"You go down New York, Broadway. You will see the
beggars, people of the streets...Where are the beggars in
Singapore? Show me."
Lee Kuan Yew
The Tuth About Poverty
THERE IS THIS MYTH THAT Singapore is a rich country and its
citizens are well-taken care of. Nothing could be further from the
truth. The 1998 United Nations Human Development Index showed that
Singapore ranked 28 on the list behind countries like Barbados and
Malta.
In fact many households earn so little that they cannot afford to
give their children pocket-money for school, resulting in the
students going hungry for the day. The following is a snapshot of
some of the more recent cases uncovered:
In 1999, nearly 2,000 children did not attend school because their
parents could not afford it. Mohammad Hirwan is one such child. His
parents earn about US $600 a month, hardly sufficient for a family
in Singapore. As a result the boy\'s parents had to take him out of
school when he was nine. His siblings did not fare any better. All
of them dropped out of school because of poverty.
A technician lost his job and had no income for about half a year
had to watch his two young children live on biscuits for days. A
social worker said that the man had no money even to take the bus
to find a job. The family was literally penniless.
A man with a wife who suffered from manic depression, asthma and
diabetes had to stay home to look after her. Whenever he found some
contract work, his children took turns to skip school to watch over
her. The family had to survive on US$200 a month they received from
welfare organizations.
A young divorcee cannot find enough money to but schoolbooks and
food for her children. Most days, by 10pm, her sons ask if there is
any more food. They cannot afford to eat and live mainly on fried
rice.
The elderly poor in Singapore lead just as tragic lives. Many have
to, literally, work until they die:
An elderly woman in her seventies was fatally run over by a
hit-and-run driver as she was returning home at 6:40 am, working as
a night-shift toilet cleaner. Not only did the elderly lady have to
toil in the night shift, her pay was so meagre that she could not
even afford to eat lunch. To top it off she had to save to help
take care of her 50-year old mentally retarded daughter.
Another septuagenarian woman worked as cleaner for a measly US$200
a month which she had to share with her 70-year-old sister. The
sisters are so hard-up that even vegetables during meal-times are a
luxury.
A 77-year-old toilet cleaner was on his way home around midnight
after work. He couldn't afford the fare for a bus ride and had to
walk home. He was hit and killed by a car.
A 96-year-old woman has to go to the garbage dump to pick out odds
and ends to sell to support herself.
A 76-year-old man ran a little business selling household
provisions. His paltry income had to support middle-aged daughters
who are wheelchair bound and suffering from polio since birth, and
a wife who is senile and incapable of looking after herself. His
problems took a dramatic turn for the worse when the Government
upped the rental of his shop from US$150 to US$450 a month.
Below are some statistical indicators of the poor in
Singapore:
In 1999 monthly wages for low-skilled workers decreased by
as much as 34 percent.
Nearly 30 percent of households were not
earning enough to afford the minimum standard of living. The
Government estimates that the subsistence level in Singapore is
US$600 for a household of four peoplea conservative figure for a
country that is consistently ranked among
the most expensive cities in the world to live in.
Between 1998 and 1999, the average household monthly income of
the poorest 10 percent of the population
decreased by nearly 50 percent. The following year, the
figure nose-dived by another 54
percent.
In 1990, the richest 10 percent of households earned 15.6 times more than the poorest 10 percent.
(Households with no income-earners are excluded from this
category.) By 2000, the gap
widened: the richest 10 percent earned 36 times more
than the poorest 10 percent.
The number of households with monthly incomes of less than
$3,000 was 40 percent in 1998
but increased to 42 percent in 1999.
According to the 2000 Census, 12.6 per
cent of households earned less than $1,000 per month. A monthly
gross total household income of $1,500 and below is considered
poor in Singapore.
A more recent survey found that 16 per cent of the respondents had
family members who often went hungry.
In 2004 37,823 households could
not afford to buy their own flats or rent
homes in the open market.
Because of the system, an increasing number of Singaporeans are
driven to seek the help of mental professionals:
In 1990 there were 88,000 such cases. This figure escalated to 147,000 in
1998.
In 1990 only 8.4 percent of Singaporeans
suffered from neurotic disorders such as anxiety and
depression. In 1998 16.6 percent succumbed to these
disorders. (This problem continues into the
present with a newspaper report highlighting that more people are
being diagnosed with mental disorders due to financial
woes.)
In 1997, psychiatrists noted a sharp increase in the number of
teenagers attempting suicide and attributed the phenomenon to the
youths being alienated from their parents. The main reason cited is the stressful lifestyle and
high cost of living.
In 1999, a consumer health survey found that among the various
Asian societies, Singaporeans are most likely to have suffered
depression, stress, and fatigue. In addition, job-related stresses continue to be the biggest
problems for working Singaporeans.
In 2003, a study found that Singaporeans aged between 20 and 49 years made up 70 percent of suicide cases
from 1997 to 2001. They also constitute the main bulk of
cases of attempted suicides.
Between 1994 and 1998 the number of divorces shot up from
3,772 to 5,651 cases.
Social workers attribute this occurrence to intense stress
experienced by workers who have households, children and aging
parents to take care. National figures compiled by the
Registry of Births and Deaths show that on average, 1 person takes his/her own life in Singapore every
day.
Visitors often remark about the tidiness and orderliness of
Singapore. It is because of such an impression that makes the cases
of poverty described in the earlier paragraphs so hard to
believe.
The reason why the poor in Singapore are not more visible is that
the Ministry of Community Development and Sports conduct
frequent raids through its Destitute Persons
Service, looking for and picking
up vagrants. If Singapore seems to have less
destitute, it is not because the
numbers are not present. The real reason is that the
PAP Government is just much more
efficient in clearing the streets of homeless
people.[/b]
For all the hype claiming that Singapore is a near-paradise,
20 percent of its citizens
indicated that they want to leave the
country, predominantly because of the [b]stressful lifestyle and high cost of
living. These would-be émigrés are mainly
from the strata of younger, higher-income
professionals.
With the costs of living rising, or at least not
decreasing, and wages continuing to be depressed, Singaporeans are
going to facing increasingly dire economic times. Without any
rights, their problems will persist.
