News update S'pore can't be flood-free

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Nee Soon South Community Day 2010 - at the Lower Seletar Reservoir Park. -- ST PHOTO: NEO XIAOBIN
Building Learning Infrastructures
IT IS not realistic to expect Singapore to be completely flood-free given its tropical climate but the Government will continue to implement new drainage works to prevent widespread floods, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Sunday.

In his first comments since the two flash floods this month, he said it would any attempt to wipe flood flooding her here would be very costly, requring huge spending and tracts of land.
'If you are going to do that, you will need huge tracts of land put aside for huge monsoon drains, which will be empty most of the time, (and) the infrastructure will cost a lot of money and it is not worth it,' he said at the opening of the new facilities at Lower Seletar Reservoir.

A more realistic objective, he added, is to prevent widespread and prolonged flooding, and limit the risk to lives and damage to property.
Assuring Singaporeans that the Government 'will continue to implement new drainage works, to improve the design of the drainage systems and deal with more intense storms', PM Lee said: 'But I don't think it is possible in Singapore to expect the place to be completely free of floods,' he said, as heavy downpours are very much part of the climate for an 'island in the tropics'.

He also stressed the need to have contingency plans for unusually heavy rain to ensure swift response in pinpointing the problem areas, dealing with them and 'putting them right', and ensuring that the massive floods of the scale that wreaked havoc in Orchard Road, Thomson Road, Bukit Timah and Tanjong Katong would not happen again.

'We have to learn from these episodes, do post-mortems, find out what happened, and upgrade our infrastructure and systems,' he said.

 

Just ask - How much is the salary as a domestic helper in Singapore ?

Hi Rosa in Singapore domestic helper on the average earns S$350 p/m if she's Filipino and S$250 p/m if she's from Indonesia or Sri-Lanka. The difference in salary is mainly due to the the fact that Philippino maids have a stronger, if not perfect command of English, are higher educated and usually more efficient in their work. There is a large number of 'maids' employed in Singapore, these are live-in girls usually from the Philippines or Indonesia. They are common both in expatriate and Singaporean households, especially when both husband and wife work. Common tasks for maids is overall house cleaning, washing, ironing, cooking and taking care of the children.

On top of the salary, the employer is expected to pay one round-trip ticket to her home country per year. These tickets are usually quite reasonably priced and most airlines have special discounted rates for maids. If the maid chooses not to return to her home country, the equivelant of the ticket should be paid out to her in cash. Furthermore, the employer is responsible for supplying the maid with a food and lodging, While most maids have one off-day per week (and some one off-day per month),as a employer they have additional costs for your live-in maid, they will have to pay a S$345 p/m levy to the government and a S$5000 immigration bond. This bond will only have to be paid in case your maid brakes the law or terms of her work permit. The government and agency in Singapore is taking a proactive approach for foreign domestic helper to help ease maid and make them feel at home in Singapore.


Tour to help ease maids in
New scheme includes info on local festivals, help on stress relief
By Melissa Sim

Foreign domestic workers being briefed yesterday on how Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore. They were on a tour of historical and cultural sites in Singapore as part of a programme to help them feel more at home here. -- PHOTO: MINISTRY OF MANPOWER
THIRTY foreign domestic workers were given a tour of a few historical and cultural sites in Singapore yesterday as part of a new programme to help them feel more at home in the country.

The four-month pilot 'Settling In' Programme (SIP), which started yesterday, is run by the Foreign Domestic Worker Association for Skills Training (Fast), a non-profit organisation.
The first stop of the morning was Raffles' Landing Site along the Singapore River. For many of the participants, this was their first glimpse of Singapore's founder Sir Stamford Raffles - not to mention, the river.
They also toured the Merlion Park, Chinatown and the Kampong Glam Heritage Village, passing through Little India and Orchard Road.
Earlier in the morning, they had learnt about Singapore's various festivals and received a quick Mandarin lesson of common terms and greetings.
Employer Peggy Leong, an administrative officer in her early 40s, said she immediately signed her helper up for the programme after reading about it in The Sunday Times

Trade in domestic helpers: Causes, mechanisms, and consequences