SINGAPORE OVERSEAS TELECOMMUNICATION BOARD BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

2.45 p.m.

The Deputy Prime Minister (Dr Toh Chin Chye): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

It will be recalled that in November 1960, the Government announced its intention to acquire the Singapore assets of Cable & Wireless Ltd, when the Company's licenses expire, on 31st December, 1962, and to merge these assets with those of the Telecommunications Department to form a statutory telecommunications board, at the same time allowing Cable & Wireless Ltd, to retain an interest in the new board.

The internal and external communications existing in the State of Singapore are held under the control of three separate organisations, namely, the Telecommunications Department, Cable & Wireless Ltd, and the Singapore Telephone Board. The Telecommunications Department provides telecommunication services for the public, including commercial organisations, and for Government or quasi-Government organisations. The Singapore Telephone Board operates and maintains the State's internal telephone system, and Cable & Wireless Ltd, operate and maintain a submarine cable and radio circuits associated with the intra-Commonwealth telegraph service.

Cable & Wireless Ltd, operate in Singapore under the following three licenses all of which are due to expire on 31st December, 1962:-

(i) The Landing Licence issued in January 1939 permits the Company "to maintain, renew and use on and along the shore and bed of the sea specified submarine telegraph cables at Singapore and Penang (and also at Cocos Islands and Labuan).

(ii) The Cable Licence issued in November 1940 covers the use of underground cables inter-connecting the Company's installations in Singapore, Penang and Labuan.

(iii) The Wireless Telegraphic Licence issued in December 1953 authorises the Company to establish wireless telegraphy circuits between Singapore and places listed in the Schedule attached to the Licence.

Before the licences of Cable & Wireless Ltd, expire at the end of this year, we have to reach a decision whether a new lease should be given to the Company or whether the Government should take over the assets and functions of the Company.

The communications system of any country is one of its most vital assets and this aspect is especially important in respect of external communications. A natural development is for independent or self-governing countries to acquire the control of the nation's communication facilities in order to develop such facilities in accordance with the countries' requirements and also to maintain the prestige value of the external communications. Furthermore, it is not desirable or efficient that the State's telecommunications services should be run by a government department on the one hand and a private company on the other. It was therefore not the Government's intention that Cable & Wireless licences should be renewed on their expiry on 31st December, 1962.

On the other hand, it was realised that because of the large initial capital outlay involved and the shortage of experienced engineers and managerial staff in Government service, it was not expedient at this moment to acquire outright the assets of Cable & Wireless Ltd, in Singapore, or to take over the existing functions and organisation of the Company. It was estimated that the assets of the Company in Singapore amounted to approximately $8¼ million. It was therefore decided that the best arrangement would be to merge the assets of the Telecommunications Department, which amounted to approximately the same value, with those of Cable & Wireless Ltd, and to form a statutory board to take over the combined assets and the existing functions of the two organisations. This statutory Board will be known as the "Singapore Overseas Telecommunications Board".

The proposed integration will not involve the Government in a large capital outlay as would be the case if the assets of Cable & Wireless Ltd, were purchased outright. It is estimated that approximately $300,000 only will be required as Government's capital contribution towards the Board's initial expenses.

This partnership with Cable & Wireless Ltd, is to last ten years, after which the Government will have the option to terminate or vary the joint ownership arrangement by giving two years' prior notice in writing.

The Bill provides that Government will own 51 per cent of the undertakings of the Board and the Company will own the remaining 49 per cent. Thus, Government will have control over the activities of the Board. This control by Government is further emphasised in that the Bill provides that the Chairman and two members of the Board will be appointed by the Government and that the Company will appoint the remaining two members of the Board.

Clauses 9 and 10 relate to the transfer of officers of the Government Telecommunications Department and of Cable & Wireless Company to the new statutory Board. This process of transferring personnel is a complicated operation as the salary and terms of service in two different departments have to be considered. If there are two separate salary scales and terms of service for the staff of the proposed statutory Board, it can be easily imagined the difficulties which the Board will run into. There will be difficulty in equating status of staff, and at the same time differences in terms of service will engender dissatisfaction among the staff themselves. It is therefore necessary that there should be a unified salary scheme and terms of service for all members of the proposed statutory Board.

Clause 9 is therefore so worded as to permit discussions between the Board and staff members of the Government Telecommunications Department and the staff members of Cable & Wireless Company. The broad object is that such staff shall not suffer in their overall conditions of service by reason of transfer, but regard to be had with the conditions of service of the Government employees at the time of transfer. In this way we hope a reasonable compromise can be achieved.

Clause 47 has the intention to train national staff progressively to take over more responsible work with the object of replacing expatriate staff. Suitable nationals will be given the opportunity to undergo technical training in the United Kingdom at the Porthcurno School of Cable and Wireless Ltd, or other suitable technical institutions and to attend administrative courses at the Company's head office in London.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

2.56 p.m.

