Monday, January 06, 2014

Are our Police competent?

I had high regard for Police but that regard has diminished in recent years. 

I helped several people to lodge two complaints to the Commercial Affairs Division on cheating cases, which had been going on for more than ten years. I had observed how the CAD carried out its investigation on both occasions, and my description is "irresponsible, incompetent and shameful". Even complaints to the Minister and the Prime Minister did not not make any difference.

We have now seen the response of the Police in the Little India riots on Dec 8.

My regard for several government agencies had also diminised considerably. I strongly dislike the attitude of passing the buck from one agency to another. We all know about the case of different types of birds being handled by different agencies - pushing the public from one agency to another or the question of which agency should deal with racing of cars on our roads in the early morning.

We also know about the rampant inflation of motor repairs which has been going on for more than two decades. No government agency wants to deal with this issue.

As a Singaporean, I am ashamed to make this statement, but it does not help if we turn a blind eye and pretend that this state of affairs is satisfactory.

Rate of traffic accident in Singapore

There are 6,500 road accidents each year involving fatalities and injuries. This is a rate of 1.2 per 1,000 people in a year. About 5% of these cases are fatal (i.e death) while the 95% involve major and minor injuries.

Incidence of breast cancer among women

Women are worried about breast cancer. These statistics may be helpful to put the risk into perspective. They can set aside some money to buy insurance against cancer (or other critical illness) but they should not spend too much money. 
http://c-onyx.com/page/1673

Loss of jobs due to retrenchment

In good times, about 10,000 workers are retrenched each year in Singapore, representing 0.6% of the workforce. During economic crises, the number can jump up to 20,000 or 1.2% of the workforce.

Over a working career of 40 years, about 40% of workers will be retrenched, on average. The real redundancy rate is likely to be higher, as some workers leave for another stated reason, but the real cause is likely to be retrenchment.

Report here:
http://stats.mom.gov.sg/Pages/Redundancy-Summary-Table.aspx

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