Rattan and Rope

$6.15 regular; $6.40 weekends.

NTUC shelf-stacking rates for a mid-forties recovering addict—presumably same for any shelf-stacker. Currently Syed works six days, five hours per diem. Full-timers might earn a trifle less hourly possibly, but then more hours add up. The usual arrangement.

National Trade Union Council supermarkets, the largest chain in Singapore, have recently raised their wage rates even more than the twenty per cent suggested by one of the chief economists here concerned about living standards for the bottom sixth percentile and ultimate social consequences. (In his pondering the man had one eye on the upheaval across the Arab world.)

One cannot blame the Chinese governing cabal or the Union body either (an arm of government here) when the keen as mustard Indon labouring class is on the door-step; the Malay labouring class 800 odd metres across the water; Myanmar labouring class a new bottomless reservoir a few hours distant; the Banglar and Indian masses offering untold legions ready to fly in if only they could. (Picture in the Straits Times today of human oxen ploughing a Gujarat field.) 

Should they so choose, were the island larger, the trade more sizeable, the Thais would be available, the mainland Chinese, Cambodian, Viets... All able to survive on a cup of rice a day and tea bags shared. Spoilt for choice. (local dreamers have looked upon Venice as historical precedent for dirt-challenged empires. SEZ's - Special Economic Zones - in Batam Indonesia and Johor State Malaysia offer scope; the manic run on Myanmar has not left the Singporeans behind either.) 

About twenty per cent of the current land mass of Singapore was reclaimed. Behind the wire in Jurong the engineers and labs were working on problems that were cropping up. (Jurong where the state-owned munition factories and hi-techs were sited).

Fifteen friends, neighbours, school- and cell-mates Syed had seen hung on this island. Clean the last eight years. Doing it tough, but clean. On-call Changi baggage handling prior to the NTUC was $50 flat for twelve hours.

Twenty-four years inside — urine testing responsible for much of it. No violence, no robbery, no dealing or other malfeasance. Just the junk. In Singapore enough for a quarter century lock-up.

A Counsellor friend Mahmod, a few years older, was the first sent to Day Top in New York to bring the program back here. Mahmod served fifteen years in total and had now been clean a similar term again. Started at fourteen when the G.I.'s on Rec. Leave from Vietnam came into town.

The brutality of the prison system here was exposed by a Brit. who ended up inside and wrote a book about it some years ago. Where the rattan was still part of the criminal justice system (current still), the imagination need not work overtime for behind-door practices. Conditions have been considerably improved since the expose, according to reports in the Straits Times.

Three times Syed was sentenced to the rattan. Once eighteen ordered, six at a time, with a month between for healing. The heavily tattooed Indian toughs, the big guys, the king-pins, were the ones who cried out under the rattan. Everyone of course listened out from the cells.

Still thirty-three it may have been Syed said on death-row in Sing. Lad just turned nineteen among them. (Under eighteen no longer permitted. 

Every week the newspapers carry the rattan mentions in the sentencing—always the items ending with a statement of the maximums in the statutes, for the implied leniency.