Bill Gates' TED Talk: Giving Teachers What They Deserve

Bill Gates' TED Talk: Giving Teachers What They Deserve

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Why seniors end up as security guards (Singapore, The Straits Times)

http://www.straitstimes.com/STForum/Story/STIStory_691154.html

ST Forum of The Straits Times, 16th July 2011, Saturday

Why seniors end up as security guards

FOR the past three years, my 69-year-old mother has tried three times to secure a simple job, slicing fish, with NTUC FairPrice. Each time, the interviewer, upon finding out her age, turned her down.

During one interview, she was asked whether she was strong enough to carry goods, or quick enough at work. This puzzled her because strength and speed are not vital to a job like cutting or slicing fish.

After the third try, my mother gave up. She signed up for classes to be a security guard - she was the oldest in her class - and is currently working 12-hour shifts nightly.

I shop at FairPrice daily and have encountered cashiers and fish packers who are foreigners and cannot execute a simple exchange of goods or tell me where the shrimps are without help from their local colleagues.

So, I cannot help but wonder why applicants like my mother are turned down.

After my mother's experience, I am not surprised to see so many seniors working as security guards everywhere - in boutiques such as Zara in Liat Towers, VivoCity and Ngee Ann City.

These are citizens who built the nation but must now stay on their feet for 12 hours daily for pay that is less than $1,500 a month.

Don't they deserve less physically demanding work, especially when such jobs are available?

I hope the Ministry of Manpower will review the long hours in jobs held by people like security guards, especially if they are seniors. A more humane arrangement for them is an eight-hour shift.

Joanna Han (Mrs)

Ex-gambling addicts tell their stories in new book "Broken By Gambling, Reconciled In Hope"

Straits Times, Apr 8, 2011

Ex-gambling addicts tell their stories in new book

By Theresa Tan

PAULINE lived in fear that her gambler husband, who had stolen money from two companies to pay his debts and was jailed once for embezzlement, would kill himself and his family to end all their misery.

The sub-contractor was hooked on jackpot machines, soccer bets and 4-D, betting up to $1,000 a week on 4-D alone. At his lowest, he owed about 20 loan sharks over $40,000, and banks and relatives another $100,000.

The father of two boys had often expressed thoughts of suicide. When Pauline, a 39-year-old clerk, showed him a newspaper article of a gambler who had killed his wife and their two children, before jumping to his own death in 2005, and asked him pointedly: 'You are not going to do this to us, are you?', his only response was a wry smile.

In desperation, she dragged him to a support group run by the One Hope Centre, a Christian group that helps gambling addicts and their families. Through counselling and witnessing how others managed to rebuild their lives, the 41-year-old, now a cabby, has broken free of his addiction.

These and 14 other real-life accounts of how gamblers kicked the habit have been compiled in a new bilingual book, Broken By Gambling, Reconciled In Hope. Published by the One Hope Centre and written by Lianhe Wanbao correspondent Woon Wei Jong, 38, it is on sale for $10 at major bookshops, such as MPH and Times Bookstores.

Of the book, Pastor Tan Lye Keng, the centre's 57-year-old executive director, said: 'We want to tell people that there is still hope, that people can stop gambling and mend their family relationships. Most of the gamblers we see are hopeless, desperate and suicidal. And some have tried to kill themselves.'

With two casinos in Singapore and more gamblers asking for its help, he said the centre wants to raise awareness of the pitfalls of gambling. The two support groups it runs weekly now see about 60 to 70 people per session, up from 40 to 50 before the casinos opened.

Gambling is not a 'play-play thing', as many people view it, but a menace that can destroy your life, he added. Those who learnt this the hard way include high-flying professionals and a top student who had to quit school to work to pay off his gambling debts, who was featured in the book.

The former gifted education programme student, now in his 20s, was known to his friends as the 'Teenage God of Gamblers'. He picked up online soccer betting in Secondary 3. He graduated to online casino games and lost more than $100,000 in a year.

Soon his mounting losses made him resort to loan sharks, and he had to quit school to work to pay them off. In desperation, he stole from his company, got caught, wrote a suicide note and prepared to end his life. Fortunately, his father stepped in as he was about to step off the ledge.

After counselling at the One Hope Centre, he realised he did not want to 'squander his youth' away. Now in the Air Force, he shared his story to warn other young people about the dangers of online gambling.

With the two casinos a short ride away, Pastor Tan said he is also concerned over the growing number of retirees and housewives - who were not gamblers to start with but got hooked after visiting the casino 'for fun'.

The Institute of Mental Health, which treats gambling addicts, says it is seeing more gamblers seeking help. Its latest figures, which are for the financial year ended March 2010, saw 217 new gamblers, three times the number - 71 - two years before that.

However, with those figures, it is probably too soon to examine the casinos' impact given that Resorts World Sentosa opened only in February last year, while Marina Bay Sands' soft-launch was in April last year.

Malaysian jailed for theft, cheating casino (Singapore Casino related Crimes)

Straits Times dated 6 April 2011, Wed

A MALAYSIAN gambler lost all his money and later used a $100 chip belonging to another patron for his own gain.

Yesterday , Goh Wing Wal , 30, was sentenced to a month in jail for theft and cheating the Marina Bay Sands casino last month.

A district court heard yesterday that the salesman came here as a tourist and visited the casino at 10am on March 12.

