Sunday, 30 August 2009, 7:45 pm | 3,145 views
Breaking
News:
The Democratic Party of Japan has won a landslide victory in the
country’s general elections, ousting the Liberal Democrats which
had ruled the country for most of the last 54 years.
(CBC
News)
Leong Sze Hian
When the question was last asked in parliament as to the
rejection rate for applications for the Public Assistance
scheme, the answer was that about 50 per cent were
rejected.
As there are only about 3,000 Singaporeans receiving public
assistance, the question that needs to be raised is whether the
criteria to qualify is too strict?
The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports’ (MCYS)
website says:
“If you are unable to work owing to old age, illness or
disability and have no means of subsistence and have little or no
family support you may seek help under the PA scheme”.
Thus in Madam Chung’s case, where she appears to be able to
“work”, she may not qualify for PA.
The tens of thousands of elderly toilet cleaners, food court
cleaners, used drink cans and used cardboard collectors, etc, I
believe may also fail to meet the PA scheme criteria.
If the elderly lady earns more than $12 a day, she may be
actually better of being a rubbish scavenger, as recepients of the
PA scheme are not allowed to work.
I also understand that if you own a flat, or have working
children, it is also very difficult to qualify. Would you prefer to
stay in your own home – instead of having to sell it and use up the
proceeds, in order to get $360?
Medifund I understand cannot be used for polyclinic out-patient
treatment. I spoke to a 81 year-old toilet cleaner who earns just
$600 a month, and she told me that her biggest worry is that
everytime she goes to a polyclinic about every three months, she
has to pay about $98 for her three-months medicine and
consultation.
As I understand it, the criteria to qualify for Medifund is
confidential. As far as I am able to find out, the patient and
family members must all have nothing in their Medisave, very little
in their bank accounts, hardly any extra monthly disposable income,
in order to get Medifund subsidy. Also, getting Medifund does not
mean free, it may just be a subsidy for part of the medical
cost.
I also understand that about 20 per cent of Medifund
applications are rejected.
Members of parliament should know what are the rejection rates
for Public Assistance, Financial Assistance and Medifund in their
own constituencies. I suggest that these statistics be made
public.
Compare Singapore to any developed country, and the number of
only 3,000 public assistance recipients against the total citizen
population, may be the lowest “welfare per capita” in the
world.
To get the whole picture, perhaps what we need are the
statistics. For example, according to the latest Department of
Statistics data available, the bottom ten percentile of employed
households have a per capita monthly income of only $360.
What about unemployed households and retiree households?
How many of the 116,600 unemployed as at June 2009 have zero
or very low per capita income?
How many Singaporeans earn less than $800? The
latest data say that 292,800 residents (Singaporeans and PRs) earn
less than $1,200, and about 126,800 work part-time for
a median income of $600 which has remain unchanged from 1999 to
2008.
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