I refer to the reports “GE: When the storm hits us, whom do you trust? asks PAP’s Foo Mee Har”and “GE: Singapore government is open and not afraid to tell the truth, says DPM Wong” .
The latter states that, “Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng said the government is open and is not afraid to tell the people the truth or learn from mistakes.”
In the interest of transparency and accountability, I would like to cite the following which in my view may be somewhat lacking in Singapore:-
Mas Selamat
1)The Mas Selamat Committee of Inquiry of three persons was appointed by the Home Minister, with one member from his ministry. Parts the Committee’s report were not made public.
Jobs
2) No breakdown of the labour, employment and unemployment statistics into Singaporeans and permanent residents (PRs).
3) Why did the Ministry of Manpower decline to reveal the number of foreigners who have been given the ‘pass’ to stay in Singapore to look for employment?
4) How many foreign university interns work in a year in Singapore? This category does not need to meet any of the foreign worker quota policies.
5) What percentage of the jobs in the two integrated resorts (IRs) are Singaporeans?
Healthcare
6) The rejection rate of Singaporeans who apply for Medifund because they could not pay for their medical bills, has never been disclosed. The Ministry of Health discloses yearly, the number of successful applications (number of times), but not the number of patients who were rejected.
7) Singapore’s Standard Drug List is not made public. If made public, we may know what drugs are non-subsidised.
8- Does Medishield make a profit? What is the surplus if any?
9) How many people who are discharged from hospital were unable to pay their medical bills?
HDB
10) The breakdown of the costs of building HDB flats.
11) HDB Annual Reports’ ‘applications for financial assistance approved’ statistics, have disappeared from its 2005/2006 Annual Report onwards.
12) How many HDB bank loans are in arrears over three months?
13) How many HDB bank loans have been foreclosed by banks?
14) How many foreigners and PRs in total are staying in SERS (Selective En-bloc Re-Development Scheme) HDB flats, former JTC, SIT, etc, flats as rental tenants?
15) How many Singaporean siblings below 35 successfully applied to buy HDB resale flats under the former ‘siblings’ policy which was terminated in March 2011. How may PR siblings have successfully applied?
16) How many HDB households were unable to pay their Service and Conservancy Fees (S&CC) in a year?
17) How many have been charged in court for not paying, in a year?
Education
18) Total number and proportion of undergraduate and post-graduate foreign and PR students in the total population of NUS, NTU and SMU.
Comcare
19) How many families have ever successfully applied for financial assistance historically, under Comcare?
CPF
20) How many self-employed are in arrears on their compulsory Medisave contributions?
21) Why is the actuarial study done on CPF Life not made public? How do we know what assumptions and methodology are being used in the computations and projections in the scheme?
Electricity
22) Why are the contracts between the suppliers of natural gas and power generation companies confidential?
Burma
23) How much arms and military related supplies have we sold to Burma?
Changi airport
24) How much will Temasek pay for Changi airport, as I believe this amount was not discussed in the Parliamentary debate on the corporatisation of the airport?
Reserves
25) Singaporeans have never been told what is the amount of our reserves? In the ChannelNewsAsia report “Mrs Lim (Hwee Hua, Minister of State for Finance) said: “You asked how much reserves we have. I’m sorry – I am not able to give you that answer. There are many, many people who are interested in how much we have. It has nothing to do with not wanting Singaporeans to know. It’s only if we go public with you, a lot of other people will know.””
CJMY
Shufiyan Shukur
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