THE CURSED SINGAPOREANS

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Last night’s Channel News Asia talk programme on whether the govt has alienated the PRs with the recent housing curbs and other measures drew out one important and very basic issue, ie, a roof over the heads of PRs and citizens. Having a roof over the head is so basic that it should be provided by any responsible and thinking govt. There is no need to be a super talent to even think of this. All the participants, locals and foreigners, agreed that a roof is a basic need.

And they also agreed on another point. How could the govt brought in so many people without thinking of the basic infrastructure, especially housing? In whatever forms, housing is a must. And they too agreed it was due to the inept policy of not building. And now we have this very serious problem of housing prices that is going to be a curse to all those with a big housing loan.

In today’s Today paper, the writer, Ku Swee Yong, was talking about buyers taking up $500k loan for a 5 rm resale HDB flat or a $1.3m loan for an EC as if it is a monopoly game. A $1.3m loan over 30 years will come to at least $2m in total payment, just for a few pieces of mortars around a small space. How much do the bricks and cement, some wirings and fittings cost?

This is a general curse on the Sinkies who were made to buy public housing at such prices and to pay using a big chunk of their income, and praying that they would be earning that income for 30 years with both not losing their jobs.

The biggest group that is cursed is those Singaporeans that were barred from buying public housing through all the spurious reasoning. With private properties at more than a million, how could they force citizens to buy private properties and not be allowed to buy public housing that are also not cheap? And when should citizens be made to buy from resale market like PRs and pay another few hundred thousands more for the same flat? Any Singaporean that is not allowed to buy public housing is as good as being cursed when foreigners turned new citizens could do so.

The govt owes every Singaporean a right, yes the right to buy a public housing flat. The govt has a case to answer to these Singaporeans who are disallowed to buy public housing as the problem is caused by under building and nothing else.

Chua Chin Leng AKA Redbean

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