Plastic Surgery for Orchard Road

The Singapore Tourism Board spent 40million worth of Singapore dollars, just to give Orchard Road a 'plastic surgery'. Orchard Road has long since been one of Singapore's tourist attractions, being known as a shopping paradise. However, after comments of 40million having a lot of zeros and many complaints from local citizens, I believe that the 40million dollars is not well spent at all. The STB's efforts to decorate up Orchard Road are in vain. 40million is a large sum of money, and it can go to better use to the Old Folks Home, the Child Care Centers or 80million roti-pratas. Thats enough to feed all the people in Singapore who cannot afford a meal for say, few months at least. People think the amount spent on this project is around one million, rather than 40 times of what they thought. This shows how inefficent the STB spend the money, not to mention in the times of the global economic recession.

Interviews reveal that most people does not notice the change in Orchard Road, and some merely see one or two of what has changed. The government renewed all the lamps along Orchard Road. A student mentioned one would not take any notice to a street lamp, unless they are malfunctioning, and that the old ones were working fine. The STB put up glass panels all along Orchard Road, featuring its culture and history. However, they were remarked to be 'cheap-looking' and 'unsightly'. People might crash into them and not only breaking the glass panels, it will cause injury. The STB defends by stating that the glass will not break, but simply crack. Although this removes the chance of being injured, we cannot allow a broken glass panel to stand in the middle of Orchard Road, which is ugly and gives Singapore a bad image. So, the glass panels will have to be replaced, which takes both time and money again. Judging by the fact that glass is very brittle, which easily breaks, this is very inpractical, unless the STB is ready to make a trip down Orchard Road every few days.

Not only that, the flower totems put up by the STB have been badly viewed upon too. Firstly, according to a ice-cream vender, people are unable to see him from across the road, as their view is blocked by the flower totem, unlike previous times, when his business is not affected by some big flower towers. Also, they were described as being small as compared to Orchard Road. One will not notice them unless they were looking out for them. They feature like dirt on one's shoe, which is hard to notice unless one looks out for it. Thus, as seen from the examples, the many changes the STB brought out were inpractical and unmeaningful.

However, this also has a bright side. Tourists who went to Orchard Road now will not be put off by many of previous factors, as they were removed. One of them is the crowd of people and traffic jam. Now, this problem is effectively resolved by the widened roads, which is one change that people liked. Also, the interesting theme of nature may help attract tourists, and the large number of shopping centers will most definately give the tourists a special feeling about Singapore when they return. A couple of tourists commented that they did not think that Orchard Road had a lot of shops when they went to Orchard Road, and it did not meet their expectations. Now, with the change, they surely will look at Singapore in a different way.

However, although there are pros about the Orchard Road facelift, the cons far outweigh the pros. The facelift gave rise to many negative effects, and caused many people to be unhappy. Also, in the troubled times of unemployment and economic recession, it is unwise to spend so much money on such luxurious projects. Thus, I conclude that the STB failed to spend the money effectively.