This was written on 4 April and scheduled to appear when I am in China.
There is a letter in Today paper that suggests that foreigners should be required to pay higher fares than citizens. This is taking "differentiation" or "discrimination" to an extreme.
The person who made the suggestion thought that it is possible to impose this differentiation using the transit card, but he probably forgot that it was difficult to make the differentiation when the commuter opts to pay by cash, and many poorer and older citizens opt to pay cash.
I have been against unnecessary differentiation in our daily lives. Let the higher income people pay higher taxes and let foreigners pay a levy. After that is done, it is better to better to levy the same charges for transport, health care, education and other basic services needed by the people.
I have also read about the differentiation of GST vouchers according to the type of housing of the citizens. This has turned out to be a source of disputes. Some elderly people live in landed properties, which they bought at a low price several decades ago. They do not have any income and find GST to be a burden.They asked to be eligible for higher GST vouchers, but the request was repeatedly turned down by the Government. I am saddened by this type of differentiation of GST vouchers.
2 comments:
There is a letter published in the Straits Times, written by a PR called David Lim, who has two sons serving NS as citizens. He expressed the fear that people like him are feeling to be unwanted in Singapore.
The Minister for Health is now introducing a further "differentiation" in the fees for hospital services charged to Permanent Residents, compared to citizens.
As we introducing more differentiation in the services needed in our daily lives, we can expect to see a more complicated environment and more disputes between people in the differentiated categories.
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