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The Employment Act was amended in 2015 to make it mandatory that employees under the Act are provided with itemised payslips and key employment terms (KETs) in writing, and employers are to keep records of employees. A breach of these mandatory requirements is considered a civil breach which will attract administrative financial penalties / fines.
Continue reading “Employment Act mandatory requirements grace period ends 31 March”
The Straits Times reported today that the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC), which is the government body under the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) responsible for enforcing Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (PDPA), announced that it is developing a local certification programme for data protection officers (DPOs).
Under the PDPA, all organisations which come under the scope of the Act are mandated to appoint data protection officers (DPOs). These officers may be employees or external consultants. The DPO has to ensure that the organisation is compliant with the PDPA.
Based on the PDPC’s survey of 1,513 organisations in March and June 2016, only about 40% of Singapore organisations have a DPO on their payroll.
While there is a foreign certification for data protection issued by the US-based International Association of Privacy Professionals, training for which is conducted by Straits Interactive, the PDPC hopes that the local certification will encourage more people to take up DPO certification, and give more recognition to the role of DPO. ST reports that “Experts estimate that there will be more than 10,000 DPO jobs here over the next three years.”
It is good for organisations to review their PDPA compliance and ensure they have a DPO appointed.
For individuals / employees / job-hunters, it is good to consider obtaining such DPO certification to boost one’s skill sets and qualification to meet the likely growing demand for DPO positions in the years to come.
For more information on PDPA compliance, visit http://www.singaporepdpa.com.
The Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity (Amendment) Bill was introduced in the Singapore Parliament on 9 March 2017. The Bill seeks to amend the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act (Cap. 50A) to introduce new criminal offences on computer offences and cybercrimes. This is especially pertinent given the rising number and extent of cybercrimes today. Just last month (February 2017), the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) system was hacked into and the personal data of many SAF service personnel were stolen: see reports on Today Online, Channel NewsAsia, Straits Times. Do note that the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) does not apply to MINDEF as it is a public body.
Continue reading “Legislative Update: Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act Amendment”
The Companies (Amendment) Bill was introduced in Parliament yesterday (28 February 2017) to amend the Companies Act (the Act) on several significant matters.
Significance: the Registrar of Trade Marks considered evidence of online post-sale upgrades and software updates to determine that the “Sherlock” trade mark registered by Apple Inc. was not put to genuine use during the relevant 5-year period after the “Sherlock” search tool and trade mark was phased out.
Apple Inc. needed to provide sufficient evidence to persuade the Registrar that the “Sherlock” trade mark was used within the relevant 5-year period, notwithstanding indications that the “Sherlock” search tool in Mac OS had been phased out. Thus, because there was no evidence that there were downloads of the online updates by Singapore users in the relevant 5-year period, the Registrar was not persuaded that the “Sherlock” trade mark was put to genuine use during that time. The Registrar thus granted the application for revocation of the trade mark as at date of the application.
Five-member Singapore Court of Appeal considered the law on absolute privilege, qualified privilege, in the context of defamation made in the form of complaints to law enforcement or prosecuting authorities e.g. police and regulatory bodies. The Court of Appeal laid down the law that gratuitous complaints to law enforcement or prosecuting authorities, should only be protected by qualified privilege, which can be defeated by malice, and not absolute privilege: see [77]-[78].
Significance: the Singapore High Court (coram: Belinda Ang J) commented obiter dicta on the approach which the Singapore courts will likely take on the applicable law in determining non-contractual obligations e.g. tortious liability and the conflict of laws doctrine renvoi, i.e. whether the reference to a foreign law includes the foreign law’s choice of law rules or not.
In sum, the Court opined that there is large support for the view that the applicable law be the contractually chosen law, which would govern contractual obligations. This approach gives weight to the party’s autonomy in their contractual choice.
As regards renvoi, the Court opined that a case-by-case approach to deciding the issue is uncertain. As for contract-related matters, the approach would likely be that reference to a foreign law only includes the domestic law of the foreign law and not also the choice of law rules. (If the reference includes the foreign choice of law rule, there could be a double renvoi where the choice of law might point to a third set of laws or back to Singapore law).
Had the privilege to participate in this meaningful initiative by some law students. I hope my juniors at their crossroads will be at least a little aided by this reflection, a letter addressed to my 19-year-old self who just resigned himself to accepting NUS Law.
http://www.lettersofthelaw.org/read-a…/ronald-jj-wong-lawyer
“Dear Ronald,
It may be rough for you right now, I know. You are struggling with intellectual skepticism of just about everything. There’s a gnawing void in your heart and soul. You messed up your application to Oxford. You have neither the funds nor a scholarship to go to any of the U.S. colleges offered to you. Your fanciful idea of becoming an investment banker and earning heaps of money so you can retire early seems out of reach. And you might feel disappointed about having to take up the offer from NUS Law. Everything doesn’t make sense to you now.
Believe me. Those things are some of the best things that will happen to you. Because it is in the ashes of those broken ambitions and the intellectual and emotional vacuum of fallen mental frameworks and fractured relationships that you will soon find purpose, meaning and community.
You will finally encounter in a metaphysical way the one through whom everything will become clear. You will find enjoyment not just in studying the law but also in the justice that undergirds it. You will experience a holy dissatisfaction with the conception of justice, or injustice, you will witness. And you will dig in ancient places for the justice which satisfies. Through that, you will find purpose and significance in the one who out of justice and mercy redeems you from the injustice you are complicit in, who calls you to pursue justice and mercy among those who are often left at the margins. This will be better than money or status or whatever idea of the good life you think you could have with your silly fanciful ambitions.
Don’t fuss about grades. Instead, work hard to receive a proper education. Learn as much as you can to be a good lawyer. And when it is time, you will have to make a difficult decision, a leap of faith, as it were, to follow through with the convictions which will brew inside you after the restlessness you will experience from the dissonance between purpose and reality. Uncertainty is the best place in which faith will reap much harvest. So don’t fear the dark. Go with what has been revealed in the light.
Pursuing the things which are good and right is tiring and difficult. Friendships and community and being are more valuable than activism and fighting and working. That will help you to be faithful to whatever you are called to.
And you will have joy. It’s not the ecstatic kind of joy. It’s a quiet joy. It will co-exist with the sehnsucht which will always simmer in your heart. It is both the joy and the yearning which will sustain you to carry on.
Don’t fear. Have faith. It will all be alright at the end of all things.
Peace,
Ronald”
Success Elegant Trading Limited v La Dolce Vita Fine Dining Company [2016] SGHC 159
The Singapore High Court, per Andrew Ang SJ, upheld the Assistant Registrar’s decision in La Dolce Vita Fine Dining Co Ltd v Deutsche Bank AG [2016] SGHC 3 in ordering pre-action discovery of customer bank account information against two banks in respect of their customer’s alleged fraudulent misrepresentations.