could afford little else.
Drivers said they frequently complained to supervisors about what they described as the cramped and unhygienic conditions. As roommates often plied different shifts, they disrupted others’ sleep cycles, leaving them perpetually lethargic. Illness spread quickly in the crowded spaces, drivers say.
In that environment, drivers say, resentment simmered over their pay and other terms of the job.
***
Before July 2012, SMRT paid mainland Chinese drivers – all hired on two-year deals – basic monthly wages of S$1,000 (US$780), compared to about S$1,200 a month (US$940) of basic pay for Singaporean and Malaysian drivers, who were permanent staff, according to SMRT statements.
Total compensation was more complicated, with Chinese drivers also receiving accommodation and utility-bill subsidies worth about S$275 a month, though they also received lower bonuses than the Singaporean and Malaysian workers, according to the SMRT statements.
Mr. He and several other mainland Chinese drivers say recruitment agencies hired by SMRT never made it clear to them that they would be paid lower base salaries than other drivers. SMRT said it has reported the alleged misrepresentation by agents to the relevant authorities. Efforts to identify and contact agents were unsuccessful.
To the Chinese drivers, the different salary programs seemed unfair. They say they understood why Singaporeans – as citizens working in their own country – received better terms, but questioned why SMRT seemed to favor Malaysians over Chinese nationals.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
There are deep social and economic ties between Singapore and Malaysia, which facilitate cross-border employment between the two former British colonies. Singapore was part of Malaysia from 1963 to 1965, and in the years since, many Singaporean employers have taken to hiring Malaysians, who typically speak English and assimilate easily given the cultural similarities.
About 400,000 Malaysians work in Singapore and many take up permanent residency in the city, a status that carries perks including participation in a state-backed pension program. SMRT has not commented on its hiring preferences but told The Wall Street Journal in an emailed response to questions that its remuneration packages—including benefits—for mainland Chinese and Malaysian drivers are “equitable.”
All this meant little to the Chinese drivers, who felt SMRT should treat all foreign staff equally.
The drivers, however, said they were reluctant to complain too much and risk their livelihoods. Many said they had taken hefty loans to pay fees to recruitment agents to secure their jobs.
They say they also were afraid of retaliation based on the experience of Hu Xiuwen, one of the first Chinese drivers to make the trip. The story of what he said he encountered circulated widely among the drivers who followed.
Mr. Hu, a Qingdao native, joined SMRT in January 2008, he said in a telephone interview. He said SMRT took possession of his passport once he landed, and placed him in an overcrowded state-built apartment with six other drivers.
Mr. Hu said he did well at work, winning trust from supervisors, who would assign him additional shifts – an important income supplement. He said he was even picked to be a poster boy for SMRT’s recruitment drives in China.
The company eventually moved him and a co-worker to another apartment, he said.
But that apartment was also overcrowded, he said: A three-room affair that they shared with eight other people – two other foreign workers, the landlord and his family, and a housekeeper.
Hu Xiuwen
Worse still, Mr. Hu said, his room was infested with bedbugs, making it hard to sleep.
Mr. Hu said he sought help from a human-resources supervisor, but was rebuffed. According to Mr. Hu, the supervisor became agitated at the mere mention of the complaint and accused Mr. Hu of acting rudely.
The landlord and supervisor couldn’t be reached for comment.
Days later, Mr. Hu was summoned to SMRT headquarters and dismissed without any explanation, he said. The same day, he said, a repatriation company put him on a plane back to China.
SMRT hired Mr. Hu in January 2008 but dismissed him in September that year for unspecified “disciplinary reasons,” the company said in response to queries from The Wall Street Journal. It declined to comment on his allegations.
***
The fates of others who complained seemed to offer confirmation that dissent would not be tolerated, drivers said.
In 2010, SMRT’s early cohorts of mainland Chinese drivers were completing their two-year contracts. Some left the company then. Others penned a petition, in Chinese, and collected about 185 signatures.
In the document, they accused SMRT of providing them with poor lodging conditions that weren’t conducive for sufficient rest and left them lethargic, according to a copy of the petition reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The drivers also in the petition demanded the company to return their passports, taken when the drivers arrived in Singapore, and provide them with copies of the original contracts they had signed in China.
And the drivers complained in the petition that SMRT had refused to pay out annual bonuses. In interviews, several drivers said they were owed bonuses worth one month’s salary – about S$1,000 (US$780) for each driver – that should have been paid annually.
SMRT, however, told the drivers it would disburse all bonuses at the end of their two-year contracts, the drivers recalled. SMRT declined to offer specific comment on the petition.
About 10 drivers hand-delivered the petition to the Ministry of Manpower – housed in a somber white-tiled building near the city’s Chinatown district – to explain their complaints to officials, according to two drivers familiar with the petition. SMRT executives arrived within half an hour, seeking to intervene and defuse the situation, drivers later recalled.
