Yesterday’s Parliament sitting opened with Speaker Halimah Yacob declaring the seat held by Bukit Batok MP David Ong vacant.

The House also debated and passed three Bills.

Making transfer appeals transparent

The school transfer process is fairer and more transparent if schools are allowed to consider transfer appeals only from students who meet their cut-off points.

Explaining the new rule that stipulates this, Acting Minister for Education (Schools) Ng Chee Meng said taking in transfer students based on other non-academic criteria is not fair to students who did better at the Primary School Leaving Examination, but did not get posted to the schools.

Suicide risk test for students in distress

Not all students are assessed for suicide risk when they are asked to help in police investigations, said Mr Ng.

He said such screening may distress or confuse students who have not contemplated suicide.

School counsellors conduct such assessments only for those students who show signs of serious emotional distress or are known to have mental health issues.

New ERP system for congested roads

A decision has not been made yet on whether the new electronic road pricing (ERP) system will be implemented islandwide.

Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan said the satellite ERP system, which will go live in 2020, will be used only on congested roads for a start.

Shops can’t show tobacco products

Shop owners will not be allowed to display their tobacco products from next year, to prevent impulse buys.

Under the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) (Amendment) Bill passed yesterday, products such as cigarettes and cigars, will have to be hidden from plain sight in shops.

New law passed on mental capacity

People who lose the mental ability to make key decisions on their personal welfare and financial matters will get more help and protection under the law.

A Bill to update the Mental Capacity Act, passed yesterday, will allow the courts to appoint paid professionals such as lawyers or social workers to make decisions on behalf of the mentally incapacitated.

The courts can also step in earlier if the people given the power to make proxy decisions are not up to the task.

This article was first published on March 15, 2016.
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The waiting time for a taxi is still the biggest bugbear for commuters, though it has improved since 2013, according to an annual study of taxi service quality.

The survey by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) found that while 96.4 per cent of the 1,200 respondents felt waiting time to be important, just 86.2 per cent said they were satisfied with the time they actually had to wait.

The gap between their expectation and satisfaction of about 10.2 percentage points was the widest of all attributes surveyed, said the LTA. “From the survey, commuters feel that taxi services could be further improved in the area of taxi waiting times,” it said.

Besides waiting time, respondents in the Taxi Customer Satisfaction Survey, now in its third year, were also asked to rate safety, driver knowledge of routes, customer service, comfort, ease of booking, taxi-stand accessibility, and information on taxi services.

These attributes registered smaller gaps between expectation and satisfaction of 1.5 percentage points to 7.3 percentage points.

The survey, conducted in August and September last year, polled regular taxi commuters aged 15 and above at cab stands.

Marketing manager Victoria Barker, 30, said: “At my workplace in Circular Road, it can be tricky to get a cab during (the) evening peak hours… The waiting time can be as long as half an hour.”

But while the gap for waiting times still needs improvement, it has “shown an encouraging trend of continued improvement”, said the LTA. In 2014, the difference was 11.8 percentage points, and in 2013, 15.5 percentage points.

The LTA put the improvement down in part to measures it took to increase taxi availability. Last year, 90.8 per cent of the 28,000 taxis here plied the roads during peak hours, up from 82.4 per cent in 2012.

Under a taxi availability framework it implemented in 2013, cab operators must ensure the bulk of their fleets are on the roads during peak hours, or face financial penalties.

The LTA said private-hire car services such as Uber and GrabCar have also provided commuters with an alternative option, resulting in improved waiting times for cabs.

Overall, however, commuters are generally satisfied with the quality of taxi services. Around 97.3 per cent of respondents felt so, which is only a slight dip of 0.8 percentage point from 2014.

Nonetheless, the persistent service gap could be why a growing proportion of respondents feel more cabs should be on the roads.

Around 42.9 per cent of those surveyed last year said taxi availability standards should be raised, compared with 29.2 per cent in 2014.

National Taxi Association executive adviser Ang Hin Kee said this may not cut waiting times but could lead to drivers cruising empty on the roads. Instead, demand and supply can be better met through the wider use of third-party cab-booking apps, he said.

“Cabbies don’t have to depend on visually spotting passengers, or going to taxi stands.”

Commuter Nurul Syuhaida, a 28-year-old translator, said. “I live in Bukit Batok and it can take up to 20 minutes to flag down a cab during the weekends. If I use an app to book, it takes just five minutes.”

The LTA said that for next year’s report, it will include questions on customer satisfaction with third- party taxi-booking apps and private- hire car services.

adrianl@sph.com.sg

97.3 per cent

COMMUTER SATISFACTION IN 2015

98.1 per cent

COMMUTER SATISFACTION IN 2014

95.6 per cent

COMMUTER SATISFACTION IN 2013

This article was first published on March 15, 2016.
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Shop owners will not be allowed to keep tobacco products in plain sight from next year, after Parliament approved changes to the law yesterday.

The affected products include cigarettes, cigars, beedis and “ang hoon”, or loose tobacco leaves.

The display ban is intended to prevent impulse buys, especially among young people.

