Victim Of Our Own Success

Carpark  Woes in HDB Estates

Mr Goh said " Because Singaporeans are more well-off now, many families own two cars. If you can own 2 cars, you are not really poor"

Question to ask : when did many Sg citizens become well-off to own 2 cars?

Many of the citizens are average wage earners who can't own 2 cars but rather i can safely say that many of them own 2 wheels (aka motorbikes or bicycles).  Fyi, many of us are still dreaming of owning a car.  lol   :D

Yeah I rmbr 1 of my friend who own 2 cars but he stationed one of his car in his office for his staff to use and the other car parked in a shopping center near his house due to a parking problem - hdb carpark too far from his home.

My previous boss own 2 cars but he park his car in factory or in his PRIVATE condo (not hdb) and he don't usually visit hdbs unless he has to.

How much will 'rich families owning 2 cars' contribute to inadequate parking space at HDB estates? And even if it does, what's the issue, don't his family also own 2 cars? Can we safely say he is also the one contributing to the shortage of hdb carpark space? 

If this compaint is not justified, why do we now see contractors start to build more carparks in hdb estates?

Inadequate HDB Flats

Can we put the blame on the average citizens?

Most citizens don't have the means and time to speculate and make money from selling flats. Making a living is already a problem for many of us, where got energy. Probably there's a minority of them doing this.

Building and supplying of hdb flats is not the citizens' business. The price of the hdb flats has very much got to do with the supplier of the merchandise (public housing).

Many of the citizens are struggling to own a basic house. Those who 'can afford' a flat are struggling to pay off their loans which on calculation can be a 15 to 30 years affair (final price one paid  = can be almost double the purchase price).

Overcrowding

This is probably due to the import of foreign talents (FT) and the lack of land space - rembr the little-red-dot.

There are probably more humans than sheeps in this island here.

How to squeeze 6 millions in a tiny island ?

Think about it, if suddenly the foreigners' hostel is gonna build next to one of the ministers, will they make noise too?

At least average earners like us don't mind too much, anyway we stay in Jurong already can see many FTs around us. At least we don't complain. :)

Helping The Poor
What has these overcrowding/carpark/hdb flats issues got to do with taking care of the poor and shift the focus?

Most people if not all, are already putting aside certain amount of their salary to organisations like Cdac,Sindas. 'Poor man' like me also contribute 50cents/month out of my salary = S$6 /yr.
If just 1 million of us did that, that will sum up to S$6million/year.
We are talking about 1million poor man contributing, what abt if we add up the higher wage earners who are doing their part contributing to this pool? I reckon can be easily more than S$12 million/yr.
This huge amount of money can be put to good use for the poorer ones.

Every year charity tv shows, many responded by contributing $ thru' smses but alas realised that some of their money went to the wrong pockets.

Poor ones who have no food to eat, we try our best to provide them food to make it thru' the next day.

But at the end of the day, isn't that the job of the govt to take care of the poor ones, why suddenly become the responsibilty of the average wage earners? Tachi ?

What are your take on the below statement made in the below news?

Welcome your comments.

Sep 5, 2010

'Victims of own success'  By Irene Tham
'I want to put these challenges into perspective with the overall needs of our society,' said SM Goh. --

 

"SENIOR Minister Goh Chok Tong has chided Singaporeans for complaining too much about overcrowded trains and the lack of carpark spaces and public housing. He said that these were problems created by Singapore's success, and urged the nation to look at them in context.

'Problems created by own success moving very quickly from the Third world to the First world'  - added Mr SM Goh 

'I want to put these challenges into perspective with the overall needs of our society,' he said.

'There are still some poor people. Those who are disabled and those who needed help.'  ... " See Link