"Talk to rich people nicely, you are a poor girl."

 

“Talk to rich people nicely, you are a poor girl.”

That, and other insults, cost Koh Lee Yen, 50, and Chee Kam Fah, 49, $3000 a piece each. 

On 21 September last year, they were caught smoking outside Lucky Plaza shopping mall in Orchard Road. Ms Asyikah Suri Kamsari was on duty that day and authorised under National Environment Agency “to carry out enforcement action against public health offenders.” And Koh and Chee were then smoking outside designated places. 

In court yesterday, they were fined for verbal abuses hurled at Ms Asyikah, which was prolonged and calculated to “insult and degrade.” 

She was merely doing her job, said state prosecuting officer Nasri Haron. 

It reports, ““Chee also used vulgar word, while Koh additionally scolded the officer in Mandarin and Cantonese. Chee then waved a S$1,000 note at the victim, as Koh said: “You should just shut up and take the money.”” 

All that was captured on Ms Asyikah’s body-worn camera. And I perceive it as something more than just a bribe of $1000. It was a grossly demeaning gesture, equivalent to telling the victim that in her poverty, she ought to be desperate for whatever crumbs that fall from the rich’s banquet table. She should just take the money and be grateful. 

To me, it went beyond a bribe, to a stinging stigma that those less well off have to bear often from those who are rich with an attitude. 

And that’s not all...

While Ms Asyikah was recording their details, they demeaned her with these words, “your salary how much, one thousand only one month I think” and “crazy girl, better go back and hug your pillow and cry, your salary not enough for me to buy a pillow...”

Lesson? Just one.

I guess at times, we all need to hug our pillow and cry, for poverty can sadly push us into a corner of despair. And in a society of high inequality, where the cost of living is one of the highest, trying to make ends meet can be very difficult for a lot of people, especially during the pandemic. Like climate change, those living in the lower rung of society will be hit the hardest when the tide of poverty rushes in and flood those living in shallow lands. 

But, what makes living together unnecessarily unbearable is how some rich people ostentatiously rub that in their faces. Honestly, like it or not, we live in a society that Chee and Koh had described relatively accurately, “talk to rich people nicely, you are a poor girl.” 

Unfortunately, we are far from a classless society. And we often judge a book by its cover, especially when it is a glittering one. Preferential treatment is often subtle and unspoken, and willingly offered. 

It also reports that Koh and Chee “are shareholders and directors of jewellery retailer Gold Star Resources. They also hold shares in other companies, and Chee is a director in various firms.”

So, yes, they are reportedly richer in material wealth than many people, and I would give them a gold star for entrepreneurship. Give credit where credit is due right? 

And I suspect paying that $3000 each is like water off a duck’s back for them. It’s merely a slap on their wrists. Alas, at times, punishing the rich with monetary sanction is like throwing a fish you caught back into water. They just swimmingly return back to their natural hubristic habitat. 

In their defence, Koh and Chee said that they were stressed at the time. And they “were (also) upset that Ms Asyikah let two men go despite catching them for a similar act of smoking outside a designated area.” 

To that, the judge said, “it was a different matter from using insulting words on the officer.” And “being stressed was not an excuse for the women to verbally abuse the victim.” 

Be that as it may, the actions and words of Koh and Chee is a microcosm of how inequality can stir the hornet’s nest and brew a social storm in our society. Revolutions are fought on such matters of inequality brought to the extreme by want of thought and action. And the insensitivity adds up, resulting in a collective social reaction to denounce and overthrow. 

Let me end on a quote by Adam Smith for your thought. 

“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Sometimes, we unwittingly conspire with the rich to oppress the poor because we sacrifice virtues of enduring character, courage and strength in blind servitude to fame, power and wealth. That is the beginning of our descent to moral corruption; most times, unknowingly.

 

MOE - Settle Your School Fees.

MOE is not wrong you know. It is the procedurally justified thing to do. 

You don’t pay, you don’t get your original PSLE result; just a copy. 

So, pay up, and we will hand over your original results slip. That’s the “longstanding practice” of MOE.

