Chin Kee Thou wrote in the Today forum pleading to the authority to consider local contractors in the award of contracts. We have been in the train business for about 40 years and there should be enough expertise to do it ourselves. Why continue to award contracts to foreigners, to be forever hoping for the transfer of know how to our local boys. China opened up for less than 40 years and they are building bullet trains on their own and many other things without the need for foreign talents. Or shall we wait to recruit train experts from the recently commissioned Mumbai LRT to run our trains as they would then be deemed as foreign talents and better than our no-talent locals even after so many years of running our train system?
Actually I am crossing over, or bought over by this craze for foreign talents. I think I am getting the disease. We really need more foreign talents or we will sink. Let’s have more of them. We have foreign talents in DBS and the bank is getting better and better. No bluff. And our stock exchange is so vibrant, the best in the world.
And we have quite a number of foreigners in the stats boards. Ok, let’s open up the ministries to foreign talents, and to make it more palatable, any position that is equivalent to the premier admin service the employee shall be given the pink IC to be seen as one of us. We can start by replacing our permanent secretaries, deputy secretaries and assistant secretaries with foreign talents.
I think all our senior civil servants will love the chance to work with foreigners as their bosses, more oomphs and creativity. They have been the ones pushing for this policy and they would not oppose it for sure. Let’s start with SPH, MHA and Mindef.
Chua Chin Leng aka redbean
* The writer blogs at mysingaporenews.blogspot.com