Commuters to the city in the morning rush hour are not keen to travel earlier to get free train rides because the allure of any money saved and more space on the train is outweighed by an extra hour of sleep, according to those interviewed.

Many also said it was pointless to go in earlier as there would be no work to do, or they are afraid of appearing to outdo their colleagues by getting in early.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced on Thursday that it would continue a scheme that gives free rides to 18 MRT stations before 7.45am on weekdays.

Commuters who arrive at those stations, which include Dhoby Ghaut, Marina Bay and Telok Ayer, between 7.45am and 8am will also get up to 50 cents off their fare.

The scheme is aimed at easing peak-hour congestion on trains.

The LTA said 7 per cent of commuters have consistently switched away from travelling during the morning peak hours. But of the 40 commuters The Straits Times spoke to over two days, only five changed their routine for the perk. The other 35 either already go to work early or are not enticed by the scheme.

“If I go in early, I can get more work done but everyone comes in and leaves at the same time. Why spoil the market?” said Mrs Esther Goh, an accountant in her 30s, using the local phrase for making others appear less hard-working.

But some agreed they would get up earlier if their employers encouraged and recognised the effort and let them leave early, or if they felt it would serve a good cause.

Mr Daryl Tan, 23, who takes the train to Raffles Place to get to his bank job, said he would travel earlier if he felt he was “saving the environment”. But for now, he has no motivation to change his routine.

“To take advantage of the scheme, I have to tap out (of the station) before 8am. That’s one hour earlier than the time I need to reach the office. Sacrificing one hour of sleep is not worth saving the $1.50 on my fare,” he said.

The main factor in getting more people to travel early is co-operation from companies, said recruitment firm owner Alvin Ang. Employees who are not allowed to leave early even if they start early have no incentive to change their habits.

An Asian work culture that glamorises working late also exacerbates the situation, he added.

Some form of job redesign to support a change may be necessary, said Mr David Ang, director of corporate services at human resources firm Human Capital Singapore, but industries that deal with overseas markets may have less flexibility.

One commuter who has made the switch is operations manager Vincent Teng, 31. “I started (doing so) because it cut my transport cost, but it’s also less of a hassle to travel before the peak hours,” he said.

“I don’t know about companies that give their employees early time out for coming in early, but it would be encouraging for more people to use the early trains if more companies do so.”

Ms Charlene Sia, 28, has been taking advantage of the free travel for about a year. Instead of going for yoga sessions in the evening, the tax associate attends early morning classes. “I feel more alert at work now because the exercise helps. Also, I used to be too tired to exercise after work, so this is a good way for me to make sure I do it,” she said.

She has saved about $100. She used to spend about $5 a day taking a private bus from her home in Pasir Ris to her office in Raffles Place.

This article was first published on June 25, 2016.
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The Housing Board (HDB) town of Punggol has notched several firsts as a model new town and now it can count its own visitor centre as among them.

To open in the later part of this year, the three-storey visitor centre in Punggol Town Plaza will house a gleaming showcase of the area’s development and boast a top-floor deck with a panoramic view of the Punggol Waterway.

The centrepiece, on the ground floor, will be an interactive 3D scale model of Punggol Town, with features such as key public housing projects, its transportation network as well as greenery and water bodies that can be lit up at the touch of a button.

Touchscreens will offer more information about the town, its iconic projects, such as the eco-friendly Treelodge@Punggol, and the upcoming smart and sustainable housing district in Punggol Northshore.

The centre will be open to the public as well as for organised visits.

The HDB called a tender last month for its design and development. It closed last week.

In response to queries, the HDB said the visitor centre would “enable residents and visitors to learn about the transformation of Punggol – from its early days as a fishing village to a sustainable waterfront town”.

It said that as the youngest HDB town, Punggol was “a good opportunity” for the Housing Board to “demonstrate sustainable urban planning and design, green technology adoption and active community partnership”.

For instance, Punggol Northshore is slated to be Singapore’s first smart and sustainable public housing district.

The “smart-enabled” homes will come with abundant digital infrastructure such as data ports so that home owners can easily install smart home features if needed, and public areas will have features such as sensor-controlled lighting.

The town has more than 40,000 units of public housing, and will have 96,000 homes when development is complete.

MP for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC Sun Xueling said having a centre such as this would “chronicle Singapore’s housing journey”.

“I am delighted Punggol has been chosen to showcase this,” she said.

“I hope the visitor centre will present a vision of what the creative cluster in Punggol will look like as this is something we look forward to,” Ms Sun said, referring to plans for grouping commercial activities.

While some residents said the centre could help them learn about the history of their town, there are others who do not see the need for a permanent display.

Stay-at-home father Brian Chee, 42, said: “Unless they keep updating the exhibits, it’s not somewhere we can go to again and again. I’d rather spend more time at the Punggol Waterway Park.”

Financial services ambassador Siti Nuraini Roslan, 31, said she would drop in if it hosts activities. She added: “I’m more interested in the upcoming facilities in our town. Hopefully, they will show more of that.”

This article was first published on June 25, 2016.
Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.

In 2014, Singapore enacted the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act, which came into force on Sept 25, 2014. Essentially, the Act makes it an offence for any entity to engage in conduct, or to condone conduct, causing or contributing to haze pollution in Singapore. Apart from criminal liability, the Act also creates statutory duties and civil liabilities.