The Manpower Ministry later said in public statements that it had investigated and resolved the complaints that fell within its jurisdiction, and discussed the remainder with senior SMRT management. Company officials agreed to return the drivers’ passports and improve their bonus packages, drivers said.
Still, their other demands – including on lodging conditions – weren’t satisfactorily resolved, according to some drivers.
And, they said, most of the 10 drivers who delivered the petition were dismissed. Drivers interviewed did not know the exact number of those asked to leave, or precisely why SMRT dismissed them. SMRT declined to comment.
***
Chapter Three: Confrontation
SMRT Corp., one of Singapore’s most prominent companies, has for more than two decades been a standard bearer for the city’s public-transport system. But in November 2012, when its Chinese bus drivers refused to go to work one morning, it was seeking to restore its flagging reputation among locals.
Set up in 1987 to launch the city-state’s subway, SMRT won global repute for seamless efficiency and fuss-free urban travel.
The company became a private corporation in 2000, and Singapore’s state investment company Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. sold more than a third of its 100% stake that year. Temasek now owns about 54% of SMRT, according to Temasek and SMRT.
In the following years, SMRT expanded its interests into buses, taxis, convenience stores – even mini-malls in stations – as it competed with ComfortDelGro Corp., the other major public-transport player in Singapore.
But in December 2011, SMRT’s standing took a major hit when SMRT-run subway lines suffered two major breakdowns that left over 210,000 commuters temporarily stranded.
The disruptions were the worst in the network’s history, prompting public outrage, criticism of the company’s wide-ranging interests, and a rare government inquiry – a reflection of how seriously Singapore takes its record of orderliness and efficiency.
Less than a month later, the company’s chief executive resigned, saying she wanted to pursue personal interests. In July 2012, the inquiry into the service disruptions said it found management and operational shortcomings at SMRT and recommended broad remedies, but didn’t assign culpability to any individual.
“There is a need to position SMRT as principally an engineering and operations company,” it said.
SMRT, then led by an interim CEO, accepted the inquiry’s findings and pledged to implement its recommendations.
Desmond Kuek, a top bureaucrat at Singapore’s environment ministry and the former armed forces chief, took over as the new chief executive in October 2012.
“What is certain is that we are first and foremost a public-transport operator,” Mr. Kuek said on his first day in the job. “This is the core business that we are responsible for and must excel in.”
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
SMRT Corp. Chief Executive Desmond Kuek, pictured here in 2009 when he was chief of Singapore’s armed forces.
***
At the same time, however, tensions were mounting with SMRT’s Chinese drivers.
In May 2012, the company announced that it would switch its bus drivers to a six-day work week from five days. As part of changes that would take effect from July that year, the company raised basic monthly salaries by between S$75 and S$250 (US$59 to US$156), following a deal hashed out with union leaders. Mainland Chinese drivers received the smallest pay raise, S$75, bringing their base pay to S$1,075. Malaysian drivers’ pay rose S$150 to S$1,350.
Singaporean and Malaysian drivers turned to the National Transport Workers’ Union to push SMRT for more favorable terms – and got them. In October, SMRT upped the monthly pay raises it gave in July to permanent bus-driving staff, boosting their wages by between S$175 and S$400 a month compared to pre-July levels, according to SMRT statements and local media reports. The company also gave them an option to return to a five-day work week, which many drivers had preferred.
Mainland Chinese drivers, however, didn’t have the luxury of collective bargaining since they were contract workers who weren’t permitted to be full union members. The improved salary terms announced in October didn’t apply to them, fueling what drivers say was a sense of grievance that they were being discriminated against.
SMRT said in later public comments that it was within its legal rights to offer different base salaries and pay raises. A collective-bargaining agreement between SMRT and the NTWU that established basic employment terms only applied to “locally engaged employees in the company’s service” and not to “temporary employees and contract employees,” according to the agreement.
The company also said in response to queries from The Wall Street Journal that overall remuneration for its mainland Chinese and Malaysian workers is “equitable,” after factoring in subsidies for transport, lodging and utilities.
But what SMRT saw as lawful differences, Liu Xiangying felt was discrimination.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Liu Xiangying
The native of Liaoning province in northern China came to work for SMRT after seeing a newspaper advertisement in 2007, he said in a telephone interview. Having spent years driving buses in Inner Mongolia, he said Singapore’s allure had proved compelling.
“Singapore was a place I looked up to. It’s an organized and orderly country with strong rule of law,” the 33-year-old father of one said in the interview. “I had hopes of bringing my wife and daughter over to settle down.”
He said he arrived in Singapore only to find that his contract didn’t match what was promised him by the recruiters in China – a common complaint among Chinese drivers. Mr. Liu said he complained to SMRT but was met with noncommittal replies.
SMRT later said in response to queries from The Wall Street Journal that such complaints were passed on to relevant authorities for investigation.
