Written by:Neil Humphreys
8/16/2011 2:42 PM 

ROWAN Atkinson had a car crash this week. Working out the time difference between Singapore and the UK, I now realise I was lamenting his absence at the very moment his car clipped a tree in the English countryside. I’m not trying to make light of another man’s misfortune, Atkinson suffered the most minor of injuries and was just fine.

But things are more than fine here in Singapore.

I left the city state in September 2006. I returned in August 2011 to a country transformed; an island I barely recognised.

In the old days you took your filled employment pass application forms, along with all your certificates and headed for the Immigration Checkpoints Authority in Lavender. You joined the back of a queue clean shaven and often reached the front with a full beard.  

Then you finally met with an immigration officer who informed you that you were missing a Cub Scouts’ needlework certificate from Primary 5 and sent you home to fetch it.

But Singapore is a different world now; an easier and - dare I naively say it - calmer world now.  When I turned up this week to get my employment pass, I expected it to be another red-tape ridden experience for several reasons.

First, we had our daughter with us, whom I love dearly but in a confined office space, she can be as distracting as a chopstick in the eye.

Second, I was seriously ill. I turned up directly from my bed unshaven, unwashed and wearing a cap to hide my unkempt hair. Every orifice around my head was producing mucus of various colours unnecessary to describe here, but I haven’t touched lime juice since. Two hours after the interview, a doctor told me I had a nasty sinus infection and sent me to bed.

Third, our taxi driver failed to hear me say “The Riverwalk, near Clarke Quay” and took us to Clarke Quay instead, assuming we wanted to look at closed bars and restaurants at 11am.And when he finally splashed our way across North Bridge Road and found the right floor, I noticed something different.

1.  It’s a new building:
   The administration for employment and dependents passes has been separated from the other divisions of immigration. The mouthful-of-a-title Employment Pass Service Centre (EPSC) is now situated at the aforementioned Riverwalk. http://maps.google.com.sg/maps?q=Employment+Pass+Service+Centre+riverwalk&hl=en&prmd=ivns&biw=1280&bih=709&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
   
   Take the train to Clarke Quay and go to exit E. This is good advice, because the Clarke Quay station has more exits than a 747 jet. It’s on the fourth floor (which also took me a while to find). Presumably because other branches of immigration and the Ministry of Manpower are housed elsewhere, the airy, open office was reasonably quiet and stress free. I once stood in a visa queue at an immigration department in Melbourne for more than an hour. By the time I got to the counter, I was worried the visa might have expired.
   
   
2. A room with a view:
   The centre overlooks the Singapore River, taking in Boat Quay, much of the CBD and parts of the old colonial district. Along the windows, some bright spark has placed info panels detailing the history of the buildings outside. I was actually disappointed when they called our names (in less than five minutes – FIVE MINUTES!).
    
   
   
   
   
3. It’s like airport check-in.
   Before we even set foot in the office, we were directed by an usher (who guided us to a check-in machine like those used by airlines. All we had to was scan the bar code on the letter (this was the “notification for employment pass holders to report at the Employment Pass Service Centre” letter – nice and concise. It’s good to know some things haven’t changed within the Singapore Civil Service.) We were then given a receipt confirming our appointment. We were eager to get in so we didn’t really hear what the usher was saying. 
   
   
4. We got our photos next door
   She told us to get our photos first. We didn’t hear her. When it was our turn to meet the EPSC officer, we didn’t have our photos. It probably didn’t help that I had a full beard, thick glasses because my eyes stung from the infection and a cap pulled down and couldn’t have looked less like my fresh-faced passport photo if I had turned up in a Borat disguise. So get the photos done first at the unit just beside the EPSC on the fourth floor. They cost $6 for four photos and only take cash. It’s always a bonus if you can turn up washed and shaved and flu-free. My photos were awful.

5. We had the right documents
   Required documents will obviously depend on each particular case. We had to take the letter with the lengthy title mentioned above, the in-principle approval (IPA) letter that had told us we were eligible in the first place,
   (See this website to find out if you are eligible to work in Singapore http://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-manpower/passes-visas/employment-pass/before-you-apply/Pages/default.aspx) our latest travel document (passport), the original disembarkation card with the short term visit pass (that little white card stamped at the airport) and, of course, the photos. There was a family close by who had a document missing and they were not happy. They were French.

   
   
6. It was like being in CSI
   Our fingerprints were taken for security purposes. This pleased our daughter immensely (until she realised she was too young to get hers done, so she’s been pretending to operate a finger-printing machine – her toy calculator – ever since). The officer squirted some cream on my thumbs – there’s a first – and I had to press on the little scanner plate thingy. Being cursed with fat, stubby fingers, it took a while because I was pressing too hard. But our daughter was mesmerised with the fingerprint images on the computer screen. Again, the process took less than five minutes. In Australia, we once had to get our fingerprints taken for a security check. We drove to a police station only to be told they didn’t have a finger-printing ink pad, so we had to drive to another station across town. We had to wait behind a guy being charged for being drunk and disorderly (it was Saturday morning). And then we had to wait behind another guy who had his car stolen. That finger-printing process took us about three hours.

7. There were play corners
   Every cubicle had a play corner to keep the kids quiet while the admin work was being taken care of. It was obviously only a small corner, a desk, a few jigsaws, some reading and colour books, but it was clean and modern and our daughter loved it. When we were finished, she asked if she could stay for five more minutes. Quite extraordinary.

   We were in and out within 20 minutes. All we have to do now is pick up the employment passes next week and that’s it for two years. And the best part is? We have exactly the same FIN (Foreign Identification Number) as we did when we were last here five years ago. Such simple, obvious, but efficient set up. And that same number will now be used in any context – work, banking, legal, health, insurance – the same number for the next two years and possibly beyond. When you’ve been slowly suffocated by as much brain-cell-killing red tape as I have in different countries in the last 20 years, it really does take the breath away.

   And my daughter now wants a finger-print scanner for Christmas.

Neil Humphreys has returned to Singapore as he wanted to give his daughter a chance to learn Mandarin. There are also some copies of his Singapore titles left that his publisher wants him to sell before he can write a new book. His best-selling Complete Notes from Singapore is a cult classic and is latest novel, Premier Leech, is out now. Contact him via  www.sg.

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Tags: working , settling , immigration , relocating , security

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