Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Authorities act on money lenders

Parliament has passed the Money lender's Amendment Bill. Singaporeans can now celebrate. With this new law, the Police can now take action on this menace - the vandalism committed by loan sharks against the properties of the borrowers, and against innocent neighbors whose flats were vandalized by mistake.

It appears that in this law abiding country, there was no law against vandalism in the past - that the Police were powerless to act against the loan sharks and vandals under the existing law. Surely, this cannot be the situation in Singapore?

More worrisome is my feeling that the Police did not act, because they were waiting for a decision at the top level, that this problem needs to be tackled. It seems that we have now developed a culture in Singapore to avoid responsibility and initiative, and to wait for the "boss" to decide for us.

Tan Kin Lian

5 comments:

Parka said...

There isn't a law against vandalism?

Recently, during the infamous SingPost incident, police were roped in to investigate the vandalism of SingPost post boxes.

Anyway, the way police intervention, as I've seen in the past, is merely pasting a piece of paper by the side the flat, a document which says either the flat owner is innocent of have recently lost their IC, and that loansharks are to read that.

Anonymous said...

There is a penal code for vandalism and damage to public property. That's why Micheal Fay kenna caned on his arse.

Coming back to this loansharking and O$P$ problem, aren't the common corridors and walls in HDB flats considered public property? If so, then most of the time when splashing paint, urine, feaces, blood, etc the common areas also kenna. I.E. runners and loansharks should be subjected to mandatory caning.

Tan hwa said...

If I am not wrong,in the paper
say by police we are waiting for
someone to make a report.
Do they meant if they saw people
smoking in the non-smoking area,
they will ignore it till a report
is make by public.I think police
is the main law enforcer rather
than leave it solely to EVA

Anonymous said...

On the last paragraph of your post, KL, you don't need to worry because this is already a reality

Safety Vest said...

Well, if a private lenders disobeyed the law then they must be punished. But as long as they are abiding in the law I don't think they must be arrested.

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