***
By November 2012, Mr. Liu said his frustrations had festered for nearly four years. After getting his pay slip on Nov. 23, Mr. Liu said he met with two friends and co-workers who also were feeling disgruntled during their time in Singapore: Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Gao Yueqiang
Mr. Gao, who was 32 years old at the time, said he was the sole breadwinner for his wife and son in Liaoning province, according to court documents. Mr. Wang, a 39-year-old from Jilin province, had been away from his teenage daughter for about five years, since joining SMRT in December 2007, according to court documents.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Wang Xianjie
The trio knew each other from regular morning jogs. But when they met at that time to discuss their jobs, the mood was grim.
Grievances against SMRT dominated their conversation, according to interviews with Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang.
The three men met again on Nov. 24 at the Sembawang God of Wealth temple, according to court documents that were filed later in connection with the bus drivers’ strike.
The Taoist temple – a four-floor building that is filled with golden idols and has a statue of the Chinese god of wealth perched on its red-tiled roof – is a popular place of worship for ethnic Chinese devotees. There, the three men discussed ideas for how they could press SMRT to address their frustrations, according to interviews with Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang.
Their ideas included penning a letter to the chief executive, and filing petitions to the Manpower Ministry, the Land Transport Authority and the Chinese embassy, the trio said.
Another idea that came up at the meeting was taking medical leave en masse, according to prosecutors and court pleas submitted later by Messrs. Liu and Gao.
Later that day, Mr. Wang posted a message for SMRT drivers from China on an Internet messaging platform known as QQ, which was operated by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. He called on his colleagues to take medical leave on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 26 and 27.
Chun Han Wong/The Wall Street Journal
The Sembawang God of Wealth Temple, located in Singapore’s northern Sembawang district.
Mr. Gao, meanwhile, said he took the idea to his roommate, He Junling, a fellow driver from central Henan province. Spurred by his own frustrations with SMRT, Mr. He composed a lengthy essay addressed to his colleagues, he said in an interview.
On Sunday, Nov. 25, Mr. He posted the Chinese piece on an Internet bulletin board run by Chinese Internet firm Baidu, he said. Its title: “The humiliation suffered by Singapore drivers (SMRT): Where’s the dignity of mainland Chinese bus captains,” according to copies seen by The Wall Street Journal.
“Please relay the message to as many as possible,” the essay stated. Most drivers socialized within cliques of about 20 to 30 people.
Mr. He also published his essay on the QQ chat group formed by Chinese bus drivers at SMRT, but only about 130 of them were active in the QQ group at the time it was posted.
At the Woodlands-district dormitory, where many of the Chinese drivers lived, Mr. He, along with Mr. Gao, visited between 30 to 40 coworkers in nearby bunks to spread the word: The job action was on for the next day.
Mr. He detailed online a plan of action for the walkout, according to court documents and archived QQ messages. His message struck a chord.
“Wake up early, gather in a large group at the dormitory gate, approach those who are boarding the shuttle buses and explain to them” the plan to strike, he wrote in a fresh QQ message published at 7:20 p.m. that Sunday.
“Don’t waste money calling the scheduling department to take leave, just go straight to a clinic.”
“I have no right to force you to not work, but I have a duty to let you know” of this plan, he wrote in the QQ message viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We are doing this for the well-being and dignity of us Chinese people.”
“I support,” many wrote in reply. “It’s time to fight back,” another wrote.
***
In the strike’s early hours on the morning of Monday, Nov. 26, participants harried each other for live updates of the situation, posting unconfirmed reports.
Over the Internet and their mobile phones, some wondered which co-workers were participating, and how many. How would SMRT respond, others asked.
“What the heck, those in Ang Mo Kio have all gone to work,” a driver wrote on the QQ group, according to QQ chat transcripts provided by defense lawyers involved in a subsequent court case related to the strike. “Damned traitors,” another driver wrote. Ang Mo Kio, a district in central Singapore, was where one of SMRT’s bus depots was located.
“Haha! No one at Kranji [bus depot] went to work!” another worker reported on the same QQ group.
“Good on those in Woodlands. Don’t be like the bunch of cowering turtles in Ang Mo Kio,” a driver wrote in the message forum. “We have got to force a resolution out of this, and not give up halfway.”
***
SMRT executives arrived at the Woodlands dormitory mid-morning seeking answers to why the company’s Chinese drivers were refusing to work, according to the drivers and QQ chat logs.
Officials from the Ministry of Manpower soon followed, as did dozens of reporters, according to prosecutors, and drivers.
Company officials proposed ferrying the drivers to an SMRT facility in central Singapore with an auditorium large enough to hold all the protesters, drivers said. Many drivers agreed, they said. Still in their uniforms, they awaited the transport.
By going on a wildcat strike the drivers had already committed a technical offense, which carries penalties of a jail sentence of up to a year or a fine of up to S$2,000, or both. But several said they didn’t know that at the time.
“Don’t be afraid! The law won’t punish mass actions,” a driver wrote in the QQ group.
Soon after, officers from the Police Tactical Unit – a paramilitary riot-control force – arrived at the scene in their trademark bright-red vehicles, according to drivers and local media. The vehicles are known colloquially as “Ang Chia,” or “red car” in the Hokkien dialect from China’s southeastern Fujian province.
Many drivers said they were spooked by their arrival, so they dispersed and returned to their rooms, scrubbing plans for the offsite talks.
SMRT officials then proposed a 3 p.m. meeting in the dormitory courtyard, a space they thought would be big enough to hold everyone, according to Mr. He, the driver from Henan who penned an online essay encouraging the strike. But that plan was washed out by rain showers.
Just before 4 p.m., SMRT started ushering drivers into the dormitory’s security office, according to Mr. He.
About 40 to 50 workers squeezed inside. Others waited outside, Mr. He recalled.
Kang Huey Ling, then vice president of SMRT’s bus operations, led the meeting, flanked by her colleagues, Mr. He said. Manpower Ministry officials, policemen and recruitment agency staff also lined the walls, according to prosecutors and Mr. He.
The room was teeming but the mood was calm, Mr. He recalled.
“What you have done today is inappropriate,” Ms. Kang said in Mandarin, according to Mr. He’s and prosecutors’ accounts. “There are internal channels that you can use to voice concerns to us.”
“If those channels had worked, we wouldn’t have chosen to do what we have done,” replied a driver, according to Mr. He. “We felt that we had no other choice.”
A ministry official reminded the drivers that protesting was an inappropriate way of airing grievances, according to prosecutors and Mr. He.
The drivers took turns to speak, pressing for equal treatment with Malaysian drivers and better lodgings, Mr. He said.
Ms. Kang assured drivers that they would get a raise of S$25 a month, according to Mr. He and SMRT public statements after the meeting. She asked for a week to consider the other concerns, according to Mr. He and SMRT.
Drivers say the meeting was the first time they had heard of the S$25 raise, though SMRT later said in public statements that it had already decided to give the increase before the strike and had been planning to inform the drivers.
A driver asked the others present if they were agreeable to the offer, but got a lukewarm response, Mr. He recalled later.
Another driver, Bao Fengshan, warned that another strike could occur if SMRT didn’t meet the drivers’ demands within a week, according to court documents filed later in a case related to the strike.
“There’s only about 40 to 50 drivers here now, and there are more than a hundred others who aren’t here and don’t know what was discussed,” Mr. He asked, he recalled later. “What about them?”
“If they have any further concerns, they can communicate with us through internal company channels,” Ms. Kang replied, according to Mr. He.
With that, the SMRT executives seemed to think that they had a deal, Mr. He recalled. They closed the meeting at about 6 p.m. In response to queries from The Wall Street Journal, SMRT neither confirmed nor denied the drivers’ characterization of events before and during the meeting, but said that they were based on “claims made by the bus captains.” Efforts to reach Ms. Kang directly were unsuccessful.
Later that night, the company issued a statement saying executives had persuaded the drivers to return to work.
“We regret that they chose to express their unhappiness about their salaries in this manner, especially when our lines of communication with them are always open,” SMRT said.
The company apologized to the public for the inconvenience caused and added that the drivers “will be returning to work tomorrow.”
It spoke too soon.
***
Chapter Four: Counterpunch
Wang Yong, a Chinese bus driver working for Singaporean transport operator SMRT, said he faced a hostile reception when he returned to his dormitory the evening of Monday, Nov. 26, weary after a lengthy shift behind the wheel.
In an interview, the 40-year-old said he wondered: What have I done now?
Wang Yong
The strike put bus driver Wang Yong in a quandary
For him and some other mainland Chinese SMRT drivers living at a dormitory in the Serangoon district of Singapore, a bus strike called by their colleagues living in a Woodlands-district workers’ dormitory that day had seemed far removed.
News of the strike had reached Mr. Wang through Singaporean and Malaysian colleagues at work, he said, but he hadn’t given it much thought.
“Those who went to work today aren’t human! They aren’t fit to be Chinese nationals,” one of his co-workers bellowed, Mr. Wang recalled later in an interview.
Less than six months into the job, Mr. Wang said he wasn’t inclined to risk his livelihood by joining the action.
He said he arrived in June 2012 from Chengdu – capital of China’s southwestern Sichuan province – lured by the prospect of earning more to help provide for his wife and 13-year-old son. Mr. Wang, who also drove buses back home, said he was a long way from recouping the 26,300 yuan (US$4,300) he said he had paid to recruitment agents.
“Unlike those who had worked in Singapore for years, I hadn’t recovered my initial capital. I wasn’t keen on making trouble,” he said.
His co-workers who had stayed away from work that day tried to persuade him to join the cause, which entailed applying for medical leave en masse to skip work.
