Murder as we know, is a serious matter. Making a new life should also be taken no less seriously. Acting Minister for MCYS Mr Chan Choon Seng was reported in today's paper as saying that Singapore will have to make some difficult social choices if it wanted to solve its twin problems of a low fertility rate and low wages.
He suggests that to 'cure' our low TFR (total fertility rate), we may have to accept women having babies outside of wedlock. That's not really a problem I think. If we were to make it legal for middle aged and older men to have sex with teenage girls, we should be well on our way to increasing our TFR. Unfortunately, instead, the men are being humiliated in public and jailed.
Having children is a responsibility that comes with a lifetime's worth of commitment. Mr Chan in following the governments script is simply looking at the numbers, specifically at the number of working adults supporting the elderly which apparently will fall from 7.5 now to 2.5 in 2030. He however is making a very big assumption and that is: WORKING Adult. What guarantee does he have that if we were to make babies with gay abandon now that in 2030, all of them will have jobs to support the elderly?
Today, in some Eurozone countries, the youth unemployment rate exceeds 50%. What contingency plans does the government have if come 2030 we face a similar if not much worse situation here in Singapore? Instead of just having an elderly problem we will additionally have the problem of looking after these jobless adults. Or was this scenario never even considered? We should expect better in a plan coming from an ex-SAF general...
As for raising the S&C charges in order to pay cleaners higher wages, I think Singaporeans would first need more transparency on how existing S&C monies are being spent. The ratio of cleaners to households is almost negligibly low, so we should be able to pay them more at current S&C rates. It is not uncommon to come across frivolous/unnecessary works being done in HDB estates If money is more carefully spent, I think we can already pay our cleaners (most of whom are foreigners by the way) better!
I'm not sure why an Acting Minister of MCYS is espousing on these issues. My unsolicited advice is that a potential PM should have a mind of his own and not just blindly follow the script he is given. You are no longer in the army and this is not a Brigade exercise where you follow the mission scenario to the letter. This is the real world and you are not playing a war game anymore.
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