Tag Archives: civil service

What I am not happy about, is why the government is lavishing Singaporean taxpayers’ money on just civil servants alone, and not all Singaporeans. Do we not contribute to Singapore’s growth, even though we work hard in the private sector? Since this is a one-off SG50 bonus, shouldn’t we receive it too since we are all Singaporeans? What I don’t like is being marginalised as a Singaporean. It’s like a father giving his elder daughter a dollar to go to NTUC and buy a soft drink, while his younger daughter receives nothing.

Your article by one Sheryl Choo claims that all civil servants are "lazy" and are "jiak liao bis". Sorry but I know quite a few civil servants and they're neither "lazy" nor "jiak liao bi". I don't know who you have been hanging out with Sheryl Choo but those civil servants I know work their socks off and they earn a pittance compared to what others earn in a private corporation.

Even though I have a real first class honors degree from a prestigious Australian university in 2013, none of the civil service jobs that I applied for at [email protected] responded to my application. I didn't even get an interview! What about us Singaporeans who have real degrees? Why does the civil service accept fake foreigner degrees but denies job opportunities to true, hardworking Singaporeans!?

Recently I said that I would change the focus of my blog. I had planned to make it more practical and useful for the average Singaporean, taking into consideration the prevailing social trends, government policies etc in this country. Well, here goes. Today we look at HR policies in the civil service. There are certain things you ought to know, before you decide to join or not to join the civil service.

I am a polytechnic graduate and did a five-year stint in the civil service. Back then, I was employed under the Management Support Officer scheme and managed to climb up to the ceiling of the scheme. However, as I was a non-graduate, I soon found myself trapped as I was unable to cross over to the Management Executive Scheme for graduates.

T H Soon left the cigarette butts on the ledge of the corridor wall. I approached T H Soon and requested him to remove the cigarette butts. He was taken aback by my actions initially but later confronted me and ask who I was. I clarified my identity as a public visiting the school and was astonished by his loud rude reply. He scolded that as a public I do not have rights to interfere in what an NTU student does in campus and told me to get lost. I explained to him that his actions is no different from littering offence and he replied rudely that he is an undergraduate who do not need uncles to teach him what to do.

I graduated from a foreign university via a tie-up programme with one of the largest private tertiary education institutions in Singapore. It was a three-year part-time degree programme. But after working hard to obtain my degree while having to work full-time, I found that my graduate qualification was not well received by some employers. I had more than eight years of relevant working experience when I graduated and was registered with several professional specialist bodies. However, I still faced prejudice and discrimination for being a graduate of a private university here.

This is the question I posed to 3 fellow Singaporeans recently, all of whom replied with a similar answer, “Not now, but perhaps later when I want a slower pace of life, or if I’m about to retire”. For many Singaporeans, a government job seems to have a strong stereotype of being slow-paced and bureaucratic. But a government position is typically well respected in most countries worldwide; you’d think that this will hold true especially in Singapore which has, undeniably, one of the most efficient government organisation in the world. Why then are so many locals dissing at the suggestion of a government job? Being there, I do agree that there's some parts that can be better, but to be fair, it's not all bad.

I retired last year at age 59 and, having turned 60 this year, decided to get back into the workforce. I tried applying for positions in various ministries and government agencies. There was usually no reply, except for a handful of rejections, even for positions such as administrative assistant. I have more than 30 years of experience working in a multinational company in the oil industry and have done some lecturing at a polytechnic recently.

This nonsense has to stop, and the public service is clearly a large part of the problem. Promises are easy to make, but if the public service hasn’t already solved this travesty by now, I don’t fancy their odds in the next couple of years.