Former NTUC Income chief’s presidential bid: 5 things to know about Tan Kin Lian

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SINGAPORE: Former NTUC Income chief executive Tan Kin Lian on Friday (Aug 11) launched his bid to run for the presidency.

He is the fourth person to declare their intention to contest the upcoming Presidential Election. The other three are former Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, businessman George Goh and former GIC chief investment officer Ng Kok Song.

Here are five things to know about Mr Tan, 75, who also ran for the presidency in 2011 but finished last.

FORMER NTUC INCOME CEO 

Mr Tan was the CEO of NTUC Income for 30 years until 2007. After leaving the insurer, he started a computer software business and travelled regularly to provide insurance consultancy in Indonesia. 

In a blog post on Jul 30, he claimed NTUC Income’s assets had increased by 600 times under his leadership – from S$28 million (US$20.8 million) to S$17 billion.

NTUC Income’s net assets were valued at around S$1.17 billion in its annual report for the financial year ending Dec 31, 2006, which was Mr Tan’s last full year as its CEO.

Explaining why he left NTUC Income, Mr Tan previously said that he disagreed with a few members of the board on the issue of privatising NTUC Income and had “fought so hard” for it to remain a cooperative.

When the board decided to search for a new CEO, Mr Tan said he accepted that decision “as it was best for NTUC Income to search for a new direction for the future”.

NTUC Income is now a corporate entity after its insurance business and assets were transferred to a new company called Income Insurance Ltd in 2022.

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Tak hospital in red as migrant patient numbers soar

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Umphang Hospital gets B20m lifeline as more people flee conflict in Myanmar

PUBLISHED : 11 Aug 2023 at 20:05

Tak hospital in red as migrant patient numbers soar
Umphang Hospital in Tak is running a 40-million-baht deficit as many of the migrants it treats cannot pay their bills. (Photo: Umphang Hospital Facebook)

The Ministry of Public Health has sent 20 million baht to Umphang Hospital in Tak province to help it cover the increased costs of treating the rising number of migrants fleeing the conflict in neighbouring Myanmar.

The hospital has been facing an increase in operating costs, putting a strain on liquidity and resulting in a deficit of 40 million baht, said Dr Opas Kankawinpong, the ministry’s permanent secretary.

“I have assigned officials to investigate if other local hospitals along the Thai-Myanmar border are facing the same situation as Umphang Hospital and for them to draw up solutions,” he said on Friday.

Umphang Hospital is listed under the “One Province One Hospital” scheme, under which hospitals in each health district share medical staff, budgets and resources to support one another.

Dr Worawit Tantiwattanasap, the director of Umphang Hospital, said on Thursday that this was the first year in three decades that the hospital has faced such a large deficit resulting from treatment for migrant patients from Myanmar.

One-quarter of migrant inpatients and half of migrant outpatients cannot afford medical bills, he added.

Many patients have been admitted to hospital because of the conflict in the border town of Kawkareik in Karen state and the ongoing malaria outbreak, said Dr Worawit.

As well, he said, more migrants have been crossing the border to give birth to their children as conditions at hospitals in Myanmar have deteriorated since the military coup two years ago.

Umphang Hospital has set up a community isolation programme in Myanmar in an effort to slow down migration to Thailand. However, the operating cost of the programme cannot be reimbursed from the public health ministry, resulting in a deficit in the hospital’s budget.

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K2: Climbers deny walking by dying sherpa in bid to break record

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Picture of the area on K2Wilhelm Steindl
By Mattea Bubalo & Bethany Bell
BBC News

A well-known Norwegian mountaineer has denied accusations that her team climbed over an injured sherpa during a bid to break a world record.

The sherpa, named as Mohammed Hassan, had fallen off a ledge on Pakistan’s K2 – the world’s second-highest mountain.

Video posted by other climbers appears to show a group walking by Mr Hassan, who reportedly died a few hours later.

But Kristin Harila said she and her team tried everything to help him in dangerous conditions.

The Norwegian was heading for K2’s summit to secure a world record and become the fastest climber to scale all peaks above 8,000m (26,000ft).

But during the ascent on 27 July, Mr Hassan reportedly fell from an extremely narrow path known as a bottleneck.

Austrian climbers Wilhelm Steindl and Philip Flämig have posted pictures appearing to show people climbing over him.

Norwegian climber Kristin Harila(C) and Tenjen Sherpa(L) at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on 5th August, 2023

Getty Images

The pair were also on the mountain that day, but had cancelled their ascent because of dangerous weather conditions and an avalanche.

They had been filming for a documentary about Mr Steindl’s attempt to reach the summit.

As their camera display was small, they say they only saw the details of what their drone captured the next day.

“We saw a guy alive, lying in the traverse in the bottleneck. And people were stepping over him on the way to the summit. And there was no rescue mission

“I was really shocked. And I was really, I was really sad. I started to cry about the situation that people just passed him and there was no rescue mission,” Mr Steindl told the BBC.

Mr Hassan was being treated by one person “while everyone else” moved towards the summit in a “heated, competitive summit rush”, Mr Flämig told Austria’s Der Standard newspaper.

Ms Harila, however, has denied the accusations that Mr Hassan was left to die.

She said no-one was to blame for his death, adding that she had decided to make the statement to stop the spread of “misinformation and hatred”.

It is unclear what point of the incident the posted footage purports to show.

In an Instagram post describing what happened, the Norwegian climber says she had been walking when she saw the other team Mr Hassan was part of a few metres ahead before the “tragic accident” happened.

She said she did not see exactly what took place, but the next thing she knew, Mr Hassan “was hanging upside down” on a rope between two ice anchors, with his harness “all the way down around his knees. In addition, he was not wearing a down suit and his stomach was exposed to snow”.

Her team tried for an hour and a half to fasten a rope to the sherpa and give him oxygen and hot water, she recounted, until “an avalanche went off around the corner”.

Having established her team were safe, she said she understood more help was coming and decided to move forward to avoid overcrowding on the bottleneck. Her cameraman stayed behind to help until he himself ran low on oxygen.

“It was only when we came back down that we saw Hassan had passed and we were ourselves in no shape to carry his body down.”

She does not say if anyone was with the injured sherpa when her cameraman left, or when they passed his body upon their descent.

K2, along the Pakistan-China border, stands at 8,611m (28,251ft) and is regarded as one of the most challenging and dangerous mountains to climb.

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Two police officers charged with taking money from suspects they were investigating

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SINGAPORE: Two police officers were charged in court on Friday (Aug 11) with criminal breach of trust after taking money over several years from suspects they were investigating.  The alleged acts by the suspects, Mohamed Mohamed Jalil and Mohamad Danial Mohamad Nazali, came to light following “proactive regular case reviews and dueContinue Reading

B64m aid boost for fireworks blast victims

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Total of B107 million now available to help rebuild damaged community in Narathiwat

PUBLISHED : 11 Aug 2023 at 18:15

B64m aid boost for fireworks blast victims
An aerial view shows the buildings damaged by the fireworks explosion that killed 12 people and injured dozens in Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat on July 29. (Photo: Border Patrol Police Unit 4414)

The prime minister has approved an additional allocation of 64 million baht to help victims of the fireworks warehouse explosion last month in Narathiwat, a spokesman said on Friday.

The latest grant brings the total awarded to the victims of the July 29 incident to 107 million baht, said Anucha Nakhasai, Minister Attached to the Prime Minister’s Office who chaired a meeting of disaster relief fund board.

The funds will be spent on rebuilding or repairing victims’ houses as well as on providing other necessary aid, he said.

Caretaker Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha last week visited the stricken community in Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat and assured residents that financial support was being expedited. He also asked his office to consider whether to grant additional funds.

The blast killed 12 people and injured 389, while three schools were destroyed and 682 houses damaged.

Sompong Nakul, 42, and his wife Piyanuch Puengwirawat, 42, the owners of the illegal warehouse, surrendered to police after returning from Malaysia last Saturday.

The couple were initially charged with negligence causing deaths, importing and/or selling fireworks without a permit and violating the Emergency Decree in the southern region.

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