Dr Thio Chan Bee (Tanglin): Sir, we are generally in favour of the principles outlined in the Bill except in one respect.

The Deputy Prime Minister has said that in regard to the transfer of the present employees of Cable & Wireless Ltd, to the Government service there might be some difficulty over the terms of service and salary scales.

Sir, the wording of clause 9 gives rise to such fears because -

Mr Speaker: Order. I think the hon. Member has not noticed that a notice of amendment has been given in respect of clause 9 and I have received information that the Member for Anson has authorised the Member for Thomson to move that amendment. I suggest that the hon. Member's remarks would be better reserved for Committee.

Dr Thio Chan Bee: Sir, I reserve my remarks for discussion on that clause. Generally, may I suggest that when it comes to any possible differences of opinion, the trade unions concerned be consulted and that no unilateral decision be imposed because in the interest of Singapore we would rather see disputes settled amicably than through strike action.

Mr Speaker: Dr Toh, in reply?

Dr Toh Chin Chye: No, Sir.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole Assembly.

Assembly immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill.-[Dr Toh Chin Chye].

Bill considered in Committee.

[Mr SPEAKER in the Chair]

2.58 p.m.

Clauses 1 to 8 inclusive ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 9 -

Mr S. T. Bani (Thomson): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move,

In page 7, line 19, to leave out "as near as may be to" and insert "no less favourable than".

Sir, there is a certain amount of apprehension among the staff concerned about the way this clause has been worded. I think it is only proper that the Government should give an undertaking that no one will suffer a loss as a result of this transfer.

Sir, "as near as may be to those they had previously enjoyed" does not necessarily mean that the new terms are going to be even identical. I believe it is grossly unfair to tell these employees that they have no choice but to be transferred, and that too on terms which may be less favourable. I submit that "as near as may be" is frightfully vague. I am of the opinion that no locally engaged officer should have his remuneration or other terms changed to his disadvantage by a transfer of this nature. I do not know whether the intention of Government is to effect comparable terms, but clause 9 as it stands now gives ample room for one to believe that locally engaged staff will have their terms changed to their disadvantage on becoming employees of the Board.

3.00 p.m.

Sir, the purpose of this amendment is to safeguard the interests of the employees to ensure that they will incur no loss. I hope the Government appreciates the principle in effecting transfers of this nature. I believe it has an obligation to guarantee locally engaged staff that they shall be transferred to the Board only on terms that will not be less favourable than those which are in force at the moment.

Dr Thio Chan Bee: Mr Speaker, Sir, we support the amendment because, as the clause stands, there is not only room for doubt but a possibility for those who are trying to adjust the salaries to fix lower salaries than those prevailing at the moment.

"as near as may be", Sir, may mean not up to or beyond, but under. Now, people framing salary scales are very fond of round figures and naturally when, in round figures, the salary of the present employee goes down, no doubt from the point of view of the man who wants tidy figures it looks fine, but from the point of view of the employee he feels that he has been given a bad turn. I am sure the amount involved is so small that the Government, desiring to have the goodwill of the workers, will not in any way make them feel that they have been penalised by the transfer. I am sure the Deputy Prime Minister, when he says that in the transfer the present employees should not suffer, surely would be glad to accept this amendment.

Dr Toh Chin Chye: Mr Speaker, I must explain why the words "no less favourable than" have been left out of this clause and replaced by "as near as may be to". In the original draft of the Bill, I myself suggested that the phrase "no less favourable than" be used in the clause. Subsequently the Government side had several discussions with Cable & Wireless Ltd, and we discovered that if the words "no less favourable than" were used, in effect the new statutory Board would be placed in a predicament, for the reason that you would have a salary scale for Government employees who are transferred to the new Board and another salary scale for Cable & Wireless employees transferred to the new Board, and a third salary scale for new employees. Now, for any statutory Board or any single employer to have three different rates of pay for its employees is obviously not feasible. That is exactly what the Board would be landed with if the words "no less favourable than" were used in clause 9. Therefore, it is obvious that a compromise has to be achieved and this compromise is attained by inserting the words "as near as may be".

