SINGAPORE – Singaporeans have been urged to be mindful of Covid-19 when carrying out their religious practices, as reports emerge that 95 Singaporeans had attended a mass religious gathering in Malaysia in which several cases of the coronavirus were confirmed.
Environment and Water Resources Minister Masagos Zulkifli said in a Facebook post on Thursday (March 12) that the Ministry of Health is in the midst of identifying and investigating the Singaporean attendees.
The event is believed to have taken place at a mosque on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur between Feb 27 and March 1, involving around 10,000 people from several countries.
The Malaysian authorities are currently tracking around 5,000 of its citizens who were at the gathering and who are believed to now have dispersed across the country.
In his post, Mr Masagos cited efforts made by the local Muslim community to limit contact as examples of good practices, coming at a time when the World Health Organisation has declared the outbreak a pandemic.
SINGAPORE – The Covid-19 outbreak will continue for some time – a year, and maybe longer – said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his second national address on the situation on Thursday (March 12).
But if Singaporeans keep up their guard and take practical precautions to protect themselves and their families, the country will be able to keep its economy going and people will be able to carry on with their daily lives, he said in a video address telecast over his social media platforms.
PM Lee also emphasised that the disease outbreak response level will not be stepped up to red, the highest level. It is currently at orange.
“We are not locking down our city like the Chinese, South Koreans or Italians have done. What we are doing now is to plan ahead for some of these more stringent measures, try them out, and prepare Singaporeans for when we actually need to implement them,” he said.
In his statement on the current situation – which he delivered in English, Chinese and Malay – PM Lee laid out the medical, economic and psychological impact of the coronavirus outbreak.
It appears to be that Singaporeans aren’t the only people who are patently kiasu. In a bid to ensure the hygiene of their hindquarters remains tip-top during the ongoing global pandemic, folks across the world have, like people here, swept shelves clean of toilet paper.
According to experts, the reasons behind the bum-rush range from the fear of missing out (can’t afford to lose out to our neighbours, after all) to survival instincts (gotta hoard as much basic necessities as we can). Thus why we hear of things like armed gangs in Hong Kong looting toilet rolls and supermarket shoppers in Australia getting into scuffles over it.
Getting violent over hoarding toilet paper? It’s an odd sentiment to the folks who’ve long dispensed the need to have a roll at hand all the time. Because who needs mounds of toilet paper when there’s this thing called a bidet?
The March school holidays are just around the corner, and with the coronavirus not tapering off any soon, overseas plans with the family may have to be put on hold.
If you’re at your wits’ end on what to do with the kiddos, we’ve compiled a list of kid-friendly places in Singapore to check out, and hopefully, it’ll take away the gloom and doom.
These places are also curated in reference to popular vacay destinations, so you can recreate your holiday in the comfort of our own country.
Police said they were alerted to a case of unnatural death on Thursday morning (March 12) when a body was discovered at the foot of an observation tower in MacRitchie Reservoir.
The deceased was a 50-year-old man.
The man was found lying motionless at the foot of Jelutong Tower where he was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
A screenshot of a bird-watching advisory on Facebook was previously circulating on messaging and social media apps in Singapore.
PHOTO: Screengrab/Facebook
Jelutong Tower, in the meantime, has been closed off to the public. It is normally frequented by visitors and bird watchers.
SINGAPORE – A 12-month conditional warning has been issued to a 21-year-old Singaporean man, known as Facebook user Edmund Zhong, who said he wanted to throw an egg at Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam in a Facebook comment in March 2019.
The police said in a statement on Wednesday (March 11) that their investigations have concluded and an advisory has also been issued to a 48-year-old Singaporean man who responded to the comment telling the younger netizen where Mr Shanmugam could be present at an upcoming Meet-the-People session.
The comments were made on a Channel NewsAsia Facebook post regarding the controversy surrounding Australian Senator Fraser Anning’s comments on the Christchurch shootings on March 15, 2019, that left 50 dead and dozens injured.
The right-wing senator, who was widely condemned for blaming the terror attacks on Muslims, was hit with an egg on the back of his head by a young man at a Melbourne event on March 16, 2019.
For at least 600 people, the offer was too good to resist, especially when prices had shot up by more than seven times from 20 cents a mask to $1.50 because of the coronavirus outbreak.
They forked out about $189,000 in total, with some ordering up to 4,000 boxes with the intention of reselling them.
They had been attracted by a listing on online marketplace Carousell by a seller with the username “diywallpaper”. The New Paper understands she is a woman in her 20s.
Advertising her wares as “Cheapest 50pc surgical mask three-ply S$12”, she claimed that other users were “selling this mask at a much higher price using my photos”.
She said the masks were made in Turkey and shipped from Turkey and the Netherlands.
In the end, none of the buyers received the boxes of masks they had ordered, and more than a hundred police reports were made against the seller.
But it seems that the seller might have been a victim of a scam.
