The Star Online: Metro: South & East
The Star Online: Metro: South & East |
- More Sunday visitors as more domestic helpers get rest days
- Australia to lead southern search for plane, says Abbott
- India denies Malaysian jet '9/11-style' attack theory
| More Sunday visitors as more domestic helpers get rest days Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT POPULAR hang-outs for maids have become more crowded over the past year, as more domestic helpers get days off. Maids and business owners told The Straits Times that Lucky Plaza and City Plaza are seeing more Sunday visitors in recent months, as are other open spaces. "Last time, only the front of City Plaza was crowded; now, all the sides are too," said Kuswati, an Indonesian maid. She meets friends at the shopping mall on Sundays. She has lived in Singapore since 2008 but started getting weekly rest days only after her contract was renewed this month. A rule mandating one day off every week or payment in lieu kicked in a year ago and applies to all new and renewed maid contracts. Maricel Cabauatan, 31, said that the queues to remit money at Lucky Plaza have also become longer since the start of this year – from two or three hours, to four. "It's very difficult to walk around," added the Filipino maid. "If you stay there for the whole day, you will feel very tired." As the crowds grow, other places like parks and beaches – where people can gather without spending money – are catching the overflow. The Botanic Gardens' director Nigel Taylor said he noticed this trend picking up in the last two years. "It's been happening on such a scale that the picnicking has overflowed onto the paths and occupies public buildings to the scale of excluding other people." To cope, the Botanic Gardens encourages maids to have picnics on the lawns. But the higher footfall is not translating into higher returns for some businesses. At City Plaza, shipping service Valutaayu-Yan Cargo said that although there are more maids, they are also younger and do not have as many items to send home. "Costlier rent and stiffer competition have eaten into sales," said Dhayalyn Koh, manager of convenience shop Negrosanon Trading, which has been at Lucky Plaza for 14 years. Internet cafe owner Tang Kok Eng puts it down to the tightening of labour laws that has made it harder for workers to get work passes renewed. "The levies are higher now. People also can get Internet on their phones so maybe they don't need to come here," he said. Some maids, like Holymar Loremia, 40, choose to avoid the crowds altogether. The Filipina was at Gardens by the Bay on a recent Sunday having lunch with a friend. "We prefer to come here because it's less crowded and more peaceful," she said. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network |
| Australia to lead southern search for plane, says Abbott Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT SYDNEY: Australia will take responsibility for the "southern vector" of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, with 25 countries now involved in a huge operation to locate the plane, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said. Abbott, who earlier yesterday told journalists he had no information that the flight may have come close to Australia, said he was responding to a request from Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. "He asked that Australia take responsibility for the search on the southern vector, which the Malaysian authorities now think was one possible flight path for this ill-fated aircraft," Abbott told parliament. "I agreed that we would do so. "I offered the Malaysian prime minister additional maritime surveillance resources which he gratefully accepted." Abbott said the defence chiefs of Australia and Malaysia were discussing how to implement the arrangement. "Australia will do its duty in this matter. It will do our duty to ensure that our search and rescue responsibilities are maintained and upheld," he said. "And we will do our duty to the families of the 230 people on that aircraft who are still absolutely devastated by their absence and who are still profoundly, saddened by this as yet unfathomed mystery." Australia has two Orion surveillance aircraft assisting with the search for the plane, which was en route to Beijing when it disappeared. Abbott said one of those had now been redeployed to the Indian Ocean. — AFP |
| India denies Malaysian jet '9/11-style' attack theory Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT NEW DELHI: India has rejected suggestions that it could have been the intended target of a 9/11-style attack by the missing Malaysia Airlines jet. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised maximum assistance in the massive hunt for Flight 370, India's foreign minister said it was vital that the mystery over its fate was cleared up. But asked by the CNN-IBN network about suggestions that the plane was hijacked with the aim of flying it into an Indian city, Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid replied yesterday: "I don't think we have gone that far." The speculation was fuelled by former US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott who tweeted that the "direction, fuel load & range now lead some to suspect hijackers planned a 9/11-type attack on an Indian city". His comments over the weekend have been widely picked up by the Indian media and Salman said people needed answers to allay their fears. "We hope to come to some conclusion that is both credible and reassuring," he said. The Times of India said security sources had "rubbished" the idea that the plane could have got anywhere close to an urban centre and insisted it would have been detected by a naval base on the Andaman islands, more than 1,000km off the Indian mainland. "There is no way our military radars would have missed the airliner as it flew over Andaman Sea, as there is high traffic around that time," one military intelligence source told the paper. The US-led Nato mission in Afghanistan, meanwhile, said it was not looking for the missing plane there, and Islamabad's Civil Aviation Authority said the flight never appeared on Pakistani radar. Indian ships and planes scoured the seas off the sprawling Andamans archipelago last week but they suspended their search on Sunday as they awaited fresh instructions from Malaysian authorities. "Operations are suspended as of now, everything is grounded," Indian Navy spokesman D.K. Sharma said yesterday. "Malaysian authorities will now decide and tell us where to go. They have asked us to be on standby for now. We are awaiting further instructions." Manmohan's office said that his Malaysian counterpart Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, in a phone call late Sunday, had requested "technical assistance from Indian authorities in corroborating the possible paths that the missing Malaysian airliner might have taken". Manmohan "assured all possible assistance from concerned Indian authorities", the office said. Meanwhile, in Beijing, relatives of the Chinese passengers voiced their fury yesterday as Premier Li Keqiang backed their demand for more information. Li in a phone call asked Najib to provide more details about the missing flight "in a timely, accurate and comprehensive manner", state news agency Xinhua reported. — AFP |
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