Re: SMRT drivers refused to start work
The second issue to consider is the proposition, invented and propagated by the PAP, that Singapore has a fine administrative structure designed purposefully for the wellbeing of the people. We heard it this week when Tan Chuan Jin, acting Manpower Minister, assured us that legitimate processes exist for the settlement of labour concerns and disputes, and that if only the Chinese bus drivers had availed of them, they would have avoided the iron fist of the law that slammed upon their backs early Monday morning.
This is a patent fiction. And the minister knows it, which makes his dishonest pronouncements, all the more shameful. He and his immediate predecessors have, for the last eight years been advised and informed of the structures of the Ministry of Manpower that militate against fair treatment of workers, particularly foreign workers, particularly low-waged foreign workers, particularly low-waged, less-educated foreign workers.
In these last eight years, the activist groups, HOME and TWC2, have bombarded the Manpower Ministry with report upon report and, literally, countless complaints about labour processes that not only disadvantage foreign, low-waged workers but in some instances result in their being maimed or killed.
Tan Chuan Jin and his colleagues are comprehensively aware of this. His behaviour over this last week has shown him to be a man either systematically incapable of telling the truth or of grasping the realities of his department. I posit neither proposal: I merely offer them for public interrogation. (And perhaps a response from the minister himself.)
Interested to see the minister's response or lack of.
