5 Royals workers questioned by police

In the process of finding out the root cause of the bleaching agent finding its way into the baking ingredients. Will be watching this progress. First time I see this happening in real life. I always joke about 'sabo' with my colleagues – it is now happening (at least that's how it looks) in real life.

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FIVE Royals Premium Cakes employees are being questioned further by police, said the company after the alleged sabotage at its Bedok factory on Sunday.

Company director Joy Tang said: "They (the police) are doing the third round of questioning. First round was for all of our employees. Second round was done yesterday, the police chose five (and) tried to gather some forensic information from the five suspects. Today, the same five will be going over."

A chemical contaminant believed to be a bleaching agent was discovered in some of the ingredients, namely pie fillings and sugar syrup, by staff on Sunday. This led to a recall of confectionary products made at the factory.

The company has yet to decide on measures to prevent a similar incident, said Ms Tang. Its management will hold discussions before submitting a proposal to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) in the next two days, she added.

Ms Tang adds that the company is doing a final cleaning to sanitise the factory. Operations at the factory will remain suspended pending investigations by the police and the AVA. The police said investigations are on-going.

AVA says it is still in the process of running tests, and has not received any complaints from people falling ill from consuming any contaminated products. 938LIVE

From TODAYonline.com; see the source article here.

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What women want but aren’t getting

 Lin Yanqin, yanqin@mediacorp.com.sg

WITH women a minority in the upper echelons of companies in Singapore, nearly half feel that they will not reach a senior management position, a survey of women in the finance and accounting sector revealed.

Add to that the desire for work-life balance — the priority for 59 per cent of the respondents — and that 53 per cent of the women will leave their jobs for one with lesser pay in order to achieve it, it’s a worrying insight for the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). Women make up 66 per cent of its 9,000 members.

Given the accounting and finance industry’s long hours, women choosing to exit the industry would drain it of much-needed talent, said ACCA country head Penelope Phoon-Cohen.

“The work-life balance situation has to improve (if we want to retain talent),” saidMs Phoon-Cohen, speaking on the survey results at a media briefing yesterday.

Women in accounting, she added, tend to leave the industry because of family commitments.

The survey by recruitment firm Robert Half Singapore and ACCA — which collected over 700 responses in March — found that 39 per cent of the women surveyed did not see women in their companies’ board of directors.

In addition, nearly half the respondents said their companies had formal equal opportunity or diversity policies, while 32 per cent said their companies’ did not have any, and 21 percent were not aware if their companies’ had one at all.

Employers need to do more about this, said Robert Half managing director Tim Hird, as a lack of formal policy means a lack of security and reassurance to employees on their career development policies.

While the survey showed that employers needed to do more to formalise and communicate policies assuring employees of equal opportunities, Mr Hird also felt that women should be more vocal about their workplace needs.

“We’ve seen women who want to leave their companies because they said they wanted more work-life balance, but they don’t actually know about the opportunities (to do so) in their companies,” he said.

Women may hesitate to bring up work-life needs in the current economic climate for fear of appearing unproductive.

However, open communication is necessary in order to avoid “grey areas”, whether it is work-life needs left unmet, or women feeling that they lack the opportunity to move up, said Mr Hird.

From TODAYOnline.com, News – Friday, 22-May-2009; see the source article here.

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