How to encourage the folks to start businesses when the government is at it again. Closing down three eateries on Yio Chu Kang Rd for traffic reasons. It is such stupidity that, I sidetrack, the fashion industry in Singapore went kaput.
The leather industry and all of its strongholds in Geylang, such as blocks 1010, 1013, 1014, 1015 Geylang East Ave 3, which is by the way just a tiny fraction of what was available, has been reduced to a pathetic state. These few blocks alone housed more than 300 leather businesses. Therefore, how is it possible that we are reduced to a state where people like my customers have to go online not knowing where exactly to find leather craftsmen?
As a result, among South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, ie the four economic tigers of the Pacific Rim, Singapore is the most culturally dry with regards to fashion. We don’t exactly beat them in the games of knowledge hub, medical hub etc either, which our government seem to continuously suggest we come in tops.
Tell me that the momentum of the thriving leather industry, or any industry at all, can come to a sudden halt without the weight of the government, just as what is happening to the eateries on Yio Chu Language Rd. And we have to thank the government for our economic success. Yup we had alot of problems like Malaysia and Indonesia blah blah. So did Korea and their north-south divide. How about Taiwan and their mainland Chinese neighbours?
Singapore is small blah blah, no space for manufacturing base blah… Given Singapore’s serious entrepot status that proved a real competition to the other tigers, there would definitely have been solutions around the problem.
Singapore could equally have become a fashion center like the other three tigers but no.
For every one business the government puts out of business, it needs to create a few more jobs to absorb the displaced souls into the economy. The strategy of turning Singapore into a knowledge-based hub, ie medical, IT etc etc is insufficient because it at best but subjugates our citizens into pawns of the economic structure. The alternate reality of the present is that in which many more citizens are proud owners of family owned businesses with a few decades’ history, already expanded overseas. This is in contrast to the situation now where ever-increasing numbers of locals have to scramble against immigrants for higher paying jobs. And then you tell us you want to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, NOW, when it could already have been here NOW.
Government, if you don’t want to help, fine, just get out of the way. Don’t act smart.
By the way, coming back, I think your solution of evicting the three businesses on Yio Chu Kang is once again a familiar over-reaction to the complains of an overwhelming number of phantom displeased residents.
Keching 