On COE prices and quotas

Today’s news reported that COE prices had gone up by as much as S$14,411 in the latest bidding exercise, with the most expensive COE (the open category COE) costing S$42,001.

The huge increases were because the government was going to limit the supply of COEs from April 2010 onwards by pegging it to actual vehicle deregistrations.

The present cost of a COE makes car ownership prohibitively expensive and out of reach from the common population of Singapore.

Is there a way to alleviate this cost of car ownership? Well, how about having a COE quota for foreigners? Say, a 25% quota, which means that 25% of the COEs released each month will go to foreigners, while 75% of the COEs will go to Singapore citizens.

Having such separate categories of COEs for foreigners and citizens will likely reduce the COE prices for citizens (because there will be more available COEs for them), and in effect make foreigners subsidise some of the high costs of car ownership (as the foreigners will probably pay a higher rate of COE given a limited quota). More importantly, it would also benefit citizens (who have long term interests vested here compared to foreigners who are here for the short term) by giving them priority in owning cars and driving on the roads of their own country.

On Singapore citizenship and permanent residency

There’s been a lot of buzz of late on how Singapore citizens don’t have much of an advantage compared to Singapore permanent residents. In fact, citizens are at a distinct disadvantage in many instances, e.g. compulsory National Service obligations (which also frequently negatively affect employers’ preferences) and the prohibition of dual citizenships.

In an attempt (weak, in this author’s opinion) to placate some of these complaints, the PAP government tried to fix the problem by giving citizens slightly better benefits, such as better subsidies or priorities in health, education, housing etc.

But the unasked question so far is: is there a need for this creature, permanent residency?

What is permanent residency? Generally, permanent residency refers to a person’s visa status, and a permanent resident is allowed to reside indefinitely within a country despite not having citizenship.

Not all countries have a permanent residency scheme. Those that do, usually have a good reason, such as special ties with certain other countries. For example, an EU national who moves to another EU country can attain permanent resident status after residing there for five years. Also, permanent residence rights are granted automatically between Ireland and the United Kingdom.

But Singapore has no such special ties with other countries, even with Malaysia, its closest geographical neighbour.

Hence, in today’s terms, why not abolish the permanent residency regime in Singapore?

In other words, a person is either a citizen or a foreigner. After all, a permanent resident is still a foreign citizen at the end of the day. There are many permanent residents in Singapore who will never consider converting to citizenship despite living, studying and working here most of their lives, and frankly, it’s usually an emotional thing with them. They do not see Singapore as their home country, and there is no loyalty to Singapore at all. In fact, permanent residents ought not to be considered as Singaporeans.. that just unhelpfully blurs the line between a genuine Singaporean national and a person who is not.

Abolishing the permanent residency regime in Singapore is not only a good idea, it is also right for Singapore. The rationale is that Singapore is a small country with limited natural resources. All nationality benefits (and obligations, such as National Service and Central Provident Fund contributions) should only be reserved for and belong to citizens, who are the ones with the right to vote. Hence, for example, given that land is a scarce and valuable resource in Singapore, only citizens should be permitted to own HDB flats.

If a person doesn’t want to be a citizen, that’s fine. He or she can always choose to be a foreigner working and living in Singapore under an employment pass or work permit – there is no problem with that. The expression “permanent resident” is really a misnomer.. the person isn’t residing in Singapore permanently at all, only temporarily. If a person truly wants to make Singapore a permanent home, just be a citizen. There is no need for a hybrid creation like “permanent resident”.

There are many benefits which can be gained from abolishing the permanent residency regime, which will far outweigh the downsides, if any. Housing will be freed up, and the red hot inflated prices will have a chance to be at a normal realistic level. Jobs will be freed up as some permanent residents (who never intended to be citizens anyway) choose to leave. Lots of governmental savings can be made because all the subsidies and benefits that used to go to permanent residents will no longer be required. Overcrowding will be alleviated. All the headaches and problems which the PAP government had futilely been trying to address regarding citizen vs. permanent resident benefits will go away.

The permanent residency scheme can be phased out. All eligible permanent residents can be offered the chance to become a citizen of Singapore. As for the ineligible permanent residents, they simply revert to being plain foreigners, which is exactly who they were all along anyway.

What do you think?

On the Jack Neo sex scandal and sexual harassment in the workplace

Much has been said about Singapore filmmaker Jack Neo’s infidelity recently. But little has been raised in regard to how his behaviour likely constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace, and in particular, the lack of specific laws in Singapore that protect employees from sexual harassment and give employees an avenue for seeking redress.

What is sexual harassment? One definition is that sexual harassment is the “intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favours”. It includes a range of behaviours from seemingly mild transgressions and annoyances to actual sexual abuse or sexual assault.

In the recent Jack Neo scandal, a number of women alleged that he made unwelcome sexual advances on them while they were in his employ or acting in his movies. Such behaviour certainly constitutes sexual harassment.

In this author’s view, every employee (whether female or male) should be protected by law from sexual harassment at the workplace. Furthermore, any employee who is sexually harassed at the workplace deserves an avenue of redress against the harasser. This is especially so if the harasser is in a position of authority over the victim. An employee who has been sexually harassed at the workplace should not be helpless without legal protection to defend herself or himself, and should not have to make the wretched choice of either losing the job or giving in to the unwelcome sexual demands of the harasser. If at all, the harasser is the one who should be penalised.

Now, sexual harassment is illegal in many countries, but unfortunately for Singapore employees, sexual harassment is not specifically illegal in Singapore.

In other countries, employers and harassers are legally responsible (under criminal and civil laws) for sexual harassment against their employees and liable to them for damages (i.e. monetary compensation for loss or injury). Examples of such countries include the United States, United Kingdom, the member states of the European Union, Australia, China, Philippines, India and Israel.

Why are there no specific laws enacted against sexual harassment in Singapore? It seems to this author that there are no good reasons why not, and it is time this lacuna is addressed by the Singapore government. In fact, sexual harassment is a prevalent problem in Singapore. In a 2008 study conducted by AWARE, 54% of the 500 participants surveyed reported having been sexually harassed at work. This includes both men and women.

Victimised employees need protection. And in this author’s personal opinion, it would not do to condone, or to rally around and support a harasser. Laws are vital to ensure that employers take pro-active steps to protect their employees from sexual harassment in the workplace, safeguard their careers and livelihoods, and give them a way to lodge their grievances. Having laws against sexual harassment will benefit not only local employees, but also the significant population of foreigners who come to Singapore to work (and who may otherwise be deterred from coming or harmed by the lack of sexual harassment laws). Certainly, such laws would go a long way in deterring a number of would-be offenders and protecting employees, and reprehensible cases such as the Jack Neo saga could be minimised or averted.

On advertisements and the truth

Kudos to kitchen tigress for teaching local bank, OCBC, a lesson on misleading advertisements!

Briefly: OCBC had been advertising that it surprises its customers with birthday cakes on their birthdays. On her birthday, kitchen tigress went to OCBC to claim her birthday cake, but was told by staff that it was just an advertisement and they don’t give birthday cakes to customers. This didn’t faze kitchen tigress one bit, and after sticking to her guns, an OCBC supervisor eventually relented and bought her a cake.

For too long, advertisers in Singapore have gotten away with feeding misleading advertisements and outright lies to consumers. This should stop. Here, OCBC advertised and gave the expectation that its customers would be surprised with birthday cakes – this didn’t happen for kitchen tigress. As for other misleading and possibly even false advertisements, these include weight loss services by slimming centres, hair growth products and services, and of course, financial products that are supposed to be “safe” (we all know the recent famous example which needs no introduction).

Companies should learn to tell the truth when advertising their products and services. If you can’t be truthful, then you shouldn’t be allowed to peddle your wares.

Do we have laws in Singapore regarding false and misleading advertisements? To some extent, we do. For example:

• There is the Misrepresentation Act, where if a person enters into a contract under a misrepresentation, then that person is entitled to cancel the contract, and possibly claim for losses suffered.



• There is the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act, where it is prohibited for a supplier to (a) cause a consumer to be deceived or misled, (b) make a false claim, or (c) take advantage of a consumer.
  
  Examples of such behaviour include (i) representing that goods or services have performance characteristics or benefits that they do not have (weight loss or hair growth products and services may fall into these category), and (ii) offering gifts, prizes or other free items in connection with the supply of goods or services if the supplier knows that these items will not be provided (OCBC’s free birthday cake may fall into this category).



• There is also an interesting concept in law, where if someone advertises that he would do something in return for your action (say for example, give you a surprise birthday cake if you sign up as a bank customer), and you actually do it, then it is a binding contract in law and that someone has to fulfil his promise!
  
  A famous case which happened in England in 1892 was the “Carlill vs. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company” case, where a certain Carbolic Smoke Ball Company advertised that its “smoke ball” would cure flu, and if it did not, buyers would receive £100. Ms Carlill tried the smoke ball, which failed to cure her flu. When Carbolic denied giving her the £100, saying that it was only an advertisement gimmick and not to be taken seriously, Ms Carlill sued Carbolic and successfully got her £100.

