Half-hearted Effort is No Effort

In recent years, the Singapore government has been encouraging Singaporean married couples to have more children. Their drive consist of giving tax rebates, benefits and more recently, the likelihood of extending maternity leave for women to four months.

While these are mostly deemed as encouraging and helpful gestures, they are not without faults. Some wonder at the amount of tax rebates being awarded, which is hardly enough to cover the expenses of child delivery, medical, insurance, and not to mention educational fees in the future.

Extension of maternity leave, while seemingly benefits the female gender on the surface, may introduce other social and economic issues. Most glaring, of course, is that companies that have a lot of female employees within the child-bearing age, may need to absorb a lot of costs this brings. Someone either needs to cover work for their colleagues for 4 months, or new hires need to be brought in to handle the workload. In addition, employers may not be as willing to hire females who have just gotten married.

Recently, I found out from a personal source that it is very much more economical to give birth to a baby in Hong Kong than in Singapore. From this source at least, her monthly visits to the gynecologist are totally subsidised (read – free!), the delivery charges will be about S$200. Just check with anyone who has just had a baby, and they will tell you the medical expenses in Singapore comes nowhere close to that.

Therein lies the problem with Singapore’s legislation. In its planning for most of the initiatives, it does so with a tight rein, almost as if afraid to do well. The initial idea may be good, but execution will usually fizzle in the end, and produces the aftertaste that things could have been better. Look at the Uniquely Singapore campaign, apart from hanging banners on the lamposts of Orchard Road, surely more could be done to emphasize the subtle differences that the country offers. Look at the recent advertisement for National Day, it was a complete copy of Australia’s promotional video, in concept at least. Not to mention the use of colour leaned towards the morbid.

The decision to operate a casino should have been made earlier, yet it is only an idea in the making still. And again, talks of barring locals from accessing the casino prove they are, not surprisingly, branching towards the cautious path. Why not throw caution to the wind, create a huge mega buzz about the idea, pull in an amazing media blitz to ensure its success? Fear of failure amidst a time when we are gardnering for entrepreneurship? The invisible rein is always holding us back.

An over-cautious mind will always hinder growth. It creates a nation of failure-fearing people, unwilling to give their best in everything they do. It creates a generation of youths without much imagination and drive. It is time to perform a check, because the way things were will no longer apply in the new economy.