Prosperity first, life second

We saw this sign at a con­struc­tion site. I think it was an MRT exca­va­tion site.

It all makes sense now — “Safety first for our pros­per­ity”. Safety’s good for busi­ness. Doesn’t slow things down. Like when the high­way caves in, or when cranes col­lapse. Noth­ing to do with the lives of the work­ers, who get fer­ried to and from work on very dan­ger­ous modes of trans­port anyway.

Today, while help­ing Naomi’s mum shop for things at IKEA Tampines (hon­est, we only bought two, three things for our­selves), I realised this prob­lem was endemic. Peo­ple sim­ply don’t care about their kids’ safety.

Kids were sim­ply run­ning amok today (that sounds like an IKEA prod­uct too, “amok”), push­ing each other in the trol­leys and tear­ing down the aisles of the self serve areas where peo­ple were strug­gling to load shelves and other things on their trol­leys. You might think it cute to hear lit­tle feet pit­ter pat­ter­ing about, but it won’t be so cute when they go pit­ter pat­ter pit­ter splatter.

Plus, being a Sat­ur­day, there were thou­sands of peo­ple there, sev­eral hun­dreds more than there were at the Sin­ga­pore Inter­na­tional Film Festival’s open­ing at Lido the night before. So, as you can imag­ine, it really was quite dan­ger­ous for the lit­tle ones to be run­ning around.

So, this is what I want to say to par­ents of young chil­dren in Singapore:

If you really have to bring your young kids to IKEA for some rea­son or other (they can’t really be help­ing you carry your Fakum glasses and Rek­tum vases), keep them close to you.

Don’t let them run around where large boxes of unassem­bled Epilep­tik lights or Hemoroyt sofas can fall on their heads.

It’s ok if you want your kids to grow up as dumb as you. But it’s not fair for them to grow up dead. It’s not their fault because they don’t know bet­ter because they’re kids.

So please. Safety first, for yours and your kids’ lives. Can?