They reminded him about their grievances over accommodation and pay, he said.
It worked.
“In the end, we didn’t think the consequences would be too severe,” Mr. Wang said. “We felt, since so many people were in the protest together, the company would be forced to start serious dialogue with us.”
The next morning, he and four friends headed straight to a clinic, he said. Mr. Wang said he told the doctor he suffered from sore hips – a real issue but one that he said he had worked through in the past. The doctor prescribed some medication, and signed a chit for a day’s rest, he said.
His supervisor didn’t seem bothered when he called Mr. Wang, according to Mr. Wang. “Sure thing, don’t worry about it,” Mr. Wang recalled him saying. SMRT declined comment.
***
Associated Press
SMRT bus drivers head to work on Nov. 27.
On Tuesday, Nov. 27, the morning that followed the first day of the strike, SMRT’s shuttle buses left the Woodlands-district dormitory with over a dozen drivers, down from the usual 70 or 80, according to He Junling, a driver from China’s Henan province who had encouraged drivers not to go to work.
Some 112 mainland Chinese drivers from across Singapore, assigned to morning and afternoon shifts, didn’t show for work that day, according to statements later made by prosecutors. Some were holding out from Monday, but others, like Mr. Wang, were striking for the first time.
SMRT officials again scurried to the scene at the Woodlands dormitory, according to drivers and a Wall Street Journal reporter present at the scene.
This time, officials from the transport-workers’ union and the Chinese embassy joined them, hoping to talk the drivers into ending their strike, according to a public statement issued by the embassy. A police posse kept watch outside, as did a gaggle of reporters.
Many of the drivers remained indoors to avoid the media scrum. But a handful emerged, stopping by the adjoining food center for meals.
“We’re not asking to be treated in the same way as Singaporeans. We understand why the locals should be better-paid,” one of the drivers said to the dozen reporters who swarmed his table. “We only want to be treated the same way as the Malaysian drivers are.”
Reporters asked the driver, a man in his thirties who said he had a wife and an 11-year-old son back home in Jiangsu province, if he feared arrest for not working.
“I didn’t beat up or kill anyone. I didn’t do anything illegal,” he replied. “I’m merely exercising my right to rest.”
This time, however, SMRT didn’t attempt to negotiate a settlement, according to Mr. He, the driver from Henan province who had penned an essay online encouraging the strike.
“They seemed to have made up their minds. They wanted us to be handled by the law,” he said.
SMRT declined to comment on whether its officials held any formal meeting with the drivers who missed work on Tuesday.
***
Surveys by local media found few commuters had actually been affected by the walkout. Officials later said SMRT maintained more than 90% of normal services during the strike.
But the strike split opinion among Singaporeans.
Bloomberg
Singapore’s skyline
For some, it was an affront to the rule of law and public order so prized by Singaporean authorities. To others, it highlighted Singapore’s over-reliance on foreign labor and served as a reminder of the public’s lack of concern for migrant workers.
“The government should take these PRC [People’s Republic of China nationals] to task for striking. They have no respect for the local law and think this is China,” a reader wrote in comments on the Straits Times newspaper’s website. “This kind of incident will happen again if no action is taken against them.”
In a poll conducted by government feedback website Reach, about 78% of 313 respondents said they agreed that any mainland Chinese driver found to have committed offences by going on strike “should be punished to the full extent of the law.”
Others were more forgiving. Labor activists argued in media commentaries and online forums that SMRT and the government should shoulder some blame for allowing tensions to fester.
The strike raised questions on “whether [the workers] have a proper channel to seek redress when they feel discriminated at the workplace,” an unemployment counselor wrote in a letter to the Straits Times.
About 90% of foreign workers in Singapore aren’t union members. In recent years, some of them have resorted to protests against alleged exploitation by employers, including a sit-in by Bangladeshi construction workers in February 2012 over what they said were unpaid salaries.
Officials quickly intervened in many of these cases, including the February 2012 incident, and reprimanded employers found to have mistreated workers. But authorities downplayed these episodes as labor disputes, never describing them as strikes.
***
On Tuesday evening, Kang Huey Ling, then SMRT’s vice president of bus operations, paid a visit to the Police Cantonment Complex, home to the Singapore police’s Criminal Investigation Department, according to prosecutors’ later statements.
At about 6:48 p.m., she was received by an officer and filed a complaint against the striking drivers, alleging their protest was illegal, prosecutors’ statements said.
Later that evening, Singapore’s Manpower and Transport ministries summoned local news media to a briefing.
“These workers have disrupted public transport services and Singapore’s industrial harmony. The government views these disruptions very seriously,” Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said at the briefing.
He added that the ministry “understands the bus drivers’ grievances.” Still, he said, “There are right ways and wrong ways to handle these concerns… This illegal strike is not acceptable and would be dealt with in accordance to the law.”
