The previous week might have been a slow news week for Singapore, but that doesn’t mean that the nation did not have its dose of some bizarre and eyebrow raising issues. Here are the top five news stories that made us go WTF.
It’s not all sunshine and roses for Singapore’s tech scene
We’ve been all rah-rah-rah about our #sgsmartliving month the past few weeks, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out this interesting counter-narrative: Singapore’s well known accelerator JDFI recently decided to shut down operations, saying that their adopted business model did not quite work out in Singapore. Among other interesting industry insights, CEO Hugh Mason said, “In the US, some Techstars accelerators have been able to virtually guarantee that one startup from each of their batches will realize value within 18 months or so after the program finishes. So the accelerator’s investors get 2-3X back on their money and everyone is happy to roll the dice again. In Asia, the time to exit is more like 6-8 years and the valuation at exit is perhaps 30% of that it would be in the US.”
We’re losing some secondary forest
With the recent rise in population, there is a need for more residences. To make way for the new neighborhood near Teacher’s estate area, clearing work of a 30-hectare secondary forest near Yio Chu Kang Road has begun. The animals in that area are to be driven to nearby green areas before the forest is cleared. Authorities have shared information about building a new natural reserve park in that area.
We’ve been dying at work
Workplace fatal injuries and deaths have increased by 40% in the first period of 2016, according to a recent study by the Work Safety and Health (WSH) institute, with construction workplace injuries at the top of the chart. This comes as an increase from the same period last year. It is safe to say that Singapore will be able to keep its population in check now.
Cruella de Singapore
Good news for all animal activists, as a 43 year-old Singaporean was sentenced to 6 months jail along with a fine of $65, 700 for abandoning 18 dogs in July earlier this year. Low Chong Kiat, who owns pet grooming school Prestige Grooming Academy at 52, Chun Tin Road, was convicted on 49 counts, including 18 for abandoning the dogs by dropping them off at various locations around the island.
Isn’t colonialism fun?
It did not sink in well with most when the National Gallery announced a fundraising gala themed “Empire”, which sparked a major outcry, so major that they were forced to changed the name of the event to the National Gallery Singapore Gala. The gala which was supposed to highlight art that came out of the British empire, clearly came out wrong. It earned a lot of criticism from various artists, who thought it glorified colonialism.
