Thursday, May 19, 2011

Business As Usual

Foreign content in water supply
In a statement on Tuesday, national water agency PUB said it had confirmed that the water from Block 686B, Woodlands Drive 73 was 'safe for consumption before the supply was restored'. The town council and PUB officers went door to door to reassure residents the water was safe for drinking and advised them to run their taps for five minutes as a precaution. The body of a 30-year-old Indonesian maid was found in the water tank of the affected block on Monday16 May at around 10 am. Only her murderer can tell us how long the putrefying corpse had been polluting the drinking supply. Contamination of water sources and the resulting transmission of infection may occur in a very limited number of cases when bodies are in contact with the water system and transmit gastro-enteritis. (WHO, Water Sanitation and Health)

No statement is expected to be issued by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources to assure citizens about the safety of the environment and water resources of Singapore. Maybe he is more concerned about floods which endangered his re-election barely a week ago. No statement will also be issued by Minster of Health about the efficacy of the washing, flushing and sterilising carried out on four affected water tanks by town council subcontractors such as Sergent Services Pte Ltd, employer of the murder suspect. Maybe he is still recovering from the blisters on his feet, after pounding the pavement to garner precious votes.

During the election hustings, opposition members took to task the security breach when two Bangladeshi port workers who dozed off in at Chittagong ended up in the Pasir Panjong Container Terminal in Singapore. Both could easily have been Al Qaeda zealots, armed with AK-47s and C4s. The water tanks at the Woodlands block could have laced with Sarin by similarly minded foreigners. No statement will be issued by the Minister of Home Affairs about the current status of homeland security, post-Wong Kan Seng complacency. As recent as 30 March, Shanmugam was challenging 29 teams from NUS, NTU and 4 polytechnics about the collaboration to come up with creative and innovative ways of improving homeland security.

After the election activities concluded on 8 May, all the ministers seem to have gone back into hibernation mode. The new cabinet line up will not change a thing. The sighting of men in white on the ground will once again be a rarity at wet markets and kopitiams.

5 comments:

  1. Yes..let's see if the leopard ever changes it spots. He wants gutter politics, he gets the gutter dept. So here's one good opportunity for the incoming Water MP to show his responsiveness and ability to "read the ground" concerns, right on his lap..deaf as usual?

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  2. As Singaporeans now demand for accountability and transparency in the government and also more capable opposition MPs in the parliament, the government will have the hard time to run this country. Don't get me wrong. This should be the case to achieve good governance as defined by the UN and not self-proclaimed good governance or good government. How could it be a good government or governance in the first place if the government is almost totally unaccountable and transparent to the people? PM Lee has done the right thing to change the ministers. There are still many change needed on the people's agenda and PM Lee has only 5 years to do all these changes. If he shows real changes, he will leave a good name in history and he may still be able to win the GE2011. But, to be really accountable and transparent the government may risk exposing dirty linens to the public. This will have great and far reaching impacts on PAP.

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  3. The ministars need a break after all that extra activity just before 7 may 2011.

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  4. Are they having the breaks up in their ivory towers?

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  5. The 40% did their part to make these PAP buggers come down a few levels from their ivory tower but I reckon it's not enough. It would help if the ivory tower is toppled by the less favoured. The inmates in changi will verify it takes nothing less than a severe setback before scums mend their ways.

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