Tampines Wood Estate. Thank you very much. They had to evict the residents! The residents said, "Look. Allow us to stay on. We will upkeep the garden for you." They said, "No dice. You get out." So they moved out. Grass grew and window panes were broken. So they offered these houses to the airlines. There were no takers. In the end, they had to get the former tenants back - those tenants who were living in their own houses and had to pay rent. What I was told was that those houses were not meant to be acquired but because of an administrative goof it was not plotted on the General Improvement Plan (GIP). You see, once a piece of land is developed, the houses will be plotted on the plan. In this case the plan for acquisition showed "lallang land" and therefore it was a very cheap piece of land, so it was red pencilled and marked out for acquisition. Later, they found that there were houses there, and they could not de-gazette it because this would create a precedent and would apply to other places. How could they gazette this? What happened? How do they justify this blunder? I do not know, This is one example. Then there was an example of a woman who lost her citizenship - in five minutes - and got it back after three rather naughty letters from me. I am not claiming any credit, but I just want to show an example of the Government machinery which operates with total ignorance of the real life situation of Singapore, our people, our culture. This woman met me and said that she lost her citizenship. I asked her how did she lose it. She said, "i don't know. I was told to go to the Identity Card Office with two photographs. They withdrew my pink identity card and gave me a blue identity card." I wrote to this Office. They replied that the date of birth on her old identity card did not tally with that in the Birth Certificate and she could not therefore prove that it was her Birth Certificate. Subsequent letters of appeal were written and I got the same reply. I sensed that this woman was wronged and so, in one of my meet-the-people sessions, I asked my staff to borrow a Chinese almanac from next door. On going through the almanac, I discovered that the date of birth on her old identity card was exactly the same as that shown in the Birth Certificate but it was based on the Chinese calendar. This is an old practice! So I wrote to the National Registration Office and Citizenship Registry and she got her citizenship back. My next question is: How many more such cases are there? The point is when we deal with our people, we must understand their cultural background. There should be a checklist so that even a non-Chinese officer who comes across such a case would be able to go through the checklist first before revoking the citizenship. I asked, "How many more such cases are there?" The officer replied, "We don't know, Mr Fong. I really don't know myself." This is one goof. How does one justify this? Then there is the Registry of Companies. The Management Services Department moved into the Registry of Companies and recommended that to save costs, the Registry should do away with the telephone operator and that each officer should have a direct line. So if you want to ring the Registry of Companies to speak to an officer on a certain subject, you will just have to ring any of these lines. But the very senior and highly paid "telephone operator" at the other end would say, "Sorry, this matter does not concern me. It is the other officer. Please ring this number. I cannot transfer the call because this is a direct line." For every six telephone calls I make, according to the law of averages there will be five wrong numbers! All this just to save the cost of a telephone operator? Justification of a blunder? They say it is efficiency! I remember when I was the Member for Stamford and before my "resettlement", I made a proposal to erect an overhead bridge at the High Street junction, so that traffic could proceed ahead. The only function of the traffic light there was to stop the traffic just to allow the pedestrians to cross the road. I received a reply saying that it could not be done because the site there was encumbered with underground services and they had no money. A few months later I saw construction work going on there. I rang the PWD and asked what was being done in my constituency. They said, "Oh, we are going to construct an overhead bridge." On hearing this, I vigorously opposed the idea. After about ten minutes of discussion, the officer said, "Well, if I am not mistaken, Mr Fong, it was your proposal that we are now talking about!" I said, "But then you told me the site was encumbered with underground services." He said, "Oh, we have now found out that it was not so." then while they were building the bridge, they issued a statement saying that the PWD was building it, I have nothing against them, Sir. They were doing good work. It is a natural tendency of the so-called experts and professionals that every time a layman, and an MP in particular, proposes an idea, they will not implement it even if they agree to it, because if a layman can provide a solution when the experts cannot, they should not be there any more. This is a typical example of cutting you down first because "we will do it ourselves.." This also happened in my proposal for the provision of canteen space in multi-storey buildings. I raised the question with the Ministry of the Environment at a meeting chaired by my colleague, the Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, with the URA representative. Their impression was this: "We build a multi-storey building. To put a canteen inside is un-becoming of a good architect?" The answer was no. It took them three months to reply to the Ministry of the Environment who conveyed their decision to me that it could not be done. A multi-storey building should not provide this kind of service