It was not known how much money he had with him but, by 2pm, he had lost it all.

About 20 minutes later, he saw Mr How Yew Hock placing a bet, using a $100 chip, on the Sic Bo table. Sic Bo is a game of three dice.

When Mr How went over to the next table to observe the action, Goh moved the chip from Mr How's bet on 'Big' to the number 'Four'. When two dice turned up with that number, Goh won $200 and left the table $300 richer.

After Mr How noticed that his chip had gone missing, he informed the croupier and the closed-circuit television footage revealed the identity of the culprit.

Goh, who was still in the casino, was handed over to the police. There was no money on him. He had lost it all.

He was jailed two weeks for theft and a month for duping the casino into paying him for the wager with the stolen chip.

District Judge Roy Neighbour ordered that the jail terms be run concurrently, so the total sentence is a month.

The maximum penalty for theft is a $10,000 fine and a three-year jail term while that for cheating is a $10,000 fine and a 10-year jail term.

Manager jailed for $20,700 criminal breach of trust (Casino related crime)

straitstimes.com, dated 10 January 2011, Monday

Reported by Elena Chong

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A LOCAL shoe-chain executive who gambled away $20,733 from the outlet's daily sales collections was jailed for nine months on Monday for criminal breach of trust.

Michael Ng, 25, an Indonesian, was working at Charles & Keith's Suntec outlet at Temasek Boulevard when he committed the offence between Sept 13 and 24 last year.

The court heard that he was supposed to bank in the daily sales of the company's outlet but instead used the money to feed off his gambling habit.

He would take the daily proceeds and 'try his luck'' at the casinos. But he lost all the money.

He could have been jailed for up to 15 years and fined.

The Straits Times, Jan 4, 2011

Casino exclusion process now faster

By Ng Kai Ling

FAMILIES will now be able to get their relatives with gambling problems barred from casinos, just two weeks after they apply for it.

This comes after changes to the application process by the National Council of Problem Gambling (NCPG).

Acting on feedback that six weeks was too long, the NCPG has more than halved the processing time by ensuring that a hearing date is set for each case once someone contacts the council for a family exclusion order.

Earlier, families and subjects of the exclusion order would have to go through counselling, and have a detailed 25-page report on their circumstances submitted before a hearing date could be set.

This part of the process is often the most time-consuming, said Tanjong Pagar Family Service Centre senior counsellor Charles Lee, because problem gamblers can be uncooperative and delay the hearing by skipping appointments.

With the new process, a hearing date is set even before the counselling is done, and regardless of whether the gambler turns up or not, a decision can be made based on the family's input.

If the application is approved, an exclusion order is issued immediately after the hearing. Following which, case workers can recommend follow-up counselling sessions. Families can also ask for them after the order is given.

The NCPG started testing out the process early last month after frustrated families complained about the time it took to have a family exclusion order issued.

One family member, Mr Richard Ho, wrote to the Straits Times Forum page on Nov 27 last year, saying that the process to get a ban on one of his relatives was too bureaucratic and long.

NCPG chairman Lim Hock San said a lot of waiting time has been cut by having the counselling session and hearing on the same day.

'We want to help families better manage the tensions and conflict from an application for family exclusion. Yet, we have also learnt that families feel an urgent need to stop problem gambling.'

Mr Lee recalled a recent case of a husband gambling away the daily $30 maintenance money he was supposed to give his wife and three kids.

'In this case, the faster approval definitely helped as we could stop the man from gambling away more money,' he said.

To meet the shorter timeline, the NCPG has deployed more manpower, starting last month.

So far, the council has received 410 applications for family exclusion orders since April 2009. As of Dec 31 last year, 297 problem gamblers have been slapped with family exclusion orders.

Unlike cases of voluntary self-exclusion, where gamblers get themselves banned from casinos with immediate effect, family exclusion orders take longer to process.

Mr Lee said applications often get delayed because the parties involved would postpone their counselling appointments or simply not show up.

'Now they get a hearing date immediately and a letter from the NCPG informing them about it. They treat it more seriously. They know that it is important and that it is a time for them to tell their side of the story,' he added.

PRIMARY SCHOOL LEAVING EXAMINATION RESULTS: Rosyth boy tops PSLE

Info Source: www.straitstimes.com dated 2010-11-25

ALEX Tan Kian Hye of Rosyth School is the top Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) pupil this year with a score of 282.

Fu Wan Ying from Tao Nan School had the second highest score of 279.

The top Malay pupil is Aquilah Dariah Mohd Zulkarnain, of Coral Primary School who scored 278, while the top Indian pupil is Muhammad Hameem, of Henry Park Primary School with a score of 274, and the top Eurasian pupil is Lendermann Monika Jiz-xin, of CHIJ Our Lady Queen of Peace, with a 269 score.

A total of 45,049 Primary 6 pupils sat for the PSLE this year. Of these, 43,826 pupils, or 97.3 per cent, can go on to secondary school.

Among the others, 63 per cent are eligible for the Express course, 22.1 per cent for the Normal (Academic) and 11.7 per cent for the Normal (Technical) course.

There are 1,223 pupils or 2.7 per cent who did not qualify for secondary school. These pupils can choose to apply to Assumption Pathway School (APS) or NorthLight School (NLS) based on recommendations of their primary school principals, or spend another year in Primary 6 to consolidate their learning.