I am the only local born Singaporean in my engineering department.
The rest are Bangalas, PRC Chinese, Burmese and Malaysian.
I came from a family of 10 siblings living in a 1 room flat at the demolished Blk 81 Redhill Lane with my dad taking home abt 200$ a month. We were poor.
Yes, I do care about the poor.
Local borns as well as poor Bangalas who paid $8k to come here. PRC Chinese who paid rmb 50k to come here.
I always ask myself how the European, American and Aussie construction workers can build all those buildings and are properly paid while our labour ministar insist that we will be "uncompetitive" if we pay any more than what we are doing now.
I personally think this is a big lie.
The fact is that we are shifting these wages from the workers to the bosses and landlords. Let's not begrudge the capital land bosses for drawing million dollars salaries and bonuses.
But let's give to the construction workers their rightful salaries. For this land belongs to local born Singaporeans, not just politicians and their appointed elites. Singapore for local born Singaporeans.
Foreign workers should be welcome to work and make a decent living here. But they should not be given new citizenships so easily. Just like I cannot get a Bangala citizenship easily in order to buy up the cheap land available there. DT