Sunday, May 8, 2011

The price for being ARROGANT

Emperor Yeo:
"Remember your place in society before you engage in political debate... Debate cannot generate into a free-for-all where no distinction is made between the senior and junior party... You must make distinctions - What is high, what is low, what is above, what is below, and then within this, we can have a debate, we can have a discussion... people should not take on those in authority as 'equals'
[video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4tUBcyC8co]


Cynthia Phua:
'Who are you? What are you doing? Why aren't you working?'... The mother said she wanted to explain her son's condition (low IQ, attends special school, has blood disorder), but wasn't given a chance. 'I felt like we were being scolded,' she said. The meeting ended after two or three minutes


Lim Hwee Hua:
'I made it very clear to (the mother) that this is unacceptable behaviour. It is not justifiable in any circumstance. There's no excuse to be violent,' Mrs Lim told The New Paper.
She also explained that she was not in a position to excuse or forgive the boy (who has low IQ. attends a special school and suffers from thalassemia, a blood disorder that renders him weak and sickly, and who has already written an apology letter:
'Please fodgive me for what I dad I am sinelely truely I'm sorry (sic),' the teenager had written in big, neat handwriting.)

What arrogance!

Well, I guess the three of them now have 5 years to repent! Repent for treating citizens like peasants and pests!


But, it's more than just arrogance:
Geroge Yeo was the minister responsible for reviewing our health and legal sector in the early 1990s and his conclusion then - published in some white paper - was that we have way too many doctors and lawyers! He debated the medical and legal fraternity and insisted that he was right, specifically that
(paraphrased) "the more doctors we have, the more expensive medical cost is going to be, because the health sector is unique and does not follow the usual market commonsense that greater supply = cheaper product."

But he was unable to explain his anti-commonsense "health sector is unique" argument, thereby frustrating the medical fraternity, especially the doctors in public hospitals and polyclinics, who were clearly overworked and stressed out.

He was the one who cut medical school admission from 200+ to 150 per year, and heavily restricted foreign medical school qualification to less than 10 universities.

Fast-forward to 10 years later, we have so few doctors that we were forced to double medical school admission to 300 - heavily straining resources at NUS medical faculty and the teaching hospitals - and to now accept more than 100 foreign medical schools. Most of these doctors - from India, Myanmar and China - cannot communicate with our senior citizens in dialect / Malay / Tamil and yes, English! Many need to rely on busy nurses doubling up as untrained translators, to understand the symptoms of patients!

A pair of doctors from Myanmar and India was responsible for causing a death at our public hospital when they failed to do a chest tube procedure properly. I am sure there are many other cases which were not reported by our "nation-building" press.

Meanwhile it was reported in the newspapers in 2010 that most Singaporeans who went overseas for their medical degree refused to return to Singapore! That's a severe brain drain (for the past 20 years and continuing) coupled with insufficient doctors in Singapore (for the past 20 years and continuing)!

As for lawyers, the AG office has been lamenting for years that we do not have enough lawyers, and a new law school had to be opened at SMU to, hopefully, redress the situation in a few years time. Meanwhile, the new medical school at NTU, is still in the planning stage!

So, 20 years of insufficient doctors and lawyers. All because of George Yeo and please be reminded, the situation is still not remedied, and will NOT be remedied - unless you think importing foreign doctors who cannot speak local languages and who are not familiar with diseases that are prevalent locally and who are less well-trained than local doctors (NUS has just been ranked the number 1 medical school in Asia) - can be called a remedy?

So, George Yeo, I say: Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish!


And btw, I want to see if George Yeo and Lim Hwee Hua can earn multi-million dollars in their new private sector jobs. Let's see for ourselves if Bargain Hen was correct to say that we got our ministers at a bargain because they can earn much more in the private sector.

Please don't let me catch the two of you hiding behind some pathetic excuses of wanting to retire to spend more time with families. For then, we Singaporeans will all know the truth: PAP ministers are not worth their million-dollar salaries. PAP's justification for their $X,000,000 salary is nothing more than a greedy attempt to LeeGALISE CORRUPTION.

9 comments:

Mr. Sin said...

lol good one, LeeGalise

fauzy fierce said...

well, George Yeo and Lim Hwee Hua will still work for the government and earn big bucks. do u still remember TT durai, he did all that and went to prison of some sort and still working for the singapore government altho in abu dhabi.

Kyong said...

our medical professionals would not have suffer a severe shortage if not for our open door policy...

young-pap said...

kyong,
Not true; Even before the open door policy, Singapore already has much less medical professionals per capita compared to other developed countries. The open door policy simply aggravated the situation. That is to say, George Yeo made a mistake on the number of doctors required by the country even BEFORE Singapore is flooded by foreigners.

Unknown said...

And whose idea was it to insist that Singaporeans stop at two, so much so that we have to import the so called "foreign talents".

Few Views said...

The cabinet salaries are going to cost taxpayers some S$9.6 billion. And the irony is that both the cabinet members' salaries and their life-time pensions are not taxable.

Few Views said...

ERajoo,

The salaries for the cabinet will cost taxpayers some S$9.6 billion. The irony is that both the ministers' salaries and their lifetime pensions are not taxable.

edward said...

好,顶!

How can a Minister (for that matters - all the Ministers, MP, Civil Service Heads, Departmental Heads) who came from Army (or just some protected professions or fresh TOP scholars/graduates) without actual on-the-ground life experience to think and plan correctly for a nation? I used to said: Education levels meant nothing in helping to build the nation (this include any Oppositons members)... unfortunately this is what happened and continued to happen to Singapore... so good luck to our nation! The whole ground work was laid wrongly and it'll take decades to change if any change can be made now! 晕...

Snowball said...

Hi Young-pap,
Thanks for the many eye openers especially those quotes and their infamous sayings.
SDP has been compiling those with pics and dates reference. Could you do the same to capture in one column, pl? Thanks :))