At first, you’d be issued an advisory if you’re caught breaking the Circuit Breaker rules, like eating on the hawker centre when you’re supposed to dabao.
Then the authorities said that first-time offender would have his or her name taken down as a warning, and the person would be fined on the second offence.
And now?
Things have changed again.
Everyone in Singapore would be fined $10,000 and jailed for—
Reader Bao: Eh, wait, no lah, not that fast
Oh, right. Not yet.
From tomorrow onwards, there would be no advisory or no “stern warning”: once you’re caught breaking the Circuit Breaker rules, you’d be fined immediately.
Kind of like how smokers would be fined on the spot if they smoke in a non-smoking area.
From Tomorrow (12 Apr) Onwards, You Would Be Fined Without Warning If You Break Circuit Breaker Rules
500 days after the Circuit Break—
Reader Bao: 5 days
Right. 5 days after the Circuit Breaker begins, a total of 3,100 warnings and 40 fines were issued, with 2,900 warnings issued yesterday as that was when they stopped giving advisories and started issuing warnings instead.
But according to the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli, that doesn’t seem to deter people from breaking the rules.
He said in a Facebook post that his enforcement officers reported that “there are still too many people not taking the circuit breaker measures seriously.”
Just today alone, there were an additional 3,000 warnings issued.
And so, “stiffer penalties are clearly needed.”
Reader Bao: Fine them $10,000 and throw them in jail for 6 months?
That’ll solve the problem of making sure that our healthcare capacity won’t be overwhelmed and we can give $8,888 to each Singaporean monthly, but our prison capacity would be overwhelmed.
So, from tomorrow (12 April 2020) onwards, no chance would be given liao.
First offender would be fined $300 immediately.
And repeat offender would face higher fines or be prosecuted in court for egregious (very bad) cases.
Don’t Send Photos to the Authorities That You Didn’t Take Yourself
So, you want to do your part in this fight. You received a photo from your uncle from WhatsApp about an incident in Admiralty Kampung Hawker Centre, whereby a guy is having his bak kut teh on one of the seats.
You immediately send the image to the authorities…only to realise that the image was taken weeks ago, and that guy has already been charged in court because he broke his Stay-Home Notice.
That’s why Mr Masagos is also advising us not to send any image that we didn’t take ourselves to the authorities “as some of these cause our officers to waste time pursuing past events.”
You can read his full post here: