Appeal to the government: Please, make more money!

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

APPEAL TO THE GOVERNMENT: PLEASE, MAKE MORE MONEY!

Post date:
4 Mar 2015 - 4:01pm








THAT picture! That’s the picture all of Singapore (regardless of who you support and vote for) cannot afford for the world to see. Why? Because for much of its recent history, Singapore has traded on the fact that it has a world-class transport system; one that’s effective and efficient; one that’ll get you from point A to point B posthaste and with very little fuss.
So the fact that these breakdowns seem to occur with ever-increasing frequency, makes me wonder what the government is thinking.
For starters, having Singapore’s human capital stuck in underground tunnels just doesn’t seem like very good business sense to me. For every minute that people are stuck in that hellish limbo, someone somewhere is losing money. The train companies’ natural (and right) reaction is to put on busses to ferry their commuters via the roads, which sounds like a reasonable and obvious thing to do.
Except that in doing so, they’ve just added more congestion on to the very roads that the trains were supposed to take congestion off! So now, the people who paid more because they “value their time and comfort” are indirectly affected by the disruptions in the train service.
Now, I’m sure that despite all the jibes about paper generals and politicians who are only in it for the money, there must be someone in government who actually cares that people and goods simply aren’t flowing as they should be. Surely, it must be in their best financial interest for the government to remedy our once flawless transport system.
There are also the long-term implications to think about. If potential or current investors and business owners who value the ease and speed in which their manpower and goods can move around Singapore, then this worrying trend of breakdowns will do the country’s reputation no favors. It’s also not a big leap of the imagination to think that our neighbors will quickly pick up on our failings and ramp up their own public transport infrastructure in direct competition of Singapore.
Yes, these neighboring countries may not have air and sea ports that can match Singapore’s, but air and sea ports may not really matter when employees can’t even get to work on time in the first place!
Then there are the tourists. As an ex travel agent, one of the comments I get about Singapore is that it’s a super-efficient city, where getting around is fast and easy (clients’ words, not mine). If that reputation were to erode beyond the point of repair, then Singapore as a tourist destination would surely suffer. Now, the last time I checked, the tourism industry is one of those money-makers that the government is desperately trying to expand, in the hopes of more revenue for the country.






Surely, one of the many bureaucrats sitting in one of the many faceless governmental departments would have recognized by now that the failing transport system isn’t conducive to tourism. Apart from the tourists who get annoyed at being stuck in traffic on their way to a tourist destination, think about all the poor saps who get stuck in traffic on their way to catch a connecting flight (remembering that Singapore touts itself as a stopover destination).
Personally, as someone who travels and visits Singapore regularly, I’ve tried to find alternatives to transiting in Singapore. If my main holiday is to Singapore to visit friends and family, then I now try to plan it so that I’m there during the off-peak periods (if one exists) so that the public transport isn’t jam-packed full of warm bodies. I also try and minimize my length of stay because statistically, the longer I’m back home, the more chance I have at being caught in one of these disruptions.
Whatever strategies (or lack thereof) the government has in place to deal with these breakdowns simply aren’t working. The consequence of this is that the country is going to lose a lot of money and eventually, its reputation of having a super-efficient and super-effective transport system. Therefore, I’m hoping to appeal to the government’s never-ending quest for more wealth and riches – don’t fix the transport system for the convenience and happiness of your own citizens; fix the transport system so that businesses and the tourism industry can continue to prosper, hence earning the government (and you, personally) more money.
BlackandWhite
TRS Contributor


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