After the destruction of one of SG’s heritage and brushing aside the vehement protest about Bidadari’s cemetery redevelopment, S’poreans are once again reminded of the dead making way for the living, and now the Sengkang West columbarium of the living making way for the dead. The flipflopping excuse of governing for the living and now-living dead (i.e., non-religious registered commercial businessmen running columbarium business) become sound reason to hoodwink neighbouring flat buyers using fine-print in sales brochures and omission of facts about a specific commercial columbarium towering next to it.
Peering behind the ghostly scheme of the PAP govt insistence on expanding SG’s population according to their roadmap of 6.9m (10m according to PAP boy-scout Liu Thai Ker), it’s timely with the Sengkang West columbarium brouhaha to demand the PAP govt make clear it’s plan for the future for the dead and living.
The PAP govt has not used it’s mouthpiece mainstream media to be more transparent (as always) on informing citizens about news on the dead. What’s the future plan (in obscure webpage?) for Mount Vernon Sanctuary, home to more than 20,000 niches stored in the columbarium blocks? How about Chua Chu Kang’s and Mandai’s? Are those 2 government-managed columbariums going to be privatized and monetized as what is being done to Sengkang West constituency? Is there a shift in PAP ideology to have niches for the dead as asset enhancement (upward spiralling market price with limited land availability in SG) just like HDB flats so that downgrading and lease-buyback kind of jazz can be pedaled to sitting duck citizens for retirement supplement etc?
Today we have funeral parlours offering embalming services located in Geylang Bahru, Toa Payoh Industrial Park, Sin Ming and Lavender Street. Are the relevant authorities (NEA, HDB, URA and especially MND) going to create new funeral parlours (please, no generic “ancilliary services” fine print) and in which estate? Fine-print and ommission of specific ancilliary services in sales brochure for hundreds of thousands of dollars HDB flats are not the way to conduct honest business and governance of a nation! It’s not peanuts!
The National Environment Agency (NEA), Housing Board and Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) as always are closely related to MND; previously under the ambit of disgraced ex-Minister Mah Bow Tan and now Khaw Boon Wan (ex-Health minister). Both had track records of underbuilding public facilities (with surplus budget going into reserve for Temasek Holdings to squander?), and fueling high cost of public flats and healthcare cost, not to mention insufficient properties and hospital beds to match PAP’s foreigner influx policy for more than a decade.
Recap Mah Bow Tan under-building HDB flats to escalate new HDB flat prices beyond the average S’porean’s reach, over-used the word “affordability” and was promptly “sacked” after GE2011 to salvage some semblance of accountability to citizens for PM Lee Hsien Loong. Worth mentioning though, this PAP ex-MND cabinet minister was extremely rich and did become the #5 biggest shareholder of GSH Corporation in 2014. The 2013 annual report shows that Mr Mah owned (as at 18 Mar 2014) 365,575,000 shares with a current market value of about S$28 million (based on stock price of 7.7 cents). Ex-MND minister Mah Bow Tan had demonstrated that under-building for the living can still be enriching for him. One probably would need to consult some medium to know whether the current MND minister Khaw Boon Wan would become rich by underbuilding facilities for the dead, through the living-dead, and overusing the words “ancilliary services”!
I say, let the living and the dead bury the dead. The latter ‘dead’ being the PAP government, dead to the voice of Singaporeans they are supposed to serve!
5starmoon