because they expected the clerks and the sales girls to eat at the restaurant in that building? They would probably eat up their salary in three days! But, four months later it was declared as a matter of policy that multi-storey buildings should have canteen space for the staff! So they will slaughter you first, have the idea re-hashed, or re-born, so that it will be one up for that ministry. i am not challenging them for doing good work. Neither do I envy them. What I wish to inform Members is their attitude towards suggestions from Members of Parliament. Here is another very interesting case. We know that it is very difficult to get money from the Government. Sir, I claim the credit of getting one dollar from the Government. I was to be blamed, Sir, for delaying payment of my road tax. When I decided to pay, the tax went up! Rather unhappily, I went there to pay my road tax. The officer said, "Well, you have to pay so much now." Reluctantly, I paid. Six months later I received a letter. The only politeness in that letter was the word "please". It was a cyclostyled letter. That means there were many similar cases. The subject matter read: "Re: your car number .... short payment, $2. Please see the undersigned on receipt of this letter with your registration book ....", and so on. They made a mistake, and I received a cyclostyled letter saying, "Come and see me with your book" So I wrote in, not on Parliament letterhead for fear of being accused of browbeating the civil servants. (The Minister for the Environment here had accused me of trying to be a hero. I will come to that point later.) I inquired from them as to how I had short paid $2. They replied that the tax should be this amount and not that amount and so I had short paid $2. I wrote again saying, "When I approached the officer, I paid the amount as demanded. Therefore, there was no question of a short payment." They replied that there was a change in the tax rate and the officer in charge had miscalculated it, resulting in an under-collection of $2. I contended that "under-collection" is quite different from "short payment". In the case of a short payment the liability was mine. I asked them under which provision of the law that a member of the public has to pay to rectify a mistake of the Government. A reply came promptly, "Please be magnanimous. Pay the $2." We have to pay for our magnanimity! I wrote back saying, "In the spirit of magnanimity I will pay, but only on condition that you promise by return of post that you are prepared to pay for my transport cost to get down to your office, my time taken to attend to this matter and the cost of one registered letter." A reply came back again, "Please pay in order to be magnanimous." Finally, I told them that in the spirit of magnanimity, I would waive all charges except $3 as a token fine for their mistake. As a result, after the deduction of $2 which I owed them, they now owe me $11. I received a reply enclosing a receipt for $2 and $1 cash. That $1 is still in my file. I shall have to frame it up. (i did not indulge in illegal activity on receipt of the $1, Sir. I was tempted to do so, but as a good Member of Parliament, I did not.) I managed to get $1 out of a Government department. But I lost $19 in the end. I wrote them a letter, this time on my letter-head, saying that I did not do so in the past for the reason which I have stated earlier. Now that commonsense finally prevailed, there was cause for celebration. I did so in the form of a donation of $20 to the ROV Officers' Sports Club. $19 was my own donation and the $1 from the Government department for their penance. It was yet another justification for a mistake! They make a mistake, you pay for it, being a good citizen. I can go on, Sir, giving many other examples. But I am afraid you will rule me out of order. We have to confine ourselves to discussion of the general principles of the Budget Statement. The examples which I have quoted do illustrate that at times there are lapses in the Civil Service in implementing Government policies. We spend $603 million on manpower and salaries alone this year. I must state here, and I think the Minister for National Development would be pleased to hear it, that I do enjoy extremely good cooperation from the Resettlement Department. These officers were or are - I hope they still are - quite enlightened. But at times they can only be enlightened after I have enlightened them. There was a case of resettlement. A farmer was offered an alternative piece of land. There were two brothers and two pieces of land were offered. The elder brother moved in first. After some months the younger brother bought all the timber, planning to move in on to the new piece of land. But the elder brother said, "Don't, this land is again being acquired." So the younger brother did not move in, but in the end he lost all his claims for the original compensation on the grounds that he had failed to take occupation of the land offered. But the land offered was once again acquired. The matter lasted for six years until I went to the constituency. I charged the Resettlement Department for expropriation and then they agreed in the end to pay what they call "ex gratia payment". They cannot call it "compensation" because that would mean admitting their mistake. They had to justify their mistake by calling the payment "ex gratia payment". That is one example. Another example is that frequently we find that in resettlement cases a family will approach the Resettlement Department saying, "Can I have two units because my son is now married?" The standard reply reads, "When we did the census, there was only one family unit. We cannot now give you another unit." I took the matter up with the Resettlement Department and asked them to produce the law which says that once a family has been censured for resettlement, no member of the family