Feedback on REACH remains strong with foreigners and population the hot issues

Foreigners and population issues were the most talked about topics in the first 11 months of 2012, says government feedback channel REACH.

On the other hand, concerns over last year's top issues, housing and transportation, have somewhat eased this year.

The agency added on the whole, the volume of feedback received has remained strong, more than a year after the last General Election.

Releasing figures REACH said for the first 11 months of this year, it received over 64,000 feedback inputs - a 42 per cent increase over the 45,000 feedback inputs received over the same period in 2011.

The hottest topic for the year - foreigners.

REACH said contributors expressed unhappiness with foreigners for what they perceived as crowding out of public infrastructure, eroding social norms and values, and marginalising Singaporeans in school placements and the job market.

This was also fuelled by a series of prominent cases involving foreigners - including the insulting comment by foreign scholar Sun Xu and the fatal accident involving a Ferrari driver.
REACH said these cases triggered heated views towards foreigners and calls for a more stringent immigration policy.

Population and immigration issues were the second most popular topic, up from third place last year.

Last year's discussion topics, which included issues of the country's low fertility rate and putting "Singaporeans First" in jobs, education and housing, continued to surface this year.

The discussion was also underpinned by concerns on the influx of foreigners,

The discussion also gained traction with the release of NPTD's Occasional papers on Citizen Population Scenarios in April and Marriage & Parenthood Trends in June, followed by the NPTD Issues Paper and a 14-week public consultation on population in July.

The third most popular topic was transportation - down from its top spot last year.

REACH said the six train disruptions in April this year and talk about public transport fare hikes generated a lot of discussion on transport.