Dr. Lily Neo vs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan

Parliament No:	11
Session No:	1
Volume No:	82
Sitting No:	20
Sitting Date:	2007-03-09
Section Name:	BUDGET
Title:	HEAD I - MINISTRY OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, YOUTH AND SPORTS

 <<< below is an extracted record from parliamentary debate >>>

Dr Lily Neo (Jalan Besar):
Mr Chairman, the Minister yesterday announced that PA allowance would be increased by $30 a month, from $260 to $290. The Minister did not answer my two questions on whether PA allowance commensurates with inflation and whether there has been a study done to ascertain whether PA allowance serves the needs of the recipients.

Sir, my single constituents told me that they needed to skip one meal a day to live on the $260 per month. And now, MCYS is going to give them $1 more a day. But, Sir, $1 a day will not be able to buy them one meal a day in any hawker centre.


Dr Vivian Balakrishnan:
When we did this review of the Public Assistance rates, we took into account both the impact of inflation since the last review as well as the impact of the GST increase. There will always be arguments about whether a sum that we have decided is enough or not. As I said yesterday, frankly, one limiting factor must be that the sum that we give through Public Assistance cannot be so generous as to erode the work ethic. As I said again yesterday, if you take a family with three children, the amount they can receive from Public Assistance - I do not have the exact figure now - I think exceeds $900. At that level, you are getting dangerously close to the earnings of a low-wage worker.

Having said that, I think there will always be unique circumstances when some families find that that sum is not enough. And that is where the community and grassroots organisations have to come in and look for those mitigating or exceptional circumstances and more help is necessary. So the key point is that as far as the entitlement portion is concerned, I will admit that that is set low. But have flexibility, have organisations and individuals who are able to assess special needs of special families and then respond accordingly. That is the system which we have.


The alternative is to set the entitlement at a very high level. But once you do that, I think you would not have only 3,000 families on Public Assistance, you will see many multiples of families.


Dr Lily Neo:
Sir, the Minister said that the increment was done in such a way so as not to take away the work ethic. Surely, this argument cannot be applied to PA allowance recipients because this is a group of people that can never work either due to poor health, old age or disability. Therefore, this work ethic concept does not work. The other point is that the Minister said that this group of people can depend on grassroots organisations and others. Am I to understand that MCYS cannot provide adequately for the most vulnerable group of our society and that PA recipients must go and seek help from others? He said yesterday that in this globalisation, he would ensure that increasing number of Singaporeans would not feel left out and that he would provide more assistance to the poor to cope with the higher cost of living. May I ask him: should providing three meals a day not be a priority of his promise?


Dr Vivian Balakrishnan:
I take the Member's point that for Public Assistance, we have fairly strict criteria. But having said that, I am still not willing to go to the other extreme and say that since we have got strict criteria, we can afford to be generous. This is the same point that Mr Seah Kian Peng raised yesterday. I have sympathy for that point, but I would still appeal to Members of this House to exercise caution.


Her second question was: why must they go and seek help? Why must they ask for it? I would like to remind her again of my speech yesterday when I said that if it is going to be low on entitlement and high on flexibility, then we do want some effort to be exerted on the part of the recipients. Yes, we do want them to go and ask for help. But I also said yesterday that, let us not get too carried away and reach a stage where if someone does not know or does not want to ask for help, we ignore that person. I have also asked the community organisations, neighbours, voluntary welfare organisations and the rest of us, if we see someone who needs more help, enquire about that person and organise the help.

Let us talk about meals since the Member has phrased her question specifically about three square meals. You and I, in fact, all of us, know that there are programmes for meals at home. There are organisations which specifically bring bread and rations, many of which are bought from FairPrice, gratitude to Mr Seah as well. But there are schemes like this. That allows me to say with a clear conscience to both the PAP and the Opposition MPs that nobody in Singapore needs to starve, nobody needs to be deprived of healthcare, and nobody needs to be deprived of a roof over his or her head. If someone indeed is so destitute and is starving, we have other means and other safety nets for them. We can bring them to the Pelangi Home, and I would invite all of you to come to Pelangi Home and see the standard of care, the facilities, the food and the way we look after them.


So, please do not run away with the misconception that Singapore is a cold, heartless place where, because we are so strict on criteria and entitlements, people are starving, freezing and denied the dignities of life. All I am asking Members is just to bear these principles in mind. Entitlements will always be low, ie, the person has to ask you for help and not bang on your table for help. We will always need the many- helping-hands model, not because the Government is broke. We can always do more and we can always raise GST further. But that is not the tone of the society that we are trying to create. We are saying that, yes, there will always be problems in society and it cannot be only the Government to do it because, if you want the Government to do it all, it means higher taxes and a large bureaucracy. As we can see in many other countries who have created elaborate welfare-states based on the best of intentions and the softest of hearts, such systems ultimately failed, they are not efficient and they are going to run out of money. We will see that happen in our lifetime, but we will make sure that that does not happen in Singapore.

As the Minister for MCYS, those are the dilemmas and the trade-offs that I have to make.


2.30 pm


Dr Lily Neo:
Sir, I want to check with the Minister again on the strict criteria on the entitlement for PA recipients. May I ask him what is his definition of "subsistence living"? Am I correct to say that, out of $260 per month for PA recipients, $100 goes to rental, power supply and S&C, and leaving them with only $5 a day to live on? Am I correct to say that any basic meal in any hawker centre is already $2.50 to $3.00 per meal? Therefore, is it too much to ask for just three meals a day as an entitlement for the PA recipients?

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan:
How much do you want? Do you want three meals in a hawker centre, food court or restaurant?

Dr Lily Neo: It is cheaper to cook for one person.

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan:
It is cheaper to cook for one person.
The point I was trying to make is that every family will have different needs and preferences. I am not by any stretch of the imagination claiming that what we are offering as public assistance is a generous package. I am not saying that. But what I am saying is that it is enough, by and large, for most families to get by and, for those who have needs over and beyond that, there are other means to do so. If every one was starving on this amount that we are giving and is totally devoid of any other sources of help, Pelangi Home would be overcrowded, and I would be building many, many more Pelangi Homes. So, in the end, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Yes, any one of us, if we search hard enough, may be able to find a family or people who need additional help. But I would also say that any one of us, if we really put our minds to it, is capable of finding those additional sources of help. What I am designing is a system in which public assistance can and should be complemented by other sources of help. I think we can continue arguing this and we can continue finetuning the exact amount that is needed. But let us just bear in mind the fact that the system is set up with a certain amount of tension, and it is a healthy tension.

In fact, I cannot resist saying that I am very disappointed that in the whole debate on MCYS, the Opposition MPs have not participated in this, and I have actually faced real probing questions more from the PAP MPs and the Nominated MPs. Perhaps, they totally agree with my policies, philosophy and programmes.