Situations that the government put people through...

Sometimes you will start wondering to yourself if the people in the government has nothing else better to do but to create disturbances in our life...

Anyway...

If you guys had been following the news lately, there have been a news on some shop houses going on fire and because of the way the shop keeper has positioned their wares, the people were trapped without a proper way to escape.

So anyway, this is our story...

My grandfather works in a shop house, not totally for profit but more for having some thing to do while in old age. So anyway, if you want to place any of your wares outside your shop, you will need to pay a certain sum of money ($600 in this case). Now, the bad news is that that area is not properly sheltered and is thus quite exposed to the sunlight and the rain. Most of the shop houses there have thus went to purchase their own "curtains" so as to shield their wares from the elements. This would then make it viable for them to place their wares outside...

Anyway, the cost of using that area has just been paid for. So, things were going on fine....
Until...
Somebody from the government came and say that we MUST take away the "curtain", if not, we must pay a fine of don't know how much money. They gave all the shop keepers a time limit of three days, following which the fine will be imposed and various other actions will be taken.

I have a few reasons to feel that this is not justified:

1. 3 days to remove
Well let's take a look at it this way. This "curtain" is very well-secured and it has been in use for some time already. Sure, we can take down the things in about a few minutes (we took about 30 minutes when we really took it down that night), but have you ever considered about the predicament of the shop keepers? How are they going to display their wares now? 3 days to re-organise your shop is, frankly, too little. You need time to plan and move all your wares such that they can fit inside your shop. This is coupled with the fact that most of the shops there are small shops, thus there isn't this sort of big storage areas where they can keep everything...

3 days to move everything and continue working? You got to be kidding.

2. Why do it after people have paid the $600?
Before we continue, it's good to note the sequence of events that has led up to this scenario:
1. Some people went around finding out if the people wanted to use the area in front of their shop. If the shopkeepers decided to use that area, they must pay $600.
2. Some people then went around in the middle of the night (seriously middle of the night) and then painted down the yellow boxes defining the places where we can put the stuff
3. After painting it, some guy appeared and told my grandparents that they must take down the "curtains". If not, they will incur a fine.

Let's see what went wrong:
-If the shopkeepers had known that they are not allowed to keep the "curtains", I would highly doubt that a large amount of people would not want to continue hiring that space to put their wares since it would mean that their wares would be exposed to the elements
-Under further questioning, the person responded that the $600 are non-refundable and cannot be given back. Which means that no matter what happens, your $600 is stuck, even if you don't use that area because your wares are stuck out in the elements.

From what I see, it sounds like a ploy to earn money. (other then saving people from a fire hazard, which I still don't see how... More on that later) Let's look at it that way, a lot of shopkeepers there are wondering if there is still a need for them to use that area. When the rental notice came, most of the shopkeepers just continue using it seeing as they already have the curtains installed. So after earning a quick $600 from all the shopkeepers, they decided to tell the shopkeepers that "Oh, too bad, no more curtains"...

I mean, look at it this way, it sounds like a contract that gives you all the details minus the fine print, and I don't think we should expect that from the government...


Yes, we all know that the reason why this is being put into place is because of that incident that has happened some days ago. We know that safety is of the most utmost importance for all but is there a need for us to go to that extent. To me, the actions that are being taken seems to be less of safety for people but more of a chance to make money out of a situation...

If you are indeed out to protect the citizens from the dangers of fire hazard and the like, won't it be better to educate the shop owners and the people who live there of the proper evacuation methods should a fire really breakout? Won't it make a lot more sense to tell people what they should do in the real case of an emergency rather then to make the lives of the shopkeeper harder by trying to make them waste their money by making them tear down the "curtains" that they had built themselves several years back, all by themselves?

Let's take this, imagine you are trapped in this building and the building is on fire. Now the fire is raging very greatly and you want to get out of this building alive. You KNOW that there is an escape route somewhere but you do NOT KNOW how to use the escape route to get out of there alive...

This is exactly the same situation that we are seeing for the fire escape route for the shop house. The things are placed in such a method that there WILL be an escape route, a good question to ask however, would be how many people really KNOW how to use it.

When it comes down to it, you are just asking yourself who is the easier person to bully?
Will you bully the shopkeepers? Or bully the public? A lot of time it becomes easier to bully the public, and since there isn't any big shops or big companies in this mix, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to bully everybody...

Anyway, I'm predicting that something like this will happen because its typical of what we have been experiencing...
After about 2 or 3 weeks, some random guy from the government may appear and they will provide all the shopkeepers with this new accessory such that they can shield their items from the elements. This will obviously incur another unnecessary cost on our dearest shopkeepers and they'll have no other choice but to buy it anyway...

So, just my take on the situation, anybody has any comments?

Discmon