Source : Sunday Times – 26 Jul 2009
With due respect to Mrs Nadia Wright in her letter last Sunday (’Hotel was operated by Sarkies brothers’), there was little that was authentically local that the Sarkies brothers introduced with Raffles Hotel.
What is tangibly authentic and redolent of heritage about Raffles Hotel was its iconic, phy-sical transformation from a rundown beach bungalow. The transformation was wholly due to the effort of the Alsagoff family, in which the Sarkieses, as lessees, were fully uninvolved.
Mr Syed Mohamed Alsagoff developed and financed the reconstruction of Raffles Hotel as the world remembers it today. It would be unfair to belittle his significant role in bequeathing a unique heritage to Singapore.
Mrs Wright prefers to view the matter in an either-or light.
The Alsagoffs do not deny the entrepreneurial role of the Sarkies brothers in running the hotel. Similarly, Mr Alsagoff’s role should not be overlooked, as it seems to have been thus far. By crediting him, we may also correct the bias in recounting the hotel’s history, which has been overwhelmingly colonial and Western.
Syed Muhammad Ghadaffi Alsagoff
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