Sunday Mail (London) 2-2-75

Mahathir: Why we cannot tax the rich too much.

The government cannot tax the rich too much in order to continue helping the poor, Education Minister Dr Mahathir said.

"If we do so, the rich will not try to make more money. On the other hand, the poor cannot depend too much on the government for help. The government must be moderate and fair to all."

In reference to the recent controversy over Baling, Dr Mahathir said it was wrong to say that anyone had died of starvation in Malaysia because God had blessed the country with fertile land and abundant rain.

"To say that we will die from starvation is to be ungrateful to God," he said.

24-6-75

Penang Malays Receive Little Benefit from Present Developments

Penang state UMNO today criticised the chairman of the National Umno general assembly. Tan Sri Nik Ahmad Kamil, for not allowing the Penang delegation to speak during the debate on the vote of thanks for the President's Speech.

The head of the Penang delegation, Encik Yusof Latif disclosed that the Penang delegates wanted to discuss the position of Malays here who, they felt, had received very little benefit from the present intensive economic and industrial developments.

"If there are such benefits, they are enjoyed by a handful of bumiputras," he added.

6-6-75

A Close Watch on Output of Grads

The fears that there will be "over flooding" of professionals in Singapore because of the government's emphasis on paper qualifications have been described as unfounded. According to Mr Bernard Chen, Deputy Secretary (Development Division), Ministry of Finance, the government was keeping close watch on the percentage of professionals, engineers, technicians, craftsmen and artisans being turned out of the universities, colleges, technical and vocational institutes to the working population. He said: "By 1979, when the present restructuring of the educational system is phased into secondary schools, 50% of the students will be pursuing what is known as a general educational system while the rest will be given technical and apprenticeship type of training.

Mr Chua Soo Tian, chief of manpower and training at the Economic Development Board, said as long as a competitive situation was maintained, only the best would become professionals.

2-6-75

3,200 Who Died at Work Sites

The need to check a distressing feature of the workshop scene—mounting industrial accidents—was stressed in TV Singapore's Economic Report programme last night. The survey pointed to an increase last year of 200 such accidents of 1973, to bring the total to 3,200 and said that, it was proposed to impose heavier fines for contravening the safety clauses of the Factories Act.

The secretary. Occupational Health and Safety Committee of the NTUC, and a Member of Parliament, Mr Ivan Baptist, said: "Many people have been killed in Singapore last year and even early this year in both the building-construction and the shipbuilding industry. A lot of these accidents result from falls or asphyxia in the shipbuilding industry."

He recalled that a woman was killed when the hair on her head was scalped in a factory in the manufacturing sector. From time to time many construction workers fell from buildings. "It is all due to personal failure which results in unsafe acts and conditions," he said.

12-6-75

Inflation is Out-running Wages . . .

The average industrial worker in Singapore is earning less, in terms of real wages, than he was six years ago.

And although the total value-added in the manufacturing sector has nearly quadrupled in this period, the share of the workers' wages in this rapid growth has dropped sharply in the last two years from a steady 36 percent to barely 29 percent.

In fact, in the past two years, inflation and the ensuing economic slowdown have eroded whatever gains the industrial worker had made in the four years previous to 1973.

It appears that the industrial worker has borne, more than any other group, the brunt of the economic problems that the island republic has been experiencing of late.

As the accompanying chart shows the average worker's standing vis-a-vis the manufacturing sector as a whole has weakened significantly on two fronts.

Firstly, because the consumer price index rose more sharply than the rise in real wages, a worker's real earnings last year were reduced to 16.6 percent below their 1972 level. Even against the 1967 level they are 3.7 percent lower.

In 1973 and 1974, consumer prices jumped by 22-9 percent and 22.3 percent respectively, but average annual money wages rose only by 14.5 percent and 9.5 percent.

Real wages per worker, therefore, fell by 6.9 percent in 1973 and still more sharply by 10.5 percent the following year.

Last year, although nominal wages reached a peak of $4,763 a year per worker, in real terms they amounted to only $3,136, lower than when Singapore's industrialisation process first got off the ground.

Second, the rise in the nominal wages lagged far behind the corresponding rise in value-added (or productivity) per worker.

Up to 1972, the rise in average annual wage per worker had been keeping pace with the rise in value-added per worker, so that wage increases did match productivity increases.

In 1973, however, productivity per worker climbed by 23.8 percent, while wages per worker rose by only 14.5 percent. This gap widened even more the next year, so that for 1973 cumulatively value-added was 58.3 percent higher compared to the mere 25.3 percent wage increase.

Seen another way, this has produced a rapid shrinking of the wages share of total value-added in the manufacturing sector, from 36.6 percent in 1972 to only 29 percent last year.

It exposed once and for all, the white lies propagated and clamoured by the Singapore Government of the economic improvements enjoyed by the working masses with Industrialisation. With rampant inflation and meagre wage increases the economic plight of the working class has in fact been aggravated ever since Singapore jumped into the Multinationals' bandwagon for Industrialisation. On the other hand, productivity has increased substantially and the exploiters are reaping record profits. And all this while, the Singapore Government is whining that wage increases this year must be modest and that productivity must increase—to overcome the recession.

The Singapore Government is trying further to prostitute her cheap and 'disciplined' labour force to the multinationals by proposing to extend the Tax Holiday for Pioneer Industries from the present five years to ten.)

((A week after the above article was published, the Ministry of Finance tried vainly to discredit and cover up the facts. It manipulated and distorted the figures and as expected produced a chart showing the workers' wages on a rising curve!!))

(((In the meantime, the Government's puppet trade union, NTUC with Devan Nair as its chief scab, is frantically echoing the Government's Labour Policy of self-restraint to seduce investments.)))

4-6-75

Devan: Singapore and the World Economic Crisis

We decided that, in our own real interests, wage costs in Singapore must not be allowed to outrun wage costs in other developing countries. Wage increases this year must therefore be modest ...."

"But our economy is competitive with regard to countries like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea.

"In Hong Kong, wages in certain sectors have actually declined. This means that their production costs go down and the prices of Hong Kong made goods also go down in export markets.

"So if Singapore is not careful, comparable goods which we manufacture here will be priced out of export markets.

'This would lead to the closing down of factories and to unemployment."

"If Singapore's wage costs went up too high, industrial investment capital would tend to gravitate away from Singapore towards countries like South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines.

"This would mean no new job creation for the thousands of young people who join the labour market every year."