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There are quite a number of statistics which
are either not available, or are not broken down to give more
transparency to issues like the electricity tariff, unemployment,
healthcare and CPF.
Electricity
Tariff
The contracts between the suppliers of
natural gas and power generation companies are
confidential.
Thus, it is almost impossible to do any
independent analysis as to whether electricity profits are
excessive, vis-à-vis the peg of the electricity tariff to fuel oil
prices.
In this connection, as discussed in the
article “Will
we have a smaller electricity bill?” (theonlinecitizen, May
24),
changing of the formula as to how the tariff is priced, may be just
one piece of the “electricity
tariff” puzzle.
Unemployment
Despite repeated calls every once in a while,
in newspaper forums or internet blogs, there is still no break-down
of the unemployment statistics into Singaporeans and permanent
residents (PRs).
For example, the non-seasonally adjusted
resident unemployment rate was 3.1 per cent, and the number of
unemployed residents on a seasonally adjusted basis was 66,300, as
of March.
If PRs constitute about 20 per cent of the
resident work force, and say the breakdown of unemployment is 90
per cent citizens and 10 per cent PRs, then the unemployment for
Singaporeans may be proportionately more than that of
PRs.
Integrated Resorts (IR)
employment
Recently, it was disclosed in Parliament,
that the two integrated resorts now employ some 16,000 workers,
with local hires accounting for 70 per cent.
How many of the 70 per cent locals, are
Singaporeans?
How many of the permanent residents (PRs)
were until recently foreigners?
Healthcare
If you are a Singaporean hospitalized in a
Class C ward, you will see in your hospitalization bill, that you
were given a 80 per cent subsidy.
So, does the hospital receive this 80 per
cent subsidy?
Not really, because Hospitals and Community
Hospitals receive funding based on a complicated system of average
costs depending on the number of patients for each and every
different type of illness or procedure, and also on a needs basis
arbitrarily determined by the Ministry of Health.
Therefore, without transparency, as to the
funding for each hospital relative to their costs, we may safely
say that nobody knows for sure, what is the “subsidy” that
Singaporeans are getting?
The above gives you some idea, as to why
hospitals may be trying so hard to get more patients to opt for
non-subsidised care, promoting health services to foreign patients
who can pay more than costs so that a profit can be made, medical
staff raising funds to help poor patients like those in polyclinics
who cannot pay but cannot be covered by Medifund, etc? What
is the Medifund rejection rate based on patients, instead of
applications? How many people do not have any kind of medical
insurance at all?
Central Provident Fund
(CPF)
I understand that most of the CPF projections
as to how much CPF funds Singaporeans will have at age 55 and
beyond, are based on active CPF account holders.
How many active and inactive CPF members are
there?
What is the defination of
“active”?
With regards to CPF Life, will there be an
independent report available to the public, so that the assumptions
and methodology for life expectancy, beneficiary payouts under the
different plans, expenses, use of funds, etc, can be subject to
public review and scrutiny?
__________________________________
By Leong Sze
Hian