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s labour market held steady in 2019, although unemployment rates edged up, according to a Ministry of Manpower (MOM) report released on Thursday (Mar 12).
Total employment growth in 2019, excluding foreign domestic workers, was the highest in five years, reflecting growth in both foreign and local employment.
But annual average unemployment rates were higher than a year ago for both citizens and residents, and the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed people declined.
“Given the continued increase in employment, this suggests possible mismatches in the labour market that bear closer monitoring,” said MOM.
Labour market trends for the fourth quarter of the year were mixed, with total employment growing at a slower pace and the long-term unemployment rate as well as retrenchments inching up.
In 2019, the annual average overall unemployment rate rose to 2.3 per cent from 2.1 per cent in 2018, holding steady in the last quarter of the year after trending upwards in previous quarters.
(Image: Ministry of Manpower)
Unemployment for residents increased to 3.1 per cent last year from 2.9 per cent the previous year, while that for Singaporeans stood at 3.3 per cent, up from 3 per cent in 2018.
The annual average resident long-term unemployment rate in 2019 was unchanged from 2018 at 0.7 per cent, but trends were mixed across age and education groups, with residents at both ends of the age spectrum and those with non-tertiary qualifications seeing a rise in long-term unemployment rate.
(Image: Ministry of Manpower)
FOREIGN EMPLOYMENT GROWTH MORE THAN DOUBLES
Total employment – excluding foreign domestic workers – grew by 57,000 in 2019, the largest increase in the past five years according to MOM.
This reflected continued growth in local employment and foreigner increases in the construction sector, said MOM.
The majority of the increase in employment was in the community, social and personal services, professional services, financial and insurance services and information and communications services sectors.
Foreign employment – excluding foreign domestic workers – grew by 28,700, more than double the 10,900 growth in 2018. This was largely driven by the construction (13,900) and services (15,100) sectors.
Employment growth among locals came in at 28,300, slightly lower than for foreigners and marking a small increase from the growth of 27,400 in 2018.
Local growth was boosted mainly by hiring in the services sector, including community, social and personal services, professional services, financial and insurance services and information and communications.
(Image: Ministry of Manpower)
Overall, retrenchments remained low in 2019, coming in at 10,690 and similar to the 10,730 retrenchments in 2018. The services sector continued to account for most retrenchments (7,000), mainly in wholesale trade, professional services and financial services.
However, the end of the year saw a slight uptick, with the number of people laid off in the fourth quarter of last year – 2,670 – slightly higher compared to the previous quarter as well as a year ago.
Business restructuring and reorganisation accounted for the bulk of retrenchments in the fourth quarter, as they did for the year as a whole.
As for job vacancies, there were fewer vacancies in December last year compared to a year ago, as employers exercised greater caution in hiring due to the uncertain business environment.
The seasonally adjusted ratio of job vacancies to unemployed people was unchanged in December (at 0.84) compared to September, as both the number of unemployed people as well as vacancies for the whole economy declined.
OUTLOOK FOR LABOUR MARKET SUBDUED
The outlook for the labour market is expected to be subdued, said MOM, given global economic uncertainties and the evolving COVID-19 outbreak.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, Singapore has downgraded its GDP growth forecast for 2020 to between -0.5 per cent and 1.5 per cent, with growth expected to come in at around 0.5 per cent.
“As the overall economic growth is projected to moderate, the outlook for the labour market is expected to be subdued,” said MOM in a statement.
However, there are “pockets of relative strength” in the Singapore economy that will continue to provide job opportunities, it added, such as the construction sector and information and communications sector.
Beyond near-term uncertainties, MOM also cited the longer-term challenges of “keeping our workforce relevant”.
The ministry highlighted the various initiatives announced in Budget 2020 including the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package and SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit as examples of support for workers and employers.
NTUC Assistant Secretary-General Patrick Tay expressed support for frontline and healthcare workers “in this difficult time”.
“For 2020, we have to stay prepared and resilient amidst the local and global uncertainty caused by the COVID19 pandemic,” he said in a Facebook post.
“In this difficult time, we stand alongside our frontline and healthcare workers, and also urge companies and workers including the freelance and self-employed to leverage the support and training schemes to utilise any downtime or business continuity arrangements.”
Facebook user Lee Yue Heng had commended the bus driver in a post on March 3 and said: “He drives Bus 187 in the morning and reaches my stop in Bukit Batok at around 7am.”
Lee, a teacher at Crest Secondary School, said that the bus captain not only greets everyone who boards his bus, but makes small talk with passengers during the journey too.
Lee also cited an incident where he noticed an elderly man with a cane walking slowly towards the bus and told the bus captain to wait for the man.
“My request was not necessary,” recounted Lee.
“‘That is my regular,'” the bus captain said. He was not going to leave without his regular.”
Not only does the bus captain drive in a “safe and steady” manner, he also watches out for everyone on board.
