The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Singapore dilemma: more or less foreign workers? Posted: 10 Dec 2013 01:20 AM PST Images of rioters overturning police cars, throwing garbage bins and burning an ambulance in Singapore's Little India on Sunday night shocked the orderly Southeast Asian nation and stirred debate over whether foreign workers should be better integrated or see their numbers reduced. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Gayathiri, 30, an engineer who lives near the scene of the riots. "I hope the government will take it as a wake-up call. We need foreigners to boost our economy, but not at the expense of our security," she added, echoing a widely held sentiment. Police charged 24 Indian nationals with rioting, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years' prison and caning. They were among an estimated 400 people who rampaged after a private bus fatally struck construction worker Sakthivel Kumaravelu, 33. The number of arrests could rise. The government has urged people not to jump to conclusions, but many Singaporeans blame an overabundance of migrant workers and could use the riots to intensify a push for tighter immigration curbs - a step that could hurt the economy. The dominant People's Action Party (PAP) that has ruled Singapore for more than half a century was facing pressure over Singapore's high cost of living and its reliance on foreign workers on the island of nearly 5.4 million people. Founded by Lee Kuan Yew, the father of the current prime minister, the PAP is credited with transforming Singapore from a colonial outpost in the 1960s into a global financial hub with world-class infrastructure, safe streets, an efficient civil service and the world's highest concentration of millionaires. Part of that success is built on cheap foreign labour, which makes up nearly 20% of the population. Many Singaporeans have expressed concerns over a government proposal to raise the population to 6.9 million by 2030. Of that, up to 36%, or 2.5 million, would be made up of foreign workers to balance a low birth rate and to sustain economic growth. Many of the 1.3 million foreign workers do low-paid jobs shunned by locals - from construction to domestic work. Jobs in the construction industry, for instance, are dominated by male workers from India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka who earn a basic monthly salary of between S$460 (RM1,180) and S$700 (RM1,795). That compares with the average Singaporean monthly wage of about S$4,433 (RM11,370). Employers must pay a government-imposed levy on each foreign worker they wish to hire, with a higher levy for lower-paid workers to regulate their numbers. Authorities could tighten that measure to slow the influx of foreign workers. "The latest incident may further increase pressure to reduce Singapore's dependence on foreign workers," said Chua Hak Bin, a Singapore-based economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "Construction as a segment is seeing some of the steepest levy hikes and tightening in quotas." Others, however, argue that policymakers should focus more on the workers' welfare and integration. Many foreign workers live in crowded dormitory compounds, some housing up to 8,000 people, on the fringes of the island. "There is no policy for promoting integration. It is a separatist policy," said Bridget Tan, the founder and chief executive of the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics in Singapore. In their scarce free time, many gather in Little India, an area of narrow streets and rows of shop-houses selling colourful fabrics, spices and groceries, a legacy of the 19th-century British colonial rulers who laid out the city in ethnic zones. Indians and Bangladeshis have congregated peacefully in large crowds in the area for years, eating and drinking, and illustrating decades of success of maintaining religious harmony in a polyglot community of ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians that was convulsed by race riots in the late 1960s. Authorities banned the sale and consumption of alcohol in the area this weekend. Police stepped up patrols at foreign worker dormitories and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong set up an inquiry. Some commentators say a deeper change of mind-set needs to take place. "We seem to operate on a model of wanting the foreign workforce for their labour and economic value, yet wishing they would disappear at all other times," blogger Alex Au wrote. - Reuters, December 10, 2013. |
| Happiness for some in Pakistan’s gated communities Posted: 09 Dec 2013 10:20 PM PST Welcome to Bahria Town, where Pakistan's new middle class takes refuge from the Taliban attacks and endless power cuts that plague the rest of the country. Cars glide softly over the smooth tarmac carpeting the gentle hills of Pakistan's largest gated community, past immaculate green verges dotted with statues of cattle — which, unlike their real counterparts elsewhere in the country, pose no threat to traffic. There's a horse-riding centre, a golf course, a posh cinema, an immaculately air-conditioned cafe and a mini-zoo with "the only black panther in Pakistan", whose growling excites young couples taking a walk. Elsewhere 20-metre models of the Eiffel Tower and Nelson's Column — complete with lions — watch over this vision of suburbia which seems a world away from the rest of Pakistan's seething, traffic-choked and crumbling cities. For Riaz, an employee of a multinational firm, it is heaven compared to the sprawling, violent metropolis of Karachi that he left a few months ago. An unprecedented wave of murders and kidnappings gripping the port city, Pakistan's economic capital, forced him to quit for the quiet comfort of Bahria Town. "Here we have peace, though it's a bit lacking in life and cafes," Riaz told AFP as he walked through the zoo with his young son. Popularised in the United States in the 1990s, gated communities have spread across the world. They have grown in popularity in Pakistan in the last decade as Islamist violence and crime have spiralled and a crippling energy crisis has left people without electricity for hours at a time in the blistering summer. Pakistan now has at least two dozen gated communities, according to real estate broker Shaista Zulfiqar. Bahria Town has expanded to three cities — Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi — housing some 100,000 people in total. When work started on Bahria Town Islamabad in the early 2000s, the area was nothing but "jungle", said 28-year-old Arif Ali, one of the first residents. For the residents of Bahria Town and the dozens of other closed communities like it around the unstable country of 180 million people, life passes calmly. Cameras watch over the enclave 24 hours a day, on top of the guards patrolling to kick out interlopers. The power cuts that plague life in the rest of Pakistan are no more than a distant memory thanks to enormous generators guzzling to run the residents' air-conditioners and HD TVs. Bahria Town is also a town without a mayor. The development company, owned by billionaire Malik Riaz, sells the land, builds the houses, hospitals, schools, runs the security, electricity, water, sewage, all in return for a local "tax". Bahria Town and its rivals like Gulberg Greens and Khudadad City offer a corner of walled-in paradise — for those who can afford it. "People from middle and upper middle class, including businessmen, government employees and bankers invest in gated communities," said Zulfiqar. The population also includes members of the Pakistani diaspora who have become rich in Canada, Australia, the UK and the Gulf. Demand has seen prices rocket — in 2007 a 200 square metre house in Bahria Town Lahore cost around four million rupees (RM209,214.80). A similar property in 2012 would have cost nine million rupees (RM470,733.30). Would-be residents have the choice of buying plots of land or houses of different sizes, with prices running up to 100-300 million rupees (RM5.2 million-RM15.6 million), according to Bahria Town vice-CEO Muhammad Ilyas. Speculation has also pushed prices up as property remains a safe haven as the rupee collapses against the dollar. "It's a very good investment, I have made 300% profit since 2007," said Umar Paracha, who buys and sells Bahria Town plots in Islamabad, though he lives elsewhere. "I am just an investor, I purchase a plot and after two or three months I sell it for a profit of one million or half a million rupees." But for most Pakistanis — a fifth of whom live on less than $1.25 (RM4.80) a day, according to the World Bank — communities like Bahria Town are a distant, impossible dream. At a roundabout facing the entrance to Bahria Town Islamabad, dozens of scruffy men wait for work, squatting on the ground looking at this portal to another world. "It does not seem like Pakistan, it seems like a new country," said one of them, Haji Gulzar. "The difference is like day and night, black and white, earth and sky." - AFP, December 10, 2013. |
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