I give the undertaking that discussions with the staff of both the Government Telecommunications Department and the staff of Cable & Wireless Ltd, will be held so that the terms arrived at for transfer will be to the satisfaction of all parties. It is not the intention of this clause to do the workers in. Far from it. In fact, may I point out that when the Oriental Telephone & Electric Co. Ltd, was converted into a statutory Board, the Singapore Telephone Board, the terms of transfer of the staff of this Company to the Telephone Board were worded similarly - "shall be deemed to be an officer of the Board at the same rate of pay and as near as may be on the same conditions as those on which he was employed by the Company"? Now in the case of the transfer of personnel from the O.T.E.C. to the Singapore Telephone Board, the exercise is relatively simple because it is just merely transferring bodies from one department to a new department. In other words, it is just a question of change of name. But in the formation of the Telecommunications Board, we have an exercise where staff from two different bodies are being integrated and unfortunately the salary scales for these two departments vary - they are not exactly equal - and therefore a happy mean will have to be struck.

Mr Byrne: Mr Speaker, Sir, in respect of drafting, I think the Member for Thomson has failed to read on from where he left off in this clause. Clause 9 states that the employees who are transferred "shall be transferred to the service of the Board on terms as near as may be to those they had previously enjoyed and such terms, which shall be determined by the Board, shall take into account salaries and conditions of service enjoyed by such officers when in the employ of the Government or of the Company." So that, Mr Speaker, Sir, the Board will be under an obligation to take into account the salaries enjoyed by the officers in Government at the time of their transfer.

Dr Thio Chan Bee: Sir, I am not a lawyer but I understand that cases have failed because of some technicality. Now, the wording to anybody here is clear, that "as near as may be" may be as near from the bottom or as near from the top. And it can be interpreted by whoever draws up the salary scales that it does not preclude that "being as near from the bottom" means less. No doubt the Deputy Prime Minister has given us an assurance, but the interpretation of the clause as it stands does not preclude the wrong interpretation later on. I wonder how he is going to get over that. If he accepts the amendment proposed here, it will satisfy his own principle and preclude any possible misinterpretation.

Dr Goh Keng Swee: Sir, the Member for Tanglin is now embarking on a new career in his political life. He may be the champion of workers and trade unions, and may I wish him all success in his rather belated start -

Mr A. P. Rajah (Fairer Park): Therefore "you are a Communist".

Dr Goh Keng Swee: - in this field of action. Now, obviously he has not got a good start because in dealing with this question of future terms and conditions of service of the Board, he starts off with something that the Government is out to do the workers in, that if we want to equate it, we would not equate it by taking all the terms together but what we want to do is to pay the chap just a few dollars less than what he is entitled to get. I mean this is really too childish an approach.

Let us imagine that it is stated that the staff transferred to the Board shall receive conditions of service no less favourable than they are now getting. Let us look at the implications of that sort of undertaking. Now, some of these persons are members of the Telecommunications Department, Divisions I, II, III and so on. One of the purposes of office in Government is entitlement to holiday bungalows at low cost. If you want to say no less favourable terms than what they are enjoying, then the Board would be required to put up holiday bungalows on a scale and at places no less lavish than those which the Government is providing. Then there are other conditions such as leave, pension rights, and so on. It is not possible in respect of each and every item to give the employees who are to be transferred treatment no less favourable than what they are getting now without the Board being committed to a tremendous amount of capital expenditure. And not only that. The staff of Cable & Wireless Ltd, may be enjoying certain perquisites which the Government officers do not get and which the Government are required, after the transfer, to give to their staff. If you give to one section of the staff, you must give to everybody.

So the test to be applied whether or not fair play has been done is whether taking overall conditions of service justice has not been done. I say it is quite unnecessary for Members of the Opposition to pretend that the Government is out to do the workers in.

I may perhaps briefly refer to another integration exercise, i.e., the integration of the City Council staff into the Government service. We did give an undertaking that they will be transferred on terms no less favourable than what they were then enjoying. And this has meant, in practice, that the former City Council staff remain exactly on their old salary scales, on their old terms of service, and integration is only an organisational one - in the sense that they are put into some positions in the hierarchy of Ministries. But complete integration, i.e., in the sense of having one identical salary scale for all officers whether they were originally in the Government or in the City Council, is not possible.

The City Council was formerly a Government department, and although there were divergences of working conditions between the City Council and the Government, they were not of such a major order of magnitude as to create insoluble problems. But in the case of a private company - although I have not examined in detail the working conditions in both Cable and Wireless Ltd, and the Telecommunications Department - I say it would be quite impossible in respect of each and every grade of staff to have treatment no less favourable than what they are getting now. All that we can aim for is that, taking all conditions of service together, they get fair treatment. More than this, I think, we cannot guarantee them. But less than this, we in the Government can assure that they will not get.

Tun Lim Yew Hock (Cairnhill): Mr Speaker, Sir, I cannot understand why the Minister should say that the Opposition pretends that the Government is out to do damage. The Opposition is not pretending. The Opposition knows for a fact that the Government has done damage to its civil servants, and, therefore, the Opposition does not rely on any assurance given by the Government in regard to any dealing by the Government of any employee.

