cut waste? cut it right!!
-
Fruit platters go, but street lights will stay
By M. Nirmala
CUT waste? Cut out the fruits then.
One government department accepted this idea from a civil servant who felt that serving fruit at its meetings was a waste of money.
The savings: $132 a year.
The Public Service Division said it used to serve fruit during monthly meetings for directors of personnel as the sessions last about 2 1/2 hours. But now it will just serve drinks.
The suggestion was among 1,200 received by the Cut Waste Panel set up three months ago to look into suggestions from the public to trim fat in the public sector.
Yesterday, it released details of the ideas accepted and rejected and those already being carried out by government agencies.
One writer thought it unnecessary for one government department to take out newspaper advertisements to congratulate another.
The writer targeted the Singapore Tourism Board, which said it would stop the practice unless there are 'exceptional grounds'.
Another writer suggested turning some unused motorcycle lots in Telok Blangah into car park lots instead, and that will be done too.
But a power-saving idea had to be rejected.
A writer felt street lighting was a waste and recommended halving the power bill by switching off every other lamp on all roads.
Today's cars come with good headlights so that should do, the writer felt.
Not so, said the Land Transport Authority.
Alternate lighting would create an imbalance to uniform illumination on the roads - something called the 'zebra effect', it said.
'The contrast between the bright and dark areas will cause tiredness to motorists. This is a safety risk,' it said.
So street lights will stay, but the LTA will look at using lower-wattage and energy-efficient lamps.
-----------------------------
oh yeah.. save $132, waste millions of dollars having "ministers of state" which are kind of redundant seeing there is already a bloody minister running the ministry?
or are they saying that their minister is too incompetent to be able to run the ministry by himself? then why the high pay?
cut waste at the right places... stop cutting the little bits and pieces which don't add up to a fraction of what we're throwing away, padding the high places of power with semi-sentient braindeaths like Cedric Foo -
cut waste..... during my ns days, i have suggested in my WITs that is there a need to spent more than $1000 in getting outside caterer for tea breaks whenever there is a high level meeting in the camp? why can't the top brass just indent food from the cookhouse just like for lower level meetings? is it the top brass which usually comprises of many SAF scholars have a different taste buds? just imagine for just 1 unit, there is usually at least 4 of these meetings a year.... what about other units? i believe this may be SAF wide..
secondly, for this kind of crap to happen in SAF, I am sure that this 'phenomenon' also occurs in other ministries.... why? should there be so much money spent on these civil servants so that they can think better and contribute more in this meetings/seminars? baloney........... even when there is a budget for these events.... this is a gross misuse of public funds..... i certainly did not pay my tax so that to make sure that some idiots can have better curry puffs and nonya guehs from bangawan solo and what nots instead of the cookhouse/canteen so satisfy their inherent greed. -
here's a news story from Florida...
sound familiar?
------------------
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) - Railroad company CSX Corp., which earlier this week announced it will cut up to 1,000 non-union employees, recently agreed to buy $1 million worth of 2005 Super Bowl tickets.
The Super Bowl ticket deal would help the city prepare for the high-profile event and continue to show the Jacksonville-headquartered company's stewardship in the community, CSX Vice President Adam Hollingsworth said Wednesday.
The tickets were provided by an organization called Jacksonville XXXIX, which is selling corporate ticket packages to raise funds to finance improvements to Alltel Stadium before the championship game.
The company would use the tickets to entertain Fortune 500 clients and to reward employees, Hollingsworth said. He said that the company "had some tough choices to make this week."
"I can understand those that might have difficult time reconciling these two different decisions," he said. "However we have to make decisions based on the long-term future of the company and make decisions fairly and thoughtfully."
CSX CEO Michael Ward is on the Super Bowl Host Committee - a separate entity from the stadium improvement organization. He declined to comment. Jacksonville Jaguars owner Wayne Weaver did not return calls.
In the third quarter, CSX reported a loss of $103 million, or 48 cents a share, after recording more than $200 million in charges to change the way it estimates injury liabilities and to settle a dispute related to a 1999 sale of international container shipping assets.
CSX has 34,000 employees and its rails cross 23 states -
hm... i personally dun understand y all the top management need to spend days at some faraway place every year for something called a retreat to think of what they want to do next year. cant they meet daily somewhere in the office or some common facilities e.g. CCs, parks? u mean they need all the luxuries and getaway feeling in order to think properly?
-
because they can get away with it... simple as that...
here's a inside scoop.. only the very top management enjoy these things in the civil service.. the other fellas who are dragged along absolutely hate it because they are forced to come up with the stuff the bigwigs then take credit for...
and everything has to be nice and all that...
on another note, read today's papers about the insipid WITs projects they are force to do.. it's a vile lie that "one out of two" hate it.. it's more like 95% of the people hate it and 4% would rather get their teeth pulled without any novacaine.. the remaining 1% are the bigwigs in their ivory towers...Originally posted by wuming78:hm... i personally dun understand y all the top management need to spend days at some faraway place every year for something called a retreat to think of what they want to do next year. cant they meet daily somewhere in the office or some common facilities e.g. CCs, parks? u mean they need all the luxuries and getaway feeling in order to think properly? -
oh absolutely. i have just got roped in to do the senior mgmt retreat. we haven had our first meeting. but i was thinking of posing my question when we do have them soon. heh. i suspect this practice has been so entrenched ppl r doing it jus cos it has been done all along.Originally posted by the Bear:here's a inside scoop.. only the very top management enjoy these things in the civil service.. the other fellas who are dragged along absolutely hate it because they are forced to come up with the stuff the bigwigs then take credit for...
on another note, read today's papers about the insipid WITs projects they are force to do.. it's a vile lie that "one out of two" hate it.. it's more like 95% of the people hate it and 4% would rather get their teeth pulled without any novacaine.. the remaining 1% are the bigwigs in their ivory towers...
and abt the WITs thing, i was at the convention yesterday when the speeches were made.