The Act is unusual but not unprecedented in targeting conduct that occurs outside Singapore, and which causes or contributes to haze pollution in Singapore.

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, speaking in Parliament in August 2014, said the Act “is not intended to replace the laws and enforcement actions of other countries, but it is to complement the efforts of other countries to hold companies to account”. He added that “we, in Singapore, cannot simply wait and wishfully hope that the problem will be resolved on its own. The Singapore Government would want to send a strong signal that we will not tolerate the actions of errant companies that harm our environment and put at risk the health of our citizens”.

EXTRATERRITORIALITY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

There were mixed reactions to this law in Indonesia. Some parties expressed support for Singapore’s law. Others, including some Indonesian ministers, criticised the law on the grounds that it was a violation of Indonesia’s sovereignty. A typical comment was: “As it happened in Indonesia, it is part of Indonesia’s jurisdiction. If Singapore could easily try Indonesian citizens, it could be a violation of Indonesia’s sovereignty.”

The Singapore Government responded that the law was consistent with international law. It was drafted with the advice of international law experts and did not violate the sovereignty of any country.

The issue is whether it is permissible for a country to enact legislation that would have extraterritorial reach. The answer to this question turns on a proper understanding of the established principles of international law.

The general principle in international law is that states exercise jurisdiction on a territorial basis, namely, over persons, property and acts within its territory. However, there are exceptions to this principle.

One exception is a group of crimes that attract universal jurisdiction. Examples are piracy, genocide, torture, slavery, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes. For instance, under this exception, it is permissible for an Indonesian or Singapore court to try persons accused of committing piracy, such as Somali pirates, even if the acts of piracy occurred outside their respective maritime jurisdictions.

Another exception involves crimes committed outside a state’s territory but which have harmful effects on the state concerned.

There are many examples, including bribery and corruption, terrorism, cybercrimes and cyber attacks and pollution. Such an exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction can be justified under several principles of international law, notably the “objective territoriality principle”.

To argue that states cannot exercise such jurisdiction would mean that states are powerless to deal with a variety of situations where individuals, groups and corporations can, with impunity, carry out acts outside their territories which have harmful effects and consequences on them.

Schools in Singapore shut as regional haze reaches unhealthy levels

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AFP, Reuters, The Straits Times

INTERDEPENDENT WORLD

Indeed, the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) 2006 Report stated that “today, the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction by a state with respect to persons, property or acts outside its territory has become an increasingly common phenomenon”.

The ILC said this phenomenon is due largely to increased movements of persons beyond national borders, the growing number of multinational corporations, globalising of the world economy, increased transnational criminal activities, increased illegal migration and increased use of the Internet for legal or illegal purposes.

To that, we will add the growing interdependence between nations, and the undeniable fact that we live in a fragile environmental ecosystem, where harmful polluting activities in one country can cause serious harm, not only to its own people but to the people of other countries. The nature of transboundary offences necessarily means that multiple states do have a legitimate interest in bringing the offenders to justice.

It cannot therefore be said that any of these states would be acting in contravention of the offending state’s sovereignty by enforcing its own laws. Such a violation of sovereignty would arise in some cases, such as, for example, if a state were to send its firefighters into the territory of another state, without its consent, to put out a fire.

Clearly, Singapore’s legislation does not seek to do this. The law is enforced only when the party accused of causing the harmful act enters Singapore and comes within Singapore’s jurisdiction.

We should add that Indonesia itself has enacted laws that have extraterritorial reach, such as its laws on corruption and on electronic transactions.

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Reuters, AFP, The Straits Times, Berita Harian

CONCLUSION

In a previous contribution to The Straits Times, (“The haze, international law and global co-operation”, Oct 6, 2015), we discussed the principle of international law that a state has the sovereign right to exploit its natural resources, including its forests. However, that sovereign right is limited by a second principle, namely that a state has the responsibility to ensure that activities within its jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states.

We explained that there is a clear rule in international law that acts committed in one territory that cause environmental harm to the territory of another state constitute a legal wrong. It is, therefore, consistent with international law for Singapore to hold accountable individuals and companies that have caused the fires in Indonesia or elsewhere for that matter, and which have, in turn, caused the haze pollution in Singapore.

Singapore and Indonesia are close friends and partners. We are two of the founding members of ASEAN. Under Article 2, paragraph 2 of the ASEAN Charter, ASEAN and its member states are committed to adhering to the rule of law and upholding international law.

Indonesia insists that the haze issue be resolved under the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution. We agree that we should use the ASEAN agreement, as well as other bilateral, regional and international agreements, to solve this problem. However, such agreements cannot curtail Singapore’s right to take actions that are in compliance with international law.

Singapore’s Transboundary Haze Pollution Act is consistent with international law. It does not violate Indonesia’s sovereignty.

On the contrary, Indonesia should welcome Singapore’s law, which complements Indonesia’s efforts to hold accountable those errant companies and individuals that have acted in blatant disregard of the serious harm they have caused to the people of Indonesia as well as those of its neighbours.

Haze hits the region again in 2015

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AsiaOne, Reuters, AFP, Berita Harian, The Straits Times, Khoo G Vui

This article was first published on June 25, 2016.
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