For the first time, Singaporean authorities had described the unfolding episode as a “strike,” a label that SMRT and media had also avoided using until then. Using the term prepared the way for the government to enforce laws against work stoppages it deemed illegal.
***
Police moved in the next morning, hauling about 20 mainland Chinese drivers into the Police Cantonment Complex for questioning, according to drivers. Almost all other drivers returned to their jobs, save for six of them later deemed by SMRT to have had valid reasons for missing work.
Investigators quickly identified who they believed to be the leading figures behind the strike: He Junling, the writer of an essay encouraging drivers to miss work; and Liu Xiangying, Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie, the three men accused of helping to hatch the idea for the incident. They were arrested.
What happened next to Messrs. He and Liu remains contested.
According to the two men, police investigators punched them when they – in separate interrogations in different rooms – answered that they didn’t know each other. The two drivers said they only became acquainted after their arrests.
Mr. He said that his interrogator punched him once in the stomach, while Mr. Liu accused an officer of hitting him a few times on the torso. According to Mr. Liu, his interrogator told him: “Do you know I could dig a hole and have you buried in it, and no one would be able to find you?”
Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Manpower said in a joint April 20 statement that Messrs. He and Liu’s statements were “baseless.”
Internal police investigations into the claims didn’t uncover any wrongdoing, according to the Home Affairs ministry.
“We take allegations of police abuse very seriously, especially when they are formally lodged, and investigate them thoroughly,” Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Teo Chee Hean said in the statement. In this case, “the investigations have vindicated the officers in this case and protected their reputations.”
Messrs. He and Liu later declined to pursue the matter, a decision that Singapore authorities said meant the drivers were retracting their allegations.
The two men, in interviews with The Wall Street Journal, maintained their claims and said they had decided not to pursue the matter only because they didn’t want to prolong their stay in Singapore to the detriment of their families, as both men were sole breadwinners.
Mr. He, in a separate statement he issued after returning to China, said he thought it would be difficult to pursue the matter, given the lack of witnesses and video recordings of the interrogation.
In an April 26 statement, the Home Affairs and Manpower Ministries said that Mr. He’s statement was “reckless” and “unfounded.”
“Either he makes a police report and substantiates his allegation with evidence or the allegations must be regarded as unfounded and spurious,” the ministries said.
***
Chapter Five: The Gavel Falls
On Thursday, Nov. 29, two days after a strike by Chinese bus drivers captured public attention in Singapore, prosecutors charged four men – He Junling, Liu Xiangying, Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie – with engaging in a conspiracy to instigate others to participate in a strike.
Mr. He faced an additional count of incitement, related to an Internet essay he wrote to spur on his co-workers.
At least an additional 50 drivers were picked up on that day for questioning, according to drivers who were part of that investigation. Police released them within hours, according to the drivers. Police have not commented on the drivers’ specific accounts.
Police detained a fifth man a day later. Bao Fengshan, a 38-year-old who joined joined Singaporean transport operator SMRT Corp. in 2008, was charged with participating in the strike.
Prosecutors said in a court submission that he made “threatening comments” during a meeting with SMRT officials on the first day of the strike. Prosecutors said he suggested that a further strike might happen if the drivers’ demands weren’t met within a week.
He later pleaded guilty without engaging a lawyer, was sentenced to six weeks in jail, and then returned to China, according to court documents. He could not be located.
By then, the drama in Singapore had caught the attention of Beijing. In a statement, China’s Commerce Ministry said it hoped “all relevant parties can treat the requests of the Chinese drivers fairly, respond to their requests actively and take care of them reasonably to defend [their] legitimate rights.”
***
As public debate over the strike intensified, the Singapore government pressed SMRT to address its drivers’ grievances.
But it also stressed that the protesters could have sought help through official channels, noting that many of their recent objections—such as perceived discrimination—hadn’t been reported to the authorities prior to the strike.
In the days after the strike, SMRT executives started visiting the mainland Chinese drivers, promising to review their salary requests and address their concerns over lodging, according to SMRT statements at the time.
Contractors were brought in to repair defects and broken fittings in the dormitories, while pest-control firms arrived to kill bedbugs, according to SMRT statements. Alternative accommodations were arranged for drivers who asked to move out of their current quarters, the statements said.
SMRT Chief Executive Desmond Kuek, who was on holiday in the U.S. when the strike occurred, also met personally with drivers from China after the strike ended. He assured them of a S$25-per-month (US$19.50) wage increase, backdated to July, that would bring their monthly pay to S$1,100 (US$859), which SMRT said it had already planned to implement in December.
But he told the drivers that no pay raise beyond that would be made, according to a transcript of his comments provided by SMRT.
Mr. Kuek and other SMRT officials explained that the company was paying the Chinese drivers lower basic salaries than their Malaysian colleagues to make up for the costs of subsidizing accommodation for the mainland Chinese drivers, according to SMRT statements.
