[Ola]

Rathe lengthy and have pasted 80% of it here

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Broke a Govt scholarship bond - got banned from talking about it in main page
Writing on Singapore Raw as I was banned from AskSingapore for talking about breaking a government scholarship bond. After receiving many messages of support from people who have endured the same thing, I decided to write this from scratch

To cut the story short, I took up a scholarship because I believed it was the best way to contribute to the common good. Totally bought up the sales pitch about serving the nation. Also of course, my parents could not afford university education, so why not since my grades allowed.

But boy am I so wrong. I broke the bond eventually after being harassed for basically having opinions… long story warning ahead

Already through the course, I realised something is so wrong with the scholarship system. Many of my peers on the programme were actually from wealthy families – from being able to afford an apartment in London, to flying home on business class. I remember once at the Singapore Seminar, a round table discussion where they flew in scholars and PS/DS/some official people to discuss issues surrounding Singapore in London. One fellow asked “how do we solve the problem of lowly educated men not getting married and educated women not getting married?”. To which the answer from the speaker I can never forget, was “As everything we do in Singapore, low end import and high end export”.

The toxic things about government scholar system

Bad-egg scholars spoil it for all

Not all scholars are bad eggs and arrogant. But the ones who are, spoil it for everyone else, and makes everyone hate on scholars for no reason sometimes. I remember my manager was a scholar and said manager had basically disdain for anyone who was not manager’s superior. Manager’s treatment of foreign workers was especially bad. Manager once yelled “grab me that bangla”, once asked the workers to sweep rocks (yes, I wonder if scholars have been on construction sites) and banned foreign workers from drinking water from the establishment’s building. Manager would also pick on anyone, threaten anyone with poor performance so long as you step on manager’s tail (sometimes in a completely non-work related way). If you are manager’s favourite, you would get your way. And as I obviously was not (scholar eat scholar, gender hate gender? Or maybe I was just honestly bad, I accept that), I was criticised constantly for being “happy go lucky” and for “smiling too much”…… with that I slowly fell into a pattern of fear of just being myself. Manager had apparently gotten 4 serious complains before, but HR decided to overlook it all because manager was a director favourite. This brings me to the next point

Directors are unfire-able Gods

Unless they commit a legit crime, they cannot be removed. Where I was, we had directors who felt the need to scold people at every meeting, put people down, belittle people (hello all scholars). Some will comment on women’s looks, some text at ungodly hours like 11:30pm. An internal survey actually showed that about 10% of the public service agency experiences harassment, but nothing was done. Because, because … all the directors are good buddies! Who can you complain to, if HR is only going to site with all of management? This made me really upset when I thought that HR was on the side of the employee. Often those who had it the worse were the “lower ranked” employees – because the organisation saw them as expandable. Yet these were the people who knew the day in and day out of the operations. During Covid, we saw that we could fire the directors, but not the technicians. Yet whenever one tries to advocate for the little man, I got treated like I chose to be on the wrong side of the battle. As though I picked the worker’s side instead of the correct “scholar side”.

Culture of silence

Honestly, scholars, you know when other scholars are unreasonable, or being an ass. But you don’t speak up. You never call out the bosses, or even your own camarades….because you hope one day you will become director, you will need their support. Behind their backs you would speak bad of one or the other, but where it matters – when they are unjustly picking on their men, when they are harassing others, you remain silent. You know deep down the scholarship system is unfair, it rewards those already from privilege, those already with connections. But no one wants to speak because why would we poison the own honey we are enjoying?

You also know when scholars are being overworked – sent to work where no one else wants to. Made to do tasks no one else wants to. But when you become the boss, you choose to do the same thing.

You know that scholars get picked for high profile projects, I’m sure you will feel its bit unfair that the others do not? Yet when you become a boss, you will promote the scholar first, you will give that better portfolio to the scholar.

Don’t question

As described above, do not be that scholar. Especially if you are picking battles that no one else sees the benefit in fighting for. In my experience, fighting for technicians and those on the grounds, most other counterparts will just find you are wasting your time as it does not add to KPI, and pisses management off.