can contract a marriage. I do know, Sir, that in my old constituency some places had been censured for resettlement but no clearance for ten years. We do not expect a young maiden to wait 10 years to get married! Does it mean that if a person gets married, he or she is not entitled to a house? Sir, on that argument the Resettlement Department relented and agreed to offer an additional unit, albeit on a rental basis. At least the family has a place to stay. There were several similar cases. On the same argument each of them obtained an additional unit. Fortunately or unfortunately, their brains did not stop working, as far as the resettlement officers are concerned. To my amusement, one day I received a letter from the Department in reply to a similar case of a request for an additional unit. It stated, "We regret to inform you that we are not able to offer you an additional unit on the grounds that your marriage was not consummated." Sir, for 17 years as a Member of Parliament, I have never come across such logic or argument, I replied to the Department and, among other things, I stated, "Since civilization began, a matter such as the consummation of a marriage is not normally done in the presence of a witness." The Housing Board took on the role of the High Court. They almost nullified the marriage. Only the High Court can decide whether or not a marriage is consummated and only upon a complaint by either of the parties. In this particular case, although there was no complaint, they ruled that the marriage was not consummated! See how do they justify a blunder? The reply to my two-page letter was indeed very short. "Please refer to your letter dated so-and-so. I am pleased to inform you that the couple has now been offered an additional unit." As I have said, I can go on giving examples. My intention here is to bring to the attention of the Ministry of Finance, the MSD, and particularly those people who implement policies, of the need to be flexible, humane, and to bear in mind the kind of people they are dealing with. Strict adherence to the rules is good. But they should allow some flexibility. Rules are made to guide the civil servants to work more efficiently and expeditiously. The Instruction Manual runs into three volumes. But they are based on past experiences to help the officers to discharge their duties in the most efficient, expeditious and humane way. But unfortunately, some of them allow themselves to be tied up in knots by the same Instruction Manual which is designed to help them. The examples which I have quoted are not that serious, but if we do not check all these minor lapses here and there, many citizens will be wronged. In the example of the identity card case which I quoted earlier, if that citizen were to approach a Member of Parliament who is not conversant with Chinese culture, she would have been wronged for the rest of her life. For one citizen to be wronged, that is bad enough, Sir. There is no recourse to litigation because if she were to go to court she could not prove that it was her certificate until a little detective work on culture was done by an MP. These lapses should remind us that there should be some check lists in the various Ministries. If they are confronted with a situation there should be a check list with which they can go through the various points before taking the rather unpleasant action, say, revoking the citizenship of a person. It is a serious matter, Sir. Regarding my query on how many more such cases, there was no answer. Since we spend $603 million on manpower and salaries, should there not be a special unit set up, perhaps under the MSD, to look into lapses like those I have just mentioned? The unit can propose some guidelines as to the degree of flexibility that can be allowed under certain circumstances. It is an unpleasant thing to have to resettle people but they generally accept that resettlement is for the benefit of the State. The principle should be that whilst no one should benefit from resettlement, neither should the people suffer as a result of it. It is therefore important that this special unit be set up as quickly as possible because as we increase the tempo of development, the officers tend to be more and more indifferent and they follow the book more and more. "After all, I draw a day's pay. I follow the guide book. If certain things cannot be done, they can see their Member of Parliament." A Member of Parliament can only offer to his people his sincerity, his willingness to work hard for his people, but he cannot offer all the solutions, still less provide answers for administrative stupidity. I do not think that is the role of the Member of Parliament. Fortunately, our meet-the-people session is a good bridge between the people and the Government. From our experience, we can gauge the general feelings of the population. But I do not think that is enough, Sir. What should be done is that the various departments should have their own guidelines on certain cases, particularly citizenship. It is a serious matter, and yet these guidelines are absent. They are merely following rules. And if the Minister for Finance can allow a provision in the MSD - first of all, the MSD themselves must be enlightened - and if all the Ministries were to suffer the same fate as the Registry of Companies where all the officers have direct lines, then we have to find another MSD to advise the MSD. It is important, Sir, that these lapses here and there should be checked. And it is all these grievances that sway the general mood of the people. On that note and with the hope in mind that the Senior Minister of State will respond to this suggestion to check the various lapses in the Ministry, I rather reluctantly associate myself in supporting the financial statement. It is painless and a rather mild surprise, because the pain will come afterwards. 6.49 p.m.