But how much is owed? 

Well, the child’s parents owed the school $156.00 of unpaid school fees (which a Good Samaritan had recently settled). So, the child did not get the original PSLE results, which was released last Thursday. 

This is what MOE has to say: -

“MOE’s consideration stems from the underlying principle that notwithstanding the fact that the cost of education is almost entirely publicly funded, we should still play our part in paying a small fee, and it is not right to ignore that obligation, however small it is. We hope parents support us in reinforcing this message.”

In a nutshell, that is the self-reliance rule of our welfare-adverse state. This withholding practice runs across our tertiary institutions/universities too. If you don’t settle your school/tuition fees, you don’t get your original examination results - period. 

This is not the first case a child’s exams results were held back for outstanding school fees.

In another case, as reported by Amelia Teng, a single mother of three children said “her twin boys received notice from their school last month that they would not be able to collect their N-level examination results slip as they each owed $310 in school fees.” 

The mother said “she has not been able to afford school fees for the past four years.”

After all said, is MOE too rigid, inflexible? Doesn’t MOE have a point? And it is really about doing your part to pull your strap up to the educational horse that the state has provided for you, right? That is all that is needed, that is, just play your part. How hard can that be? 

As MOE puts it, “we should still play our part in paying a small fee, and it is not right to ignore that obligation, however small it is. We hope parents support us in reinforcing this message.”

Honestly, when I read the post, and the numbers of negative remarks that have gone viral ”trying to call into question the intention and values of MOE”, I felt at first that we are not a very understanding people. 

Can’t we give MOE a break? They are just doing their job. Didn’t they say that that is a long-standing practice? It is about mutual empowerment, and not an unconditional handout, while you sit on your hands doing nothing. 

Mind you, it is a meritocratic horse we are running since independence, and you better wise up to pull yourself up before you can have a chance to ride it. 

Yet, at this juncture, I am reminded of Prof Teo You Yenn’s “differentiated deservedness”. 

That is a long word, but it is basically a Trojan-horse-like prejudice against the disadvantaged as a result of the unintended consequences of public policies that lead to the “ghettoization of the problem of poverty.”

Prof Teo wrote that the poor will always be known as “the needy”. And this “way of framing the problem of poverty isolates it” - recall “ghettoization” - and it “detaches the issues and challenges faced by a small minority of the population from those faced by everyone else. It dislodges the issue of poverty from the broader political economy in which it is produced. Importantly, it frames public interventions as “charity”, as “help”.””

In a consumerist society like ours with one of the highest income and social inequalities, being poor is not just a label, but a sentence, a social sentence. 

You are shown little or no respect and dignity. You live in a world of your own, isolated and ghettoized, one in which you are constantly seen as someone who is always in need, always needy, always asking for help, always bothering others with your financial problems. 

Is it then any wonder that the poor and homeless, who are struggling to make ends meet, are jaded, demoralised, and some are even dehumanised?

Sadly, I dread to think how their children who have innocently inherited this social stigma will overcome the ”differentiated deservedness” shown to them, not just by their richer classmates, but by the society at large, which incidentally offers conditional handouts only if they (in their impoverished state) do their part, however small. 

Yet, small is an understatement because to the wealthy, what is $156 or what is $310 (owed over four years)? That is what their children get as school allowance for a day or two. 

But for the poor, those who are struggling to pay the bills, worrying about whether they can keep their job, being abused in a marriage that they see no way of getting out, fearing that the banks will come with lawyers’ letters, and/or feeling that they have been a big disappointment to their children, $156 or $310 is everything to them. 

So, going back to MOE’s rationale, they can’t really be faulted. Rules are rules. They are just enforcing them. 

In fact, there are many social schemes for those who need help. All they have to do is ask and show up, play their part. Differentiated deservedness or otherwise, poverty is not a handicap right? 

And withholding results, reminding the child (who had worked hard for six years under trying circumstances) that their parents owe the state, is the least they can do right?

So, where do you lay the blame then? Or should you even bother? Does it help? 

