Singapore Chocolate Factory

The National Integration Council announced plans for a $10m fund to facilitate efforts to help new immigrants integrate into the local community. The $10m fund can be used for co-funding of projects by private and public organizations or societies that promote social cohesion amongst citizens and new immigrants. In true Singapore fashion, the government wasted no time in packaging this initiative into a national media campaign and solicited the artistic community to lend a helping hand. Unexpectedly, the arts fraternity declined to take up the offer. The reasons given by the leaders of the community for declining the government's offer include the reluctance by the artists to engage in propaganda art as well as the basic difference in opinion for fostering social integration in Singapore. Many in the arts circle feel that the government's approach to try to create a common identity and culture amongst different community groups is the opposite of their vision of a celebration of diversity and promotion of healthy interaction and dialogue amongst the different groups. The artists' deliberate dissociation with the campaign seemed to me to be of an ideological and technical nature. For someone with little or no artistic talent or inclination, my concerns are much more prosaic and ordinary.

Let me begin with a story.

There is a factory that produces chocolates for sale. There are 20 bakers working in the factory and a manager to keep things running smoothly. Work is hot and stuffy but there is a big fan to keep things bearable and the bakers are satisfied with their jobs. As the factory is working well, orders for its chocolates started pouring in and the manager realizes that 20 bakers may not be enough to meet the orders. He wants to produce the numbers to present to higher management but is also worried about rising costs if he implements overtime pay for his bakers. He then sees some gardeners working outside the factory. He figures that chocolate-making isn't really a difficult art anyway and decides to employ the gardeners to be his new bakers. The gardeners, due to their inexperience, were much cheaper than the experienced bakers but they didn't mind since baking beats gardening anytime anyway. The manager got to meet his production numbers while keeping costs low. However, with the addition of the new bakers, the factory was getting more crowded and hotter and the bakers started complaining. The manager had to turn up the fan to its maximum speed to keep the temperature and tempers down. Some bakers warned that the fan was never meant to be operated at that speed for a prolonged period of time but the manager didn't listen. True enough, the fan soon broke down and the workers had to pool together a big sum of money out of their meagre pay to get the fan fixed since it is essential for their daily work. The manager did not contribute since he did not work directly with the bakers but spent most of his time in his air-conditioned office. He reminded the bakers that the fan was a luxury provided by the factory which should not be taken for granted and thus the factory should not be held liable for its repairs. The fan was nevertheless repaired with the bakers' money and the orders were met on time. For his leadership, the manager was awarded with an extra month of salary. Using the spare change from this his bonus, the manager bought a packet of sweets to be shared amongst his bakers for a job well done and encouraged them to take 5 minutes off to get to know each other better before starting work on the new orders.

Can anyone identify with the bakers in the story above? While $10m does sound like a lot of money, I consider this sum of money to be only the explicit cost of social integration of the new immigrants in Singapore. The implicit costs are way higher and I believe that the local populace, rather than the government, bears the bulk of this unintended burden. I feel that the roots of dissatisfaction of the local population with the new immigrants do not primarily lie in the cultural or racial differences. There will be undoubtedly small amounts of conflict arising from the differences in culture, race, language and religion between the local population and the new immigrants. Every now and then we will still have the minor disagreements with our neighbors and friends, regardless of their race, religion, sex or age. We have always been able to resolve these differences and I believe we will continue to do so if the differences are of this benign nature. The widespread discontent with new immigrants, spreading like wild fire within the media and cyberspace, is due to matters much more tangible and realistic; that of property, jobs and quality of life.

The effects that the influx of immigrants has had on property and jobs have been widely discussed. The strain the increasing population places on our transportation system is another no brainer which I do not wish to elaborate. What cannot be denied is that in more ways than one, the influx of immigrants does not seem to have caused a positive change in the lives of the majority of Singaporeans. In fact many will argue it is quite the opposite. The root causes of the social unrest remains unresolved. Furthermore these causes seems unlikely to be ratified any time soon. No amount of advertisements and posters protraying neighbours holding hands, exercising together or any other imagery of inter-racial harmony will change that. Some will argue that some improvement, no matter how insignificant and irrelevant, is still better than no improvement at all and I have to agree with that. One sweet is better than no sweets at all right? Years after the "Speak Good English" campaign, we still have a certain Miss Ris Low appearing on national TV to "boomz" the audience. This social integration effort by the council will follow a similar fate. Singaporeans will remember the campaign slogan, perhaps the campaign mascot as well. But the real healer to the social pains we are experiencing now will not be due to this initiative of the council. Instead it will be the uncanny ability of Singaporeans to endure, rationalize then accept the status quo. That is the true Singaporean virtue and that is how the immigrants will be accepted and integrated into Singapore.

But just take a moment to consider. If Singapore is indeed like a chocolate factory, are common Singaporean like the bakers? If the bakers paid for a fan they did not break, are Singaporeans paying for the effects of asset inflation and crushing debts which they were not responsible for? If the cheap sweets were scant consolation to the bakers, would a $10m sweetener from a multi-billion GDP (thus bonus) windfall make any difference to the common Singaporeans? We need to ask ourselves if the common Singaporean is indeed a baker and if benefits for the factory equates just rewards for the bakers. What is the rationale in what we are doing as a country and can there be a better way out? There are the questions we need to ask ourselves if we do not want to end up like a typical baker in the Singapore Chocolate Factory.