Now, the abovementioned laws are not very effective, because they do not make it an offence for companies to advertise in a false or misleading manner. These laws only help consumers who are willing to go to court to seek redress. However, hardly anyone would bother going to court to seek redress – it’s troublesome and usually not worth the while because most people would not have spent very much anyway on the actual good or service.

So what can the government do to properly protect consumers in Singapore? Easy, pass a law that bans and makes it an offence to have false or misleading advertisements. This way, the onus is on companies and advertisers to be mindful of their responsibility to the public.

For completeness, it should be mentioned that a few items, such as medicines, have statutory regulations making it an offence for persons or companies to advertise them in a false or misleading manner in Singapore. But for most products and services in general, there are no such laws, and it’s about time something is done.

The objective here is not stifle creativity in advertising. For example, a tagline such as “Red Bull gives you wings”, while it is a cute tagline, the Red Bull beverage of course doesn’t give its drinkers any wings, and no reasonable person would expect it to do so, so there’s no harm (just a note here: in the opinion of this author, companies can come up with great taglines which are genuine, such as “HSBC – the world’s local bank”. Now that’s something which HSBC can try to deliver to its customers). But if a company advertises something that is humanly possible (such as a birthday cake surprise for its customers), then it should jolly well carry out its promise.

On the closure of hotel spas

Two spa businesses suffered sudden closures in Singapore recently, leaving their customers stranded with useless packages that have already been expensively paid for. These two businesses, Wellness Village Spa and Simply Spa International, operated outlets in good, well-known hotels, being the Pan Pacific Hotel and the Parkroyal Hotel respectively.

The aggrieved customers are now fighting to get their money back through the aid of the Consumers Association of Singapore and the Small Claims Tribunal, although it is not certain that these spa businesses even have any money left to refund their customers.

What can be done to prevent such incidents from happening again in future?

One suggestion has been made regarding chargeback schemes for credit card users, where consumers can reverse a credit card transaction if they do not receive goods or services that have been purchased from merchants.

But it seems to this author, that hotels should also play an important role in preventing such incidents. After all, any business (including spa businesses) which sets up shop in a good hotel will be relying on the name, goodwill and reputation of the hotel to attract customers. Most customers do not associate shady, fly-by-night businesses with shops that are found in a good hotel. Moreover, hotels have a vested interest in preventing such incidents from happening, because if hotel shops falter and leave customers in the lurch, they will also tarnish the name of the hotel.

There is, in fact, something that the hotels can do. And that is to require the businesses which set up shop in the hotels to maintain a certain minimum capital in their companies. In a way, the capital can serve as an assurance that the company will be able to meet its debts and obligations as and when they fall due. If this had been done in the case of Wellness Village Spa and Simply Spa International, the affected customers may have some assurance that there is money in the companies from which to get their refunds.

Now this is not a new idea, and there are some shopping malls in Singapore that require their shop tenants to maintain adequate capital, so as to protect the mall landlords as well as the customers.

If a business cannot afford to maintain an adequate capital, then the hotel should not bother with allowing such business to run in the hotel. As seen from the case of the two failed spa businesses, there is just too much risk in allowing one dollar companies to operate one day and disappear the next, leaving hundreds of customers stranded.

On internet security in Singapore

According to a recent report by computer security expert, McAfee, Singapore has the 10th riskiest internet domains in the world.

This means that if you surf to a Singapore-registered website which ends with “.sg”, the chances of your computer contracting some form of malware is very high. According to McAfee, Singapore’s risky websites rose appreciably from 0.3% last year to 9.1% this year, although, McAfee found that the dangers appear to be of a moderate level rather than severe level. Interestingly, McAfee highlighted Chinese pharmacy spam sites in Singapore as a main cause of risk.

In comparison, Malaysia’s domains (.my) were ranked relatively safe at #80 out of 104 domains with a rating of only 0.3% risk, while Japan’s domains (.jp) were established to be the safest country domains with a rating of only 0.1% risk.

According to McAfee, when scammers and hackers register their malicious websites, they look for registrars with:

• lack of regulation


• ease of registration


• lowest price

Given that Singapore’s domains (.sg) are ranked among the top 10 riskiest internet domains in the world, presumably, scammers and hackers view that there is little regulation involved in registering the .sg domains, and they are easy as well as cheap to register.

