COMMENT All nine opposition parties – that have announced that they will be fielding candidates in what is expected to be the first general elections in decades whereby all 87 constituencies in Singapore will be contested – have raised the issue of helping lower-income Singaporeans who have seen hardly any real increase in incomes in the last 10 years or so, as shown in data from the Singapore Ministry of Manpower and the Singapore Department of Statistics.
Over the past few elections, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) had formed the government as early as nomination day, because of walkovers that gave the PAP the majority in Parliament even before polling day.
PAP’s elections record is arguably one of the best in the world:
1965 to 1983 – won all parliamentary seats since independence
1984 – won 72 out of 74 seats
1988 – won 76 out of 77
1991 – won 77 out of 81
1997, 2001, 2006 – opposition only won two seats
The last two presidential elections were also walkovers in favour of PAP.
This year, as in previous elections, the media has gone on overdrive in the days leading up to polling, to put up stories about how much help the needy in Singapore have been, or will be getting in the near future.
Helping needy with 27 cents?
In this connection, I would like to refer to the article ‘$3m scheme to help 30,000 needy’ (Singapore Straits Times, April 21).
The report says, “(The government) is giving out $3 million worth of discount vouchers – three times the value dished out last year – to about 30,000 low-income members”.
Last year, Singapore’s National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) gave vouchers to its needy union members’ families that were about three times less than this year, i.e. S$30 (RM73).
This works out to about 8 Singapore cents (19 sen) a day per family (S$30 divided by 365 days) for last year, and about 27 Singapore cents (66 sen) per day for this year, to each needy union member’s family who successfully applies.
Since NTUC union membership fees are S$117 (RM285) per annum, one way of looking at it, may be that if you are a needy union member family, you got about 25 percent (S$30 vouchers divided by S$117 (RM285) membership fee) of your union dues back in the form of discount vouchers last year, and will get about 85 percent back this year.
Why the delay?
The article adds, “The vouchers will be given out by Aug 1. These vouchers will be valid from Aug 1, 2011 till Jan 31, 2012”, citing the NTUC’s web site.
So, when warehouse coordinator Mohamed Ansary Ismail, age 43, who is the sole breadwinner supporting his wife and three teenage children on his S$1,500 (RM3,653) monthly wage, and whose monthly grocery bill is only about S$150 (RM365), was reported to have said, “Normally I try to watch what I spend and stick to the basics like rice and sugar.
“But I can afford to splurge a bit more on my family when I receive the vouchers – and am glad of the helping hand”.
I wonder if he knows that he can only use the vouchers in three months time from Aug 1.
Hopefully, he has not jumped the gun and informed his children already, they may perhaps suffer momentary disappointment when he reads the fine print upon receiving his vouchers.
Can and should needy families in Singapore have to wait for more than three months, when the vouchers could have been effective immediately?
Incidentally, with 580,000 union members, NTUC’s revenue from membership fees alone is about S$68 million (RM166 million) per annum.
If there are 30,000 needy union members’ families out of NTUC’s 580,000 members alone, one can imagine how many needy families there are across Singapore, since the total number of Singapore resident workers is 1,990,700, as of December, 2010.
With NTUC’s profits from its 12 social enterprises over the three-month period until the vouchers are redeemable, not to mention money from fund raising, like the S$6.9 million (RM16.8 million) raised under NTUC’s U Care Fund this year alone, it is hard to understand why the delay till Aug 1 to cash in the vouchers.
