Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0316/03162.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 18KB | 288 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03162}
$Pretitle{384}
$Title{Singapore
Chapter 2A.   Geography, Population, and Labor Force}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Nena Vreeland}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{singapore
water
island
miles
city
industrial
percent
facilities
population
government}
$Date{1976}
$Log{}
Country:     Singapore
Book:        Singapore, A Country Study
Author:      Nena Vreeland
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 2A.   Geography, Population, and Labor Force

     Singapore has only two natural resources: its position and its people. It
owes the presence of its people almost entirely to its strategic position
athwart the narrowest point of passage between the Indian Ocean and the
Pacific Ocean. Recognizing the favorability of this location and of the
excellent natural harbor for the establishment of an entreport and trading
center, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles founded the city in 1819 and began a
process that swelled the island's population from 150 then to over 2.3 million
in 1976. Until the 1930s the population and the city grew in a more or less
uncontrolled fashion as large numbers of Chinese, Malay, and Indian immigrants
came in search of economic opportunity. Until 1960 the city was characterized
by grossly overcrowded slums with poor sanitary conditions and by a population
reproducing so quickly that the island seemed destined to sink beneath a mass
of humanity. Yet by the mid-1970s Singapore's population had one of the
highest standards of living in Asia and life expectancies that rivaled those
of the West, and half of its people were housed in new apartments that-though
spartan and overcrowded by Western standards-were a great improvement over the
squalor the people had left behind. More significant and more impressive,
Singapore had become the first Asian country to bring its population growth
under control and had realized the distinct possibility of achieving a zero
growth rate within the next few decades. Singapore was a nation approaching
demographic stability.

     One factor more than all others was responsible for the dramatic change
in the island's demography: government planning and initiative. The tight grip
of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's one-party government must be given most of
the credit for achieving population control and changing the living patterns
of the country. Singaporean planners, whether in birth control or in housing,
have created programs that seem to be based on an intimate and comprehensive
knowledge of the people's condition and the direction of change. Policies are
almost always made in the context of long-range goals and, once arrived at,
brook no half measures. Goals are generally realistic and thus are often
exceeded. Once a policy has been decided on, the government will tolerate
little opposition in achieving it.

     Fortunately for Singaporeans, these tactics succeeded during the first
fifteen years of Lee's rule. But Singapore's successes with these policies
have not been unmixed. Despite the loss of its hinterland when the city was
served from Malaysia in 1965 and despite relatively high unemployment during a
slump in world trade in the late 1960s, the growing labor force has been
accommodated. But it has been accommodated at the expense of tens of thousands
of resident aliens whose working permits have been extended and withdrawn
according to the vagaries of the labor market. The labor force, though
literate and well disciplined, has a severe shortage of skilled technicians, a
tribute to the population's preference for academic learning and office jobs.
The housing program too seemed in danger of creating high-rise class ghettos
as ethnic neighborhoods gave way to housing developments.

GEOGRAPHY

Topography

     Singapore owes its growth and its importance in Southeast Asia to its
geographic position rather than to the natural resources of the land. The
entire country is slightly more than 230 square miles in size, an area roughly
equivalent to that of Chicago. Almost all of the land area is on the single
island of Singapore; about fifteen square miles are taken up by fifty-four
islets, fewer than half of which are inhabited and the largest of which, Pulau
Tekong Besar, is less than seven square miles (see fig. 1). The city of
Singapore has an area of 37.6 square miles, a somewhat misleading figure
because large areas outside the city limits are heavily urbanized as well. The
main island is roughly diamond shaped and is about twenty-six miles from east
to west and fourteen miles from north to south. Land reclamation has added
almost six square miles to the total territory since 1966, mostly along the
southeast coast.

     Singapore is separated by the Johore Strait from the mainland and
Malaysia's state of Johor-to which it is connected at the narrowest point of
the strait by a causeway seven-tenths of a mile long-and is separated from
Indonesia's Pulau Batam and lesser islets by the Singapore Strait where it
debouches into the Strait of Malacca-less than five miles wide at its
narrowest point. Indonesia and Malaysia hold that the Strait of Malacca and
the Singapore Strait fall within the twelve-mile limit of territorial waters
and thus are not international waterways. Singapore, whose position as an
entrepot depends on the free passage of international shipping through these
waters, maintains the international character of the waterway.

The islands are generally flat and low lying. There is a hilly area in the
center of the main island; the highest point, Bukit Timah (Tin Hill), is a
little less than 581 feet above sea level. The topography of the southwestern
part of the island is varied by a series of short cliffs and shallow valleys
formed of sedimentary rock. Coastal waters are generally less than 100 feet
deep. The island is drained by several short rivers, streams, and drainage
canals, principally the Singapore, Jurong, Kalang, Kranji, Seletar, and
Serangoon rivers. The longest of these, the Seletar River, is only about nine
miles long.

     Originally the island was mostly covered with forests and mangrove
swamps. Beginning in the early nineteenth century much of the forestland was
cleared, and many of the marshes and swamps were filled in and reclaimed; in
1975 less than 11 percent of the country was considered forested or tidal
marsh, although another 38 percent was classified as arable waste or other
(which includes open spaces, public gardens, cemeteries, and the like).
Efforts at land reclamation have continued into the mid-1970s, a principal
example being the draining and filling of the formerly swampy basin of the
Kalang River in the eastern part of the city, to be used for industrial,
commercial, and residential purposes. Most rivers and drainage canals are
polluted by industrial effluvia, sewage, and trash. The government has
undertaken a serious effort to reverse these conditions, but the density of
the population and a sewage system that dates back to the late nineteenth
century make the task difficult.

Climate

     Located less than 2 degrees north of the equator, Singapore has a
tropical climate of uniformly high temperature and humidity throughout the
year. Average temperatures fall within a six-degree range around 84.2F,
although temperatures as high as 94.6F and as low as 67.3F have been recorded
since the mid-1970s. Relative humidity at 1:30 P.M. averages 72 percent, but
the effects of high temperatures and humidity are largely moderated by sea
breezes. Rainfall averages 86.8 inches annually and is fairly evenly
distributed. Roughly half of the days each year are rainy. The greatest
variations in weather are marked by the two monsoons; prevailing winds come
out of the northeast between November and March and out of the southwest
between May and September. The southwest monsoon is usually accompanied by
squalls known as sumatras, which are sometimes violent and have had winds as
high as sixty-four miles per hour. High tides and heavy rains combining during
the northeast monsoon