We refer to the article “Poorest households spend S$801 more than they earn each month: MTI” (Channel NewsAsia, Nov 4).

Reply: Bottom 25% when question was on bottom 10%?

It states that “Mr Lim noted that for the bottom 25 per cent of households by income, more than eight in 10 households owned their homes.”

– Isn’t it kind of obvious that the reply should be on the bottom 10 per cent of households. After all, wasn’t that the question?

Why talk about the bottom 25% without giving the corresponding statistics for the bottom 10 per cent?

Kind of like “non sequitur”?

“Owned home” means better off?

In any case, what has owning a home got to do with your expenses being about 80% more than your income? You may even be worse off if your mortgage payment (because you own your home) is higher than say your HDB rental flat’s rent.

“Govt transfers” is money that can use meh?

As to “About 55 per cent of their income was derived from work, while the remaining 45 per cent was from non-work income sources such as investment income and regular transfers from the Government”

– much of the “regular transfers from the Government” like Workfare and CPF Medisave top-ups are not disposable income that can be utilised by these houldsholds.

How many foreign spouses on LTVPs?

The article “More foreign spouses on longer-term visa scheme” (Straits Times, Nov 5) said “a total of 7,300 foreign spouses were in the Long-Term Visit Pass Plus (LTVP+) scheme’.

Actually, we believe what Parliamentarians and Singaporeans really want to know is the total number of LTVP, LTVP+ and the recently announced LTVP for “would be” foreign spouses.

Competing unfairly for jobs?

This would give us a better idea as to how many may be competing with Singaporeans unfairly for jobs – no CPF, no need to apply for work pass, not counted in foreign workers’ quota, etc?