Now, why should dangerous internet domains be an important concern for Singapore? Well, a bad reputation for Singapore websites could negatively affect legitimate businesses in Singapore who intend to rely on e-commerce. Internet users may not trust websites ending with .sg for fear of contracting malware or succumbing to scams. In fact, if Singapore’s standing as a reliable and trustworthy place in the internet world is lowered, the potential impact is global.

So, does Singapore have laws against computer crimes such as websites with malware? Yes, in fact, it does. The main legislation is the Computer Misuse Act which was passed in 1993. There are a variety of activities which are considered offences under the Act, such as:

• unauthorised access to, or modification of, computer material


• unauthorised use or interception of computer service


• unauthorised obstruction of use of computer


• unauthorised disclosure of access code

The penalties for committing these offences are severe, especially if damage is caused, ranging up to fines of S$50,000 and jail terms of 10 years. If the offences involve threats to national security, the penalties can be enhanced up to fines of S$100,000 and jail terms of 20 years.

So, on the face of it, Singapore appears to have adequate laws against computer crimes. But are these laws being enforced? Well, the main agency tasked to tackle computer crimes, is the Technology Crime Division of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Singapore Police Force. This division conducts investigation, forensic examination and prosecution into technology-related offences committed under the Computer Misuse Act, such as hacking and unauthorised access to account.

Is the Technology Crime Division doing enough to counter scammers and hackers in Singapore? At present, this author is unable to find specific statistics on how many scammers and hackers have been successfully prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act. Admittedly, it is a difficult job to fight computer crime and to bring elusive scammers and hackers before the law. Even with a dedicated unit like the Technology Crime Division, the evidence of Singapore’s poor security ranking for internet domains indicate that many scammers and hackers do thrive in Singapore.

What else can Singapore do? Well, the key may lie in making it difficult for scammers and hackers to register their domains. The .sg domains are registered by SGNIC’s accredited registrars, such as SingNet. Perhaps, for a start, these registrars can require domain applicants (as well as current domain owners) to furnish more detailed information and proof of identity. And whenever news of malicious domains is notified to the registrars, the registrars should act quickly to investigate and disable such domains, as well as report them to the police. In this respect, SGNIC may also consider providing an easy website form for users to report malicious Singapore websites.

Update: Local media picked up on this news on 18 December 2009.

On restricting employees from competing or soliciting

It seems a fairly common practice in Singapore for employers to contractually impose post-employment restrictions on their employees to prevent them from working for a competitor or taking fellow employees away.

Because of these restrictions in their employment contracts, many employees worry that they cannot work for companies of their choice after leaving their employers. Further concerns which they have include:

• They cannot earn a living during the period of restraint, especially if their skills are not easily adaptable to other kinds of work.


• Their skills may be rendered sterile if not actively used.


• Their work experience will be adversely affected.

Why do employers impose such restrictions? Well, there are legitimate reasons for doing so if an employer wants to protect certain interests, such as:

• Preventing unauthorised use of its special trade connections.


• Preventing unauthorised use of its business secrets.


• Maintaining the stability of its workforce.

There are two competing principles at stake here: an employee’s freedom to work versus an employer’s right to protect its business interests.

Are these restrictions legal in Singapore? The short answer to this appears to be, it depends – on whether the restrictions are reasonable:

• First, as mentioned, the employer must have genuine legitimate interests to protect.


• Second, the extent of the restrictions themselves (such as the types of activity being restrained, the geographical area of restraint, the duration of restraint etc.) should be no more than necessary to protect the employer’s business interests.


• Third, the restrictions also have to be reasonable from a public policy viewpoint.

If the restrictions fail to meet any of these conditions, they will not be legal in Singapore.

But often, employers in Singapore impose such restrictions unfairly, either (i) simply to deter or “scare” their employees from working for a competitor, even if the employer doesn’t have adequate interests to protect, or (ii) having unreasonable restrictions, such as lengthy non-competition periods or restraining a wider scope of work than necessary or applying blanket restrictions to all their employees (even rank-and-file employees and junior executives) without heed as to whether these restrictions are even relevant to the nature of the jobs involved.

Now, many of these employees are generally helpless to negotiate the terms of their employment, and have very little choice in the matter. They are invariably taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers in these situations and are effectively “scared” or tied down. They usually also lack the financial resources to seek legal counsel of their own.

It would be good if the Singapore government could recognise this issue, and set up a small unit (perhaps at the Ministry of Manpower) to investigate and help mediate complaints in this respect, and also provide general advice to companies about not restraining their employees unduly.