S'porean man, Andy Wong Ming Jun, 28, slams govt for KTV Covid-19 cluster (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update...9934319837184/), now facing 11 charges related to sharing leaked sexual materials of women on Telegram
The true reason for Singapore's latest and largest domestic outbreak of Covid-19 to date (not counting the foreign worker outbreak in April 2020), is organised crime, and the institutional failure of Singapore's much-vaunted "law and order" society in dealing with it.
It is an open secret in Singaporean society that karaoke lounges with freelance hostesses/prostitutes have been operating for decades with the same business model, and normalised to the point of being an integral part of many business dealings and contract closures in Singapore, particularly with Chinese clients both local and PRC in origin.
For decades, such places existed with tacit approval and a deliberate blind eye turned to their operations. You'd get periodic raids on such premises, with nice media photos of hostess women being mass arrested and deported. But the lounges never closed for good. None of the real owners ever got prosecuted. Arrests always stopped at the freelance hostesses. Lounges got to claim ignorance by the fact that the girls are never registered as employees, but entered as "patrons", working illegally in Singapore on short-term visitor or student passes.
It's massively hypocritical that Singapore closed down its only legal red light district at the beginning of the pandemic for public health reasons, did the same with these illegal brothels with lounge fronts, but then allowed them to reopen under the pretense of "pivoting" towards F&B "bistro" business models after August 2020. The legal red light district remains closed. No law enforcement ever went to check that the reopened lounges actually were bistros. Many lounges simply claimed to be one and served takeaway food from nearby food outlets to their patrons, who were there for the booze and the girls.
Singaporean ministers are now feigning shock and surprise that such loopholes were discovered and abused. But there's nothing new about it. Institutional failure to deal with the true backing behind organised crime that can run such karaoke lounge fronts for sexual vice has been existing for decades in Singapore.
Institutional failure is also displayed in how Singapore dealt with foreigners in very different manners. It must rankle expats in Singapore who can't get assurances of being allowed back into the country if they wished to return home now to visit family after more than a year apart, to know that as recently as March 2021, Singapore's ICA was still allowing in foreign girls claiming familial ties with "boyfriends" here in Singapore, with zero vetting of their actual relationship nature, nor of their actual intent in coming to Singapore.
Singapore's image as a "law and order" city is a glittering mirage. A city where the plebs get policed, whilst rich, well-connected figures in the criminal underworld are allowed to continue their front operations with tacit government approval. And it took Covid-19 for real societal prices to be paid.
https://mothership.sg/2021/07/andy-wong-ming-jun/
https://sammyboy.online/showthread.p...4#post20760204
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-...COVID-outbreak
