Thursday, March 4, 2010

Wasteful security measures

To visit an office in Suntec City, I had to register with the security counter to get an access card and to fill in my particulars. On leaving the building, I had to return the access card. Both activity took me an additional 20 minutes, including time waiting in the long queue.  I had to carry two bags containing materials for my talk, so the security measures and waiting time is a big hassle. Nobody bother to look at the contents of my bag - to see if I was carrying a bomb.

Security is important, but are we overdoing it? Is there more effective ways to have security instead of asking visitors to spend a lot of time unnecessarily? All these hassles add to wasted time and higher cost of doing business. If there is a terrorist visiting any large office in Singapore, it is easy to bypass the security measures as the security guards are too busy doing paperwork and recording particulars of genuine visitors.

To be effective, it is better to employ more security guards (i.e. create more employment) to watch the strategic locations, such as lift lobbies or lift cars, and to watch people moving around the office. Security is watching people and not doing paperwork.

You can multiply the wasted time in all of the big office buildings in Singapore to get an idea of the scale of wastefulness. Anyway, Singapore is a wasteful society. We spend a lot of time and money on things that are look good but are not effective.

To be productive, we should be adopting practical measures that reduce our cost and achieve our goals. We have to cut down wastefulness.

Tan Kin Lian

High cost of driving

I went to Suntec City to deliver a talk. I had to drive there, as I had to carry the materials needed for the talk. I left home at 7.45 a.m. hoping to avoid the ERP charges at Central Expressway. I did not realise that the ERP charges start from 7.30 a.m. I paid a total of $6 for the ERP charges along the expressway and to enter the Central Business District. Parking at Suntec city for slightly longer than 4 hours cost $11. This reminded me of the high cost of driving in Singapore.

Promoting Singapore as a Financial Center

Dear Mr. Tan

From 2005, the MAS has been aggressive in promoting Singapore as a financial centre. Singapore gave tax incentives of all sorts to attract financial institutions to relocate their biz to Singapore.

Many banks relocate their FX, fixed income, structured products biz to Singapore. Also, Singapore has attracted many hedge funds to set up offices here. While the effort did boost Singapore's GDP, it might have also led to the following:

i. inflated real estate prices in commercial offices, residental
ii. more structured products being structured and sold here to unsuspecting retail customers.


HCM

Unemployment in Singapore

Hi Mr Tan,
I am a keen reader of your blog and I remember previously you were keeping track of employment and retrenchment statistics.

Just want to highlight that MOM recently updated their stats, and also included a new one: Re-Employment i.e. what percentage of retrenched workers were able to find another job within 6 months.

The numbers are not as nice as reported in the news:

1. For 2009, the overall unemployment rate is 3% while the unemployment rate for residents (incl. PRs) is 4.3%. This is higher than in 2001 and just slightly lower than for year 2002. If just looking just at citizens, the unemployment rate may be 5% or higher.

2. The total workers retrenched in 2009 is 19,500. This is similar to year 2002. If combined with 2008, the total number retrenched is 33,420. This is higher than in 1998.

3. Looking at the Re-Employment stats, the percentage of retrenched workers in 2009 who found another job within 6 months is only about 50% or less. This is worse than during the last long recession from 2001 to 2003.

Below is URL for MOM's main statistics page:

ttp://www.mom.gov.sg/publish/momportal/en/communities/others/mrsd/statistics.html

Ex-Con

Shape Quiz for a class

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Free Gift - Shape Quiz Minipak ($2)

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