Sir, it is a very important point in trade unionism that, in any transfer from one service to another, the conditions of service shall be no less favourable. Surely, if the Government says that we are pretending that it is out to do damage and that it sincerely does not want to do damage, then why all this opposition to this amendment, which only means that the terms and conditions of service shall be no less favourable than what they have had before? The Minister says that it is not possible for employees in the Government to continue to receive privileges of bungalow facilities and what not, and that in the case of the Cable and Wireless employees, there might be employees who are being given certain conditions of service which may not be acceptable to the Government. But the Minister for Health and Law has clearly pointed out that in so far as their own conditions of employment are concerned, it shall be as near as may be. And we only say that if there is no intention on the part of Government to do damage, then surely the Government should accept that the transfer shall be on terms "no less favourable than".

Mr Bani: Mr Speaker, Sir, I just want to say a few words. First of all, I think the Minister for Health and Law has suggested that I have not read the other parts of the clause. Sir, I assure him that I have read the other parts of the clause. What it says here is that the Board shall take into account the salaries for determining the new terms. Sir, that does not necessarily mean again, to say the least of it, that the new salaries and new terms are going to be identical. Sir, all that the Deputy Prime Minister said was that because there are more than two salary scales at the moment, it may be difficult to work out an arrangement whereby the terms may not be less favourable. Sir, I frankly do not see any difficulty in this. I am sure Government Members will agree that that has happened in other industries and in other establishments in the past. Whether there is one salary scale, two salary scales or three salary scales, if we adopt the principle of converting so that no one receives terms which are less favourable than the old terms, we can easily fuse this into one common salary structure. I am not saying that the Government is definitely going to do it to the workers. What I am saying is that it should provide safeguards to say that the salaries and other terms of service of the locally engaged staff - I am not concerned about expatriate officers - be ensured and are not less favourable than whatever they are enjoying at the moment.

Dr Toh Chin Chye: I am glad the Member for Thomson has at least agreed that on principle we should have a unified salary scale for employees of the new statutory Board. It is pretty obvious that in order to arrive at this new salary scale, the terms of clause 9 should be such as to enable the Board to discuss it with the staff members in the Telecommunications Department and members in Cable and Wireless Ltd, so that this unified salary scale can be achieved. But the moment we insert the term "no less favourable than", that means they are stuck with the terms and conditions which they have now. Therefore, it is not possible to arrive at a unified salary scale. As I have explained earlier to the House, I myself inserted in the draft Bill "no less favourable than". But after listening to all sides, I was convinced that it was not possible to proceed with the transfer with this phrase "no less favourable than". Let me assure the House and staff members of Cable and Wireless Ltd, and in the Telecommunications Department that we want this telecommunications service to proceed smoothly, just as the telephone system in Singapore is proceeding smoothly under a statutory Board. Therefore, an opportunity will be given for negotiations between the Board and the staff members.

Mr Speaker: Mr Bani, a vote?

Mr Bani: A vote.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out, be left out."

Mr Bani: Division.

The Committee divided: Ayes, 17; Noes, 23; Abstentions, Nil; Absent, 9; Paired, 2. Ayes. Noes. Abdul Hamid bin Buang bin Haji Jumat. Omar Junid. Bani, S. T. Byrne, K. M. Fung Yin Ching, Chan Chee Seng. Miss. Chan Choy Siong, Madam. Lee Siew Choh. Chor Yeok Eng. Leong Keng Seng. Goh Chew Chua Lim Yew Hock. Goh Keng Swee. Lin You Eng. Hoe Puay Choo, Madam Lingam, S. V. Kandasamy, G. Low Por Tuck. Lee Khoon Choy. Mohamed Ali. bin Lee Kuan Yew. Alwi. Lee Teck Him. Ng Teng Kian. Lim Cheng Lock. Ong Eng Guan. Mohd. Ariff bin Suradi. Sheng Nam Chin. M. Ismail Rahim. Tan Cheng Tong. Ong Pang Boon. Tee Kim Leng. Rajaratnam, S. Thio Chan Bee. Ramaswamy, S. Wong Soon Fong. Sahorah binte Ahmat, Madam. Toh Chin Chye. Wee Toon Boon. Yaacob bin Mohamed. Yong Nyuk Lin. Abstentions. Nil. Paired. Mammen,John. Absent. Seow Peck Leng, Ahmad bin Ibrahim. Mrs. Ahmad Jabri bin Mohammad Akib. Chan Sun Wing. Koh, C. H. Marshall, David. Ong Chang Sam. Rajah, A. P. Tan Kia Gan. Teo Hock Guan.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

Clause 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 10 to 54 inclusive ordered to stand part of the Bill.

The Preamble ordered to be the Preamble of the Bill

Bill reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.