“It is unfortunate that this incident has happened,” Mr. Kuek said in a Nov. 30 statement.
“It shows that more needs to be done by management to proactively manage and engage” the drivers.
Even as SMRT mopped up the strike’s aftermath, the government was preparing a response of its own.
***
Wang Yong
The strike put bus driver Wang Yong in a quandary.
Wang Yong, a driver at the Serangoon-district workers’ complex, said he and other workers returned to their jobs on Wednesday, his backing of the strike cooled by the government’s tough rhetoric.
He spent several hours on Thursday speaking to police investigators, he recalled later, cooperating with their queries and arguing that he had received legitimate medical leave.
That, he hoped, would be the end of it.
In the wee hours of Saturday morning, after Mr. Wang pulled a late-night shift, his supervisor rang him up, he said in an interview.
“The police need you to go back for further investigation,” the supervisor said, Mr. Wang recalled. “They’ll pick you up in the morning.”
He said he roused before 8 a.m., had breakfast and waited.
An SMRT bus arrived soon after, he said. The vehicle meandered through the streets then took an unfamiliar route, making Mr. Wang nervous, he said.
The bus pulled up at Admiralty West Prison, a remote facility near Singapore’s northern coastline, according to Mr. Wang, as well as another driver.
Other vehicles also arrived, ferrying drivers from the Woodlands-district dormitory. Dozens of police and immigration officers awaited the 29 drivers who were brought in, the drivers said.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
An SMRT bus leaves the Admiralty West prison after taking mainland Chinese bus drivers to the prison in Singapore on Dec. 1, 2012.
An official stepped forward. “We’re repatriating all of you back to China,” Mr. Wang recalled him saying in Mandarin.
The drivers insisted they didn’t do anything wrong, according to some of the drivers present, including Mr. Wang.
The official was unmoved, they said.
Another driver came forward. “Tell me. What offense have I committed?” he asked, Mr. Wang recalled.
The official said the drivers had committed an offense by participating in the strike, and that repatriation was the penalty, according to Mr. Wang and another driver.
“The decision has been made,” the official said firmly, according to Mr. Wang. “There is no room for negotiation.”
Government officers proceeded to revoke the men’s work permits and driving licenses, and booked them on flights to their home provinces in China, according to drivers present and a government statement issued that day, Dec. 1.
SMRT officials terminated the drivers’ contracts and made arrangements to settle outstanding salaries, according to an SMRT statement and drivers.
“You are being issued a warning, but none of you will be charged,” a police officer told Mr. Wang, according to the driver.
The 29 drivers were made to change into prison garb and ushered into cells, where they were given dinner, according to drivers.
They had no access to lawyers and were barred from making phone calls, drivers said. But they were allowed to speak to visiting Chinese embassy officials.
“Some drivers were shouting continuously from their cells, hurling abuse,” Mr. Wang recalled. “But I realized it was pointless. The Singapore government had made up its mind, and we couldn’t do anything about it.”
Under Singapore labor regulations, authorities have the right to revoke foreigners’ work permits and deport them if they violate local laws and certain employment conditions.
All 29 drivers were dispatched for home late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, according to a government statement.
SMRT did not comment on the specifics of how the deportation was handled.
In a joint Dec. 1 statement, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Manpower said the 29 drivers had “disrupted our public transport which is an essential service, and posed a threat to public order.” They were “blatant and persistent in their unlawful acts,” the ministries said.
***
The men accused of being the strike’s ringleaders, meanwhile, faced trial in Singapore’s justice system.
On Dec. 6, He Junling, Liu Xiangying, Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie were brought back to court.
According to Mr. He and Mr. Liu, police investigators had tried to discourage them from engaging lawyers, saying such a move could result in heavier punishment than if they pleaded guilty immediately. The police didn’t respond to queries about this claim.
The drivers told the court they wanted to engage lawyers, and the judge set bail at S$10,000 each for Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang, and S$20,000 for Mr. He, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.
Activists and migrant-worker advocacy groups helped the four men post bail and provided them with meals and accommodation, according to drivers and activists involved.
Support also came from as far afield as Hong Kong, where local unionists staged a protest, calling on Singaporean authorities to drop charges against the drivers, according to a statement from the unionists and media reports in the Straits Times and other publications.
In February, the four men decided to take the case to trial, rejecting an offer from prosecutors to amend their charges from instigating the strike to mere participation in return for guilty pleas, according to state prosecutors, defense lawyers and Messrs. He and Liu.
Although both offenses were punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, participation is typically considered to be a lesser crime than instigating a strike.
But as the process wore on, the men changed their minds, according to Messrs. He and Liu, as well as lawyers representing Messrs. Gao and Wang.
“All of us also have families back home to feed,” said Mr. He in an interview, adding that the men didn’t want to make matters difficult for some colleagues who were still being asked to assist police investigations. “So we decided to speed up the process,” he said.
