Charmaine Poh

Feb 15, 2024 | jom.media | Jonathan Lin |Tsen-Waye Tay |Charmaine Poh |Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh

National servicemen can expect to face violence not only from their enemies, but sometimes their comrades too. In May 2018, Kok Yuen Chin, a 22-year-old corporal with the Singapore Civil Defence Force, was celebrating his imminent “operationally ready date (ORD)”. As part of the festivities, his fellow servicemen had chucked him into a 12m-deep pump well at their fire station. After more than 30 mins in the water, during which his colleagues had tried to save him, Kok drowned.

Feb 8, 2024 | jom.media | Jonathan Lin |Tsen-Waye Tay |Charmaine Poh |Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh

Singapore’s public housing model is often heralded as a massive success. Over 80 percent of the resident population lives in a Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat, of which about 90 percent own them. These high rates of public housing ownership are quite rare, globally, earning HDB plaudits while its work has been turned into case studies at top universities around the world. “Lessons from the best public housing program in the world”, headlined an article from The World Bank in 2018.