Job Credit Scheme is a Misnomer!
Oxsome! Yes, that's Mr Low Thia Kiang's contribution to the Budget 2009 debate. Having come out with his reasons for the no brainer Jobs Credit Scheme, he was strong as an ox to withstand the bullies of the ruling party trying to make him look stupid. I'm glad that the speaker of the house had the decorum to make another mintster sound more stupid.As vindictiveness is the essence of some, I won't be surprised if the whole ruling party re-orgs to come up with a slammer soon to put LTK down!
Where I'm concerned, the Jobs Credit Scheme is nothing more than a 'wag-the-dog' scheme to help companies and put the Government in a good light. It is a good hype to use the word "jobs" to give the impression that it is helping the employees. No matter how wordsmiths and lawyers would like to put LTK down, we cannot hide the fact that "Jobs Credit Scheme" is nothing but an "Employers Credit Scheme"!
The example given by Mr Low of employers saving $7,500 vs $900 must have made many experts in MOF cringe. It was reported in the Straits Times by, of all people, Chua Lee Hoong that even "Mr Ngiam Tong Dow, a retired Ministry of Finance permanent secretary, even argues that the Jobs Credit scheme is a 'strategic mistake . . . What makes the scheme easy to implement is that Singapore has in place the Central Provident Fund. The government grants are paid directly into the CPF accounts of workers.".
The scheming of this scheme is like magic! You'd know that the money from the left hand still goes back to the right hand! Interestingly, it's money from the reserves that goes to CPF that goes back to the reserves!
The greater joke is $4.9 billion dip into the reserves to make things happen.Wow, it sounds so grandiose and noble-like to have one key by government and the other key by Mr President to open the secretive keyhole of the vault to use the $4.9 billion. How much we have inside the vault only God knows! Even our past president Mr Ong Teng Cheong had trouble finding out.
Do the ministerial elites think that:
- Where our reserves comes from is of no concern to Singaporeans.
- How much is our reserves is of no concern to Singaporeans.
- Where our reserves are (apart from being in ShinCorp, ABC Learning, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, UBS, etc. where they are forced to be transparent) is of no concern to Singaporeans.
- As much as Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chok Tong, Lee Hsien Loong, Tony Tan and Tharman Shamugaratnam can quote on the wonderful state of our reserves, who are we to know? If President Ong Teng Cheong had so much trouble seeking the truth, you think truth will be told to us peasants? So when I read "Never Break Piggy Bank" or "GIC generates returns", I'm like, "What Piggy Bank? What returns?"
"Jobs Credit Scheme" or "Employers Credit Scheme"?
Meanwhile, 'Singapore will come out of this,' said Mr Tharman. 'We will bounce back the way we've bounced back three times already in 10 years.' - Straits Times
Hey, with the pay you guys are getting, we should not be in this aweful jam in the first place!
If you lead by example, you'd better cut cost (especially mintsters' salary) to save jobs in your ministries too!
Talk is so bloody cheap!
feedmetothefish
posted by FeedMeToTheFish @ 10:47 AM
14 Comments
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14 Comments:
That's a great post!
The job credit scheme is such a lousy scheme - it even pays the partial CPF of CEOs and Directors of Profitable organisations eg SMRT / Delgro / NTUC fairprice.
No one knows how many jobs it will save, but you get the idea...$4.5 bil to save say 1000 jobs, and Tharman will say it is well spent.
Our reserves. Dang....
Did any MP even question whether the Govt departments can go on a cost cutting phase? There's nothing about this. Whilst the pte sector is raging an all out war on costs!
What's this I hear defense budget increased? What? more toys for our army boys to play around with?
Finally, there's no real debate in Parliament.. we see MP's wax lyrical about how great this JCS is ... wa piang... shameless.
The SS
Just as I don't buy stuff I don't need just because there is a 12% discount on it, I don't think companies will keep their staff just to enjoy the 12% "discount". At the end of the day, companies obtain savings from keeping staff that they would have kept anyway whether or not there is this job credits scheme. So how does this scheme help to save jobs?
Yes the budget for defence is going up by over $600 million and that for Home Affairs by some $300 million. Large increases for other expenditures in this budget are mainly due to the one-time extraordinary budget schemes of $20 billion. But not the expenditures for these 2 which have consistently been increasing year after year. Security is no doubt important but our spendings especially on defence at over $11 billion is out of proportion and questionably necessary.
NMP Siew Km Hong also did very well! He handled the 4 PAP MPs' lame questions with robust logic, in the process exposing the 4 clowns as total mediocre waste-of-air, hahaha!
recruit ong
the job credit scheme is doomed to fail becoz it works in the assumption and belief that companies will do the "right thing" after getting the handouts..
well, they don't. mine didnt.
welcome to the REAL corporate world.
here is the email address for low & siew.
if u think they had raised valid concerns & got unjustly fuxx by the pap dogs, do email them a word of encouragement like i did.
low: ltk@wp.sg
siew: siewkumhong@gmail.com (http://siewkumhong.blogspot.com/)
According to Inderjit Singh, a similar job credit scheme was recently discarded by the US administration but we are using it.
Agree that each govt ministry should be cutting costs,especially defence and home affairs.
This job credit scheme is some kind of desperate foreplay by one dominant party to stimulate the private sector but the end result will probably be an anti-climax because many will still lose their jobs.
Notice the lack of brainstorming to find solutions but plenty of PAP members blowing each other.
Even with 50,000 additional jobs lost, and the government pays those retrenched their annual salary of, say, on average, $30K each, the total bill will still be $1.5B. Saving the 50,000 jobs on the other hand is going to cost $4.5B? How so?
Lost Citizen
Correct me if I am wrong, and being a layman, I only know about the basics of dollar and cents... If I am correct, out of the 4.2 million population which they claimed, about 3.8 million are actually the "real" citizen. So to me is very simple, instead of 4.5 billion to save job, why don't just give all the 3.8 million citizens 1 million each? Settled!!! All got money, no headache, can spend to boost economy somemore...
On the one hand, the various financial assistance schemes run by the CDCs have lists of requirements that applicants must satisfy e.g. income must be below certain level, must have little or no savings, must satisfy needs test, etc. On the other hand, the gahmen is giving our hard-earned money away with so little deliberation, giving to ALL companies, whether they are profitable or not, have any intention of retrenching workers or not. Such a huge amount of money given away so freely.
My personal views on Job Credits:
1) it is like a pain-killer to relief you of pain from the strained muscles of the employers.
2) it is not a medicine to treat a cancerous cells at its terminal stage.
3) it is a vitamins/supplement for the healthy/well-doing companies.
Regards
... instead of 4.5 billion to save job, why don't just give all the 3.8 million citizens 1 million each? Settled!!! All got money, no headache, can spend to boost economy somemore...
bro.. cannnot lah.. 1 million each for 3.8mil pax is 3.8 TRILLION dollars. i sincerely wish we had so much $$ in reserves but i dun think so... coz if REALLY we have 3.8 trillion. MIW will be much much more arrogant already..
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