Alas, the problem with a deeply divided, unequal and stratified state, however democratic, world class or efficient, is that it adds a layer of complexity to the saying, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” (Gandhi).

The key verb here is “treats”. Because we can always do charity, showing our good side, relieving the burdens of those left behind, but the dark side of altruism is how we never let the poor forget how generous and magnanimous we can be. 

And I end with what MOE said - “We hope parents support us in reinforcing this message.” 

But then, who will reinforce the message the poor has been trying to tell the rich and their leaders for the longest of time? Mm...I guess that shouldn’t be their problem?

The fates of two girls born worlds apart.

I always imagine this, two young girls coming to God and asking to make their dreams come true. 

God then shows them two earthly fates to be born into: one is about a girl born into a broken home with a mother who left her at 9 for another man and a father who is unemployed due to diabetes, and the other fate is about a girl who is born into a home that is practically a skyscraper, all 27-storey high, like a mansion in the sky. 

How would the girls choose then? 

Because if you think about it, there is nothing different about the two girls standing before God. One is not anymore special than the other. 

In looks, they are about the same. In intellgence, it is not something that separates them that much. And in ability and drive, both traits can be taught, inspired and developed over time on earth with the right setting and encouragement. 

Now, I know the choice would be obvious. Like Warren Buffet once said, if he had been born into the streets of Calcutta, he thinks that he would not be where he is today. 

But the catch is this. The two vastly different fates are not for the choosing. The two girls are not allowed to pick what they want, even if what they want is painfully obvious as one is a pauper’s daughter and the other is a king’s princess. Mind you, the latter is the life of a fairy tale, and the former, well, lets just say it is fairly scary.

So, they will have to draw lots. They would have to pick one of them and hope they choose the right earthly fate. 

And guess what, Aida chose the shorter stick so to speak, while Isha (Ambani) chose the unimaginably charmed life of untold excesses. That is their fate for the rest of their lives, and that brings me to the news this morning. 

An article written by Raul Dancel (Philippines Correspondent) caught a snapshot of the life of a 22-year old Aida from Philippines. 

Yes, her mother left her when she was 9 and her father is sick and can hardly make ends meet. So Aida has to come to Singapore to work. 

She answered a local ad asking for the jobs described as ”brand ambassadors”, “beauty consultants”, “push girls”, message therapists and waitresses, and Aida became a waitress hoping to make enough to send money back to her father.

But simple dreams like that don’t come true the way they are advertised. Aida was promised that if she works one month, she will be debt-free”. 

Yet, after a few months, Aida said she wants to go home. She is tired, and she had barely “made a dent on the debt she owed the manager-cum-owner of the pub” she works in. It reports that “she owed $3000 for her air ticket, work permit and bribes paid to get her to Singapore.”

According to the article, Raul described what it meant for Aida working in a pub. It is based on a points system. Aida earns her pay based on “the total amount of alcohol a customer buys for her.”

“”This is how it works. Each week, (Aida) has to rack up 210 “points” so she can pay down her debt and earn a little extra for herself. A point is equal to one serving of any alcohol a customer buys for her that costs $10.””

Here is how Raul broke it down in the article.

“A $10 shot of tequila gets a point. A bottle of beer at $50 earns five points and a bottle of whisky at $300 earns 30 points. In a week, that means a staggering 30 shots of tequila or six bottles of beer consumed (by Aida) over nine to 11 hours every day.”

Raul added: “You know how to tell if the girls have been here too long? When they already look like a walking sack of potatoes.”

Aida admitted that in that state of complete inebriation, she allowed the men to do whatever they like to them. She said, “that’s my job.” 

Next comes the life of a princess, that is, the daughter of the richest man in Indian and Asia, Mukesh Ambani. 

His only daughter, Isha, is married to the son of another industrialist billionaire. Isha apparently won the ovarian lottery and her wedding costs US$100 million with a $64 million diamond-themed mansion waiting for the newly wed. 

