What I found MOST annoying is that ALL the hotel room cleaning stuff are from CHINA. HELLO?????? Hotel cannot find LOCAL PEOPLE to work as cleaning staff in Singapore? U need to EMPLOY FOREIGN STAFF IN SUCH SERVICE INDUSTRY???? I am very sure this is not some sort of talent exchange or intership ok.
So What? China people are more"Talented" than local in making bed? China people are more "talented" in sucking up dust from room? China people are more "talented" in changing bedsheets and towels? You are telling me that these are the jobs that LOCALs will not want to do, hence we need to source talents from china???? Can we at least keep such blue collar jobs within Singapore to strictly Singaporeans as 80% of the workforce? What I saw over the week was 100% china cleaning staff at least for my level and the the top level.
And even better still, when husband was trying to nap in the room due to jetlag, the 2 china male cleaning staff was CHATTING LOUDLY in China Mandarin and banging around as they go about doing their job. It was Sooooo immensely annoying enough to have someone talking loudly esp from the staff. So I have to ring up the "instant service" staff to get them to get their cleaning staff to shut up or at least LEARN TO TALK SOFTLY.
Then next morning when we were heading out for brunch, my husband spotted the china male staff. He told the guy if they could clean the room earlier that day since we will be back before 3pm. (We had prior experience that the room cleaning doesnt start until 3pm - 4pm and we couldnt nap because they would still be changing and packing etc). What annoyed my husband was the staff mumbled in MANDARIN and REFUSE or UNABLE to speak English. My husband was complaining to me "What the hell?! Why employ staff who cannot speak English?!" He was also annoyed with the overun of china people working in singapore, and he is not even a sg citizen to feel the pinch.
So now this is the scenerio in Singapore perceived by my return each time.
We have:
- Tele-Customer service being dominated by Filippinos and now China people.
- Home Maid service by Filippinos and Indonesians (which is understandable),
- Constructions and rubbish cleaning by Indian workers as well as China people now ((which is understandable)),
- Hotel cleaning staff dominated by China people ,
- Restaurants waitressing dominated by China people,
- Nursing increasingly more china nurses.
While I understand and agree that many locals would not want to work at constructions, maid and rubbish cleaning jobs, it is very very very very difficult for the govt to convince me that even the hotel, restaurant servicing industry we need "foreign Talent" from China. How much has really been done to give priority to locals? Strangely when I do not oppose to having Malaysian chinese in these areas. At least I think we share similar culture and we have such old historical link being neighbors and their slighly accented mandarin has become part of our culture too.
I simply detest the idea of my country being overrun by china people. We are NOT part of China, so why we accepting so many of them here? It is not the fear of competition, in fact it is not even about competition. What competition in the domains of service industry????
I just wonder if the immigration department really have the TRUE statistics and numbers of the actual figures of China people residing and working in Singapore. These inflood of china people remind me of locusts invasion. Taking and ransacking a territory in swarm and they do not leave until every good thing have been eaten up. I dislike this invasion because instead of
conforming to our culture, I felt that they are the ones forcing us to conform to them instead. Most of all, I hate their loud voices and talking. I feel like yelling at them to SHUT THE FK UP each time I hear them speaking in china mandarin at loud volume in the train, in the bus, in the mall, in the restaurants. I have friends from china. However just like even if you like your neighbour, it does not mean u will allow or tolerate your neighbor to covet your house and everything in it.
When I was back in Sg the last trip, I was watching this Secondary/ JC Mandarin competition on TV. We have top schools like Nanyang girls, NJC, Raffles Girls, Raffles boys. Each school has 3 representative. And you know what? It saddens me tremendously when every school is represented by China people. If its not all 3 china students, it is minimally 2 china student in each group. What happen to our local students? And if it is a team of 2 china vs 1 local, the local student somehow just didnt show the spark and "happy" to sit back and let the china students dominate the mic to win the scores because she doesnt want to be the one that "let the school down" no doubt. So this is the sort of "foreign talent" so widely promoted? Sure they are good, but do we need to compare? Can't we just produce our own talent instead? I was soooo disheartened by the program that I turn it off. It's all about winning...and no doubt the China students mandarin will be stronger than local students. It's just like a chinese student will never be as fluent in malay as a malay student. So can we limit the bright foreign students in such competitions and let our local students a chance to shine? Can we forget about the need to win so badly, and just think about exposure and experience for our own generation for once?
In the past, I love watching those interschool mandarin debating team and they were really good and they were ALL LOCAL STUDENTS. Even if we had foreign student in the team, at least the ratio back then was like 10 to 1. It didnt matter which school won.
And when u have so many china students here in the top schools, so where do the good but local students go? The next best school? Yeah equal opportunity and the best makes to the top. In my school years, the foreign students were the Asean scholars from Malaysia. I have 5 Asean scholars alone in my class. They definitely are bright and older than us. I didnt see them as competition strangely. Just because these foreign students are smart doesnt mean they brought the overall standard of the class up either. It is still an individual thing at the end of the day no matter what schools and ministries say. In my class, we still view the smartest local kids as the true competition, not the Asean scholars. And guess what? NONE of the Asean scholars we knew back in highschool stayed behind in Singapore. They either went back to Malaysia or went off to States or UK to further their career. We are still friends and still in touch. Our lifes move on. What competition and motivation? So it brought to mind, how many of such foreign students will stay behind and service this nation? Look at our china table tennis team... such a national joke. And see who our ex star player is marrying, her own people, not ours.
So question is, do we have a responsibility to groom our own brood and talent first since they are the one that we are passing the baton to in future? I say groom, not educate. I know I sound bias. I am I confess. Because I was born under a flag that is half red and white with a crescent and 5 stars, not a whole red flag with 5 stars.
In HK, I remember when I was applying for a job here, there were many criterias in the service industry that local citizens get priority over foreign applicants or some job are for locals only. Even for my regional job, I remember my boss had to write a letter of justification to the immigration for my work employment visa, as to why me over a local applicant. Well fortunately for me, experience and multilanguage work to my advantage. While there are workaround to this legislation, I was surprised but impressed with this local people protection. I am not even sure if Singapore has this law....
When I was talking to the HK property agent about the advantage of china boom and helping with the HK property market, I was told a very interesting fact. It appears that HK does not allow CHINA people to buy property there, unless the china national owns a non china passport/ citizenship. Interesting isnt it? Is that why non china passport is such a BIG thing with chinese people? And he went on to share that most rich chinese national would rather buy property in mainland like shanghai or BJ as their top choice than HK anycase (unless they married HK local), because at the end of the day, these chinese people rather go back to china. Even HK people can recognise where chinese nationals loyalty lies....
Sooner or later, if our national policies persist to let the country overrun with so many china people, alot of its own people will also sooner or later stop feeling patriotic to a country which we no longer recognise as our own.
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