Rules on online tobacco advertisements will also be tightened. For example, ads that come from Singapore will be banned, even if they are not targeted at Singaporeans.

“With the expansion of online access, there is increasing use of the Internet for tobacco advertising and commerce,” said Senior Minister of State for Health Amy Khor in moving the Bill.

She said Singapore should ensure that its curbs on tobacco advertising are comprehensive.

As for the 17 shops that specialise in selling tobacco products, Dr Khor said they would be allowed to display them, as long as the products are not visible from outside the shops.

In response to queries from MPs, she added that duty-free shops at Changi Airport would be exempt from the new rules for now, while those at seaports would have to follow modified rules similar to those for specialist tobacco shops.

MPs welcomed the move, with some like Dr Fatimah Lateef (Marine Parade GRC) reeling off a string of smoking-related ailments to stress the importance of anti- smoking measures.

Mr Louis Ng (Nee Soon GRC) even recounted his own efforts at kicking the habit, recalling how the nicotine withdrawal symptoms made him “a Grouchy Smurf “.

“If there was one thing I remember about the quitting process, it was that I did my very best to avoid places selling cigarettes,” he said. “Every time I saw a cigarette packet… my cravings shot up.”

Others, such as Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong GRC), Ms Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon GRC) and Dr Chia Shi-Lu (Tanjong Pagar GRC), called for even stricter measures to curb smoking rates.

Suggestions included raising the minimum legal age for buying cigarettes and increasing the number of designated smoking zones.

It was even suggested that smoking be made illegal for those born after a certain year. This would not disadvantage current smokers, said Dr Tan, who is a medical oncologist by training.

“But over time, there would be fewer smokers and less harm caused by second-hand smoke,” he added.

Dr Khor said the Health Ministry has given this proposal much thought, but is not fully convinced of its effectiveness.

“Our concerns are the significant practical difficulties and risks in implementing and enforcing such a ban,” she said, adding that it may not even cut smoking rates.

She added that enforcement would be “challenging” and “resource-intensive”, and that it would also require laws to penalise people who buy cigarettes for those affected by the ban.

linettel@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 15, 2016.
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COMPANIES that anchor their “pioneering activities” in Singapore which bring significant benefits to the country will enjoy greater tax incentives, after Parliament passed amendments to the Economic Expansion Incentives Act on Monday.

Firms that are awarded the “pioneer certificate” by the government will be entitled to the maximum tax relief period of 15 years for each activity, instead of for the company as a whole.

Currently, a company is awarded multiple certificates when it anchors different qualifying economic activities in Singapore over time. It gets the maximum tax relief regardless of the number of certificates it owns.

The changes were outlined by Minister for Trade and Industry (Trade) Lim Hng Kiang during a short debate on the Bill.

He added that the government has awarded pioneer certificates to 239 companies over the past 10 years, with 71 of them getting the certificates between 2011 and 2015. Of this group of 71, two were small and medium-sized enterprises, of which one was a local firm.

“(Pioneer certificates) require companies to commit to economic contributions of substantive scale, and therefore it is quite natural that the bigger companies would tend to qualify,” said Mr Lim.

The amended Bill also affects the existing Development and Expansion Incentive (DEI), which was introduced to encourage companies to expand by investing in technology as well as major upgrading of equipment and operations.

Under the Bill, the tax relief period under the DEI is generally capped at 20 years and currently applied on the company instead of the incentivised qualifying activities.

“These enhancements will encourage companies engaged in high value-added manufacturing or services activities, including existing ones, to continue to expand in Singapore,” said Mr Lim.

The aim of both the pioneer certificate and the DEI is to encourage companies to undertake substantive economic activities in Singapore, which would in turn create good jobs for Singaporeans and bring spin-offs to the economy.

“The objective is to encourage ‘queen bees’ with regard to commerce to set up operations here and thereby help build a cluster around them,” said Mr Lim.

“Applications are assessed based on the scale and the qualitative aspects of their economic contributions to Singapore. The exact level of support is thereafter calibrated to be commensurate with the level of economic contributions from the company,” he added.

Separately, Parliament approved laws that will require stores to keep tobacco products such as cigarettes out of sight, and to sell them to customers only when requested. This will take effect from 2017.

Under approved amendments to the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) Bill, retailers will be allowed to display only a standard format, text-only price list upon request.

The appearance of this list will be prescribed by the Ministry of Health.

The ban on the point-of-sale display is meant to “de-normalise” tobacco use in Singapore and reduce the exposure of non-smokers to such products, said Senior Minister of State for Health Amy Khor.

Tobacco retailers will be given a one-year grace period before the point-of-sale display ban takes effect, she said, adding that the government has engaged retailers extensively since 2014.

Dr Khor shared that Singapore’s smoking rate stood at 13.3 per cent in 2013. Worldwide, tobacco is the cause of about six million deaths every year.

More than five million of those deaths are a result of direct tobacco use, while more than 600,000 are due to exposure to second-hand smoke.

leeuwen@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on March 15, 2016.
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