Mr. He told his lawyers that he would plead guilty in return for a seven-week jail term, while the others said they would accept six weeks, Mr. He, defense lawyers and prosecutors said.
Messrs. He, Liu, Gao and Wang all pleaded guilty to instigating a strike when they reappeared in court on Feb. 25, while Mr. He pleaded guilty to the additional charge of incitement.
Before sentencing, their lawyers asked the court to consider lighter sentences, according to court documents.
“It was never Jun Ling’s intention to startle or alarm the public, nor was it a calculated plan of his to unsettle labor relations in Singapore for personal gain,” Peter Low and Choo Zhengxi, counsels to Mr. He, wrote in their court submissions.
“His actions came from a place of deep desperation and despair at his living conditions, discriminatory pay, and a lack of an outlet to express his grievances.”
Mark Goh, the lawyer who represented Messrs. Liu and Gao, told the court that the drivers had chosen to avoid work by taking medical leave, as opposed to “an outright defiant refusal to go to work,” according to court submissions reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
This showed that the men “were still mindful and respectful of the parameters of their employment terms” and couldn’t have planned to cripple the public-transport network, as their plan was dependent upon the discretion of third-party doctors, Mr. Goh wrote in court submissions.
Prosecutors, however, in their court submissions pressed the judge to impose more than “a mere fine or a nominal imprisonment term.”
Ministry of Manpower
Above, Singapore’s historical strike data from 1946 to 2009. In this chart, man-days lost refer to the total number of working days lost annually due to industrial action. It is calculated by multiplying the duration of industrial actions (in days) with the number of workers that were affected.
“The actions of the four accused persons played an undoubted part in precipitating a situation that had an adverse impact on our public transport services,” Francis Ng and Peggy Pao-Keerthi, both deputy public prosecutors, said in their submission.
“It is thus vital that a deterrent signal be sent to dissuade others from committing similar offenses to obtain concessions from their employers, lest such conduct ultimately prove inimical to the well-being of the public,” they said.
Judge See Kee Oon sentenced Mr. He to seven weeks in jail. Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang each received a six-week sentence.
Neither SMRT nor the government commented on the sentencing.
***
After serving their sentences, all four drivers returned to China. In total, 34 drivers were deported for their roles in the strike.
In the months since, some of them have secured new work while others were still searching when contacted by The Wall Street Journal.
Several of the men said they were trying to put the past behind them, but the sting from their experiences lingered.
“I do feel that I was treated unfairly,” said Wang Yong, the driver who said he was deported even though he only stayed away from work for one day. But “I can understand why the Singapore government chose to do what it did, acting quickly to discourage more labor unrest.”
He has since found work as a machinist at a Chinese construction company in Angola.
“What has happened has happened, it’s time to move on,” He Junling, the writer of an online essay encouraging the strike, said in an interview from his home in Henan province, where he found a new job in what he described as a “managerial-type role” at a factory.
But Singapore, he said, could do more for its foreign labor, a group that he felt was underappreciated by its hosts.
“Migrant workers contribute so much to Singapore’s success, doing dirty and menial jobs that Singaporeans don’t want to do,” Mr. He said. “They deserve respect.”
Still, for drivers that remained in Singapore – and for new drivers who arrived since – the work environment has improved a bit as a result of what happened, according to SMRT statements and drivers who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. In some ways, the protest worked.
Drivers hired from China on two-year contracts now receive the same performance incentives as drivers of other nationalities, according to an SMRT statement. They also get a 13th-month bonus and a year-end variable bonus. SMRT said it took steps to improve dormitory conditions, including moving some drivers to better facilities and reorganizing work schedules to allow adequate rest.
The company also revamped its human-resources department, disciplined under-performing supervisors and improved communication channels with its workers, it said.
The National Transport Workers’ Union has been actively encouraging foreign workers to become members, an official at the union’s parent entity—the National Trades Union Congress—said in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal.
The NTWU now counts about 86% of SMRT’s mainland Chinese bus drivers – or about 380 people – as associate members, though contract workers like those from China remain excluded from full membership under the terms of the union’s collective agreement with SMRT.
Associate members can seek union help to engage management on workplace grievances, although they remain excluded from collective-bargaining processes that determine pay and other working conditions.
On the government’s part, the Manpower Ministry has pledged to step up protections for vulnerable workers and encourage companies to improve mechanisms for handling employees’ grievances, Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin told Parliament in February.
“No matter how we painstakingly manage industrial relations, problems will emerge and disputes will occur,” Prime Minister Lee said in his May Day speech, making his first public comments on the SMRT strike.
“The government’s position is clear: We cannot tolerate any party taking illegal action, or deliberately damaging our harmonious industrial relations,” Mr. Lee said. “This is the Singapore way – we must preserve this fine spirit.”
–THE END–
Singapore Strike: The Full Story
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