The wedding was so big and grand that Beyoncé performed in it for 45 minutes and the bill for that is US$4 million. And the guest list is literally the who’s who of the world - John Kelly, Hillary Clinton, Salman Khan and so on. 

One sociologist (Dr Parul Bhandari) said: “”In modern times, “neoliberal” times, heightened consumerism, along with the influence of Bollywood, has created an image of a “perfect” Indian wedding as one that is big, loud and glamorous.””

This is in fact how the rich defines themselves. Their identity is wrapped up airtight with the symbolism of wealth flaunted as a kind of cultural/status signal sent to the other bIllionaires in the country. 

While billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s splurge of up to US$60 million for his daughter’s nuptials in 2004 was once considered the “gold standard”, the Ambanis saw it fit to up that to another US$40 million. 

And in terms of education, health and weddings, the fate of Aida and Isha cannot be more different or worlds apart. While Aida had little schooling, having to work at a young age in a foreign land to support her father, Isha is a graduate from Stanford, and her only worry now is probably on counting her wedding gifts and thinking about home decor. 

In terms of health, Aida is now being treated as no more than an alcohol barrel and she is only in her early twenties. Need I say more about the charmed life of Isha who is only 27? 

Lesson? Well, on a Sunday morning where some section of our society are all dressed up for Sunday service (that would include my family), I apologise for starting this post mentioning God as a gift-giver or dream weaver. 

My point is about the luck of the ovarian draw and you cannot make it any more visceral than contrasting the fates of Aida and Isha. 

Now, let me preface this by saying that this post is not about what we can do about it or how we can close the gap. God knows there are many out there making a difference in the lives of people like Aida, and our collective hearts should be duly lifted and encouraged. 

But I am afraid that the luck of the ovarian draw is often the stark reality that we rather not talk about, especially not when we are singing songs of victory and joy. 

And that is understandable because when you offer hope, whether in a closed-door seminar before a paying audience or in a public, all-inclusive church congregation, you offer it regardless of whether you honestly and completely believe it or not. 

For faith is the evidence of things not seen, or of substance of things hoped for, therefore, it is oxymoronic for one to hope for hopelessness or have faith in faithlessness? That is also wholly against human nature. 

But alas, human nature and reality are very different and most times, our continual survival and flourishing depend very much on faith, hope and persisten belief. For some, they are the cornerstone of their eventual success and for others, it is a recurring delusion that they never give up pining their hope on till their expiry on earth. 

So, in the end, between stark reality and faith, between the luck of the ovarian draw and hope, and between the fates of Aida and Isha and persistent belief, I admit that I am biased towards human nature, towards faith, hope and belief - because the alternative is quite unthinkable. 

As a believer, there is another version of that God encounter I would like to end this post with - which some may agree or disagree.

I concede that you can’t change where you are born into, or which family, and in reality, that could very well determine your fate for a long long time. 

Admittedly, a lot of us never escape from our place of birth. It still haunts us, debilitates us, even condemns us. Like what William Blake said, “Every night and every morn some to misery are born. Every morn and every night some are born to sweet delight.”

But having considered that, I still believe our birth tells only half the story. I also believe that half the battle in life is about taking over penmanship, that is, writing your own story notwithstanding the place of birth. 

At this point, this risks degenerating into a self-improvement talk, but not all self-improvement talk deserves the same treatment by us. Most times, most people attend self-improvement talk not so much because they want to change, but because they want to feel good about wanting to change. 

So, that God encounter may just end up differently for many people including Aida. As long as we are alive, we cannot say that we have no faith and hope in a better tomorrow. Oxygen is to life what hope is to living, and hoping is surely a sign of living. 

And while Aida’s story has so far been written most times by the dire circumstances she was born into, I believe she and many of us who are born not into wealth and power are not denied the power of choice. 

What makes the difference eventually is to never give up writing our story, crafting our dreams into it, and holding on to our hope one sentence at a time, one page at a time, one day at a time. 

That is not just our human nature. It is what I would call rising above our human nature, and going beyond the deck that life had initially shuffled and handed to us. Cheerz.