80% of unwed mothers’ HDB requests rejected?
After writing “80% of unwed single mothers have their HDB application rejected?” (theonlinecitizen, May 27) – I saw a very interesting comment on the facebook of theonlinecitizen, from Raja Kannappan who wrote
Appealed or applied?
“Does the minister know the meaning of applied and appealed?
Who is providing the … information now?
Does this mean that the number of applications is more than 100? May be in the thousands?”
Appeals vs applications?
In this regard, do the 400 appeals of which 80 per cent were rejected, mean that it is only referring to the unwed mothers who appealed against the rejection of their applications?
If say 40 per cent of those whose applications were rejected actually took the trouble to appeal – does it mean that the number of rejected applications may be about 1,000 (400 divided by 0.4)?
Unwed mothers over 35 not counted?
Since the statistics given are only for unwed mothers below age 35 – if there were say one over 35 applicant for every four under 35 applicants – does it mean that the number of rejected under and over 35 applicants in total, may be about 1,250 (1,000 divided by 0.8)?
Why only talk about under 35?
We should not assume that once a single mother is 35 or older – that she can afford a resale HDB flat, or afford and wait for a HDB BTO 2-room flat that takes an average of about three years to build from the time of successful application (such flats are heavily over subscribed).
Wed single mothers not counted?
If we include wed single mothers – does it mean that the figure may be in the thousands?
What about those who were told “not eligible”?
And if we include those who never even apply because they could see from the HDB web site, or were told that they didn’t meet the eligibility criteria in the first place – could the number be even higher?
Case-by-case & “a pinch of salt”?
Do the above arguably, give a hint to Singaporeans that whenever you are told something along the lines that we will be flexible on a case-by-case basis, without any statistics to back up the “flexible” – you may like to take it with a pinch of salt!
Leong Sze Hian
