Family of 8 living on $500/month with no water, $5 Pay U and
limited transport fare
http://www.transitioning.org/2017/08/04/family-of-8-living-on-500month-with-no-water-5-pay-u-and-limited-transport-fare/
Visited a needy family at Marine Terrace yesterday – I was
fascinated by the beautiful sea view on top of the block though it
houses three rental blocks for Singapore’s poorest. About 20 metres
away are another two more rental units.
The five rental blocks for the poor are surrounded by our
high-rise HDB flats with a 3-room unit selling easily at $380,000
minimum. But these poor families pay rent of between $50 to $300
each depending on the combined income of the family members.
There is a narrow common corridor leading to the unit and there
is little hint of any poverty outside as its sparkling clean and
like I mentioned earlier there is also the beautiful sea view.
A PayU meter – sign of a family in poverty – caught my attention
as it hung on the left side of the main door leading into the cosy
living room. A PayU meter is used by the needy so that they will
control their electrical usage – it can only be topped up at the
SingPost using a pre-set key.
The meter reads $5.90 so the family probably can use it to power
their electrical household consumption till Saturday at the most as
the daily usage is about $2 for the powering of lights, fan, fridge
and other simple electrical appliances. I gave them about $50 to
top up the Pay U before leaving.
They confided in me that there are periods whereby they live
without any electricity as they simply have no cash to do the
top-up – the longest they have to live with candlelight at night is
close to a month!
Tears welled up when they say that as I remembered my own
experience with darkness when my parents could not pay the SP bills
on time when I was still in primary school. We light candles too to
pass through the bleak nights and its no fun.
Furniture for the family of 8 is mostly hand-me-down and a nice
cosy creamy sofa took up a main corner of the living room. A large
plasma TV – another hand-me-down from the nearby FSC is the
family’s regular entertainment time-buster. Canned food and parcels
of rice filled up a large corner in the kitchen – donations from
the FSC and some charity groups.
I met up with the wife whose four kids are at home with one
taking the crucial PSLE this year. One other boy will join the
schooling troll next year and the last one is a young toddler of
four years old.
The husband later join us and says he has kidney pain after
falling from a gondola cleaning job many years ago but strangely he
refuses any medical treatment procedure even though many are keen
to foot for the expenses.
He told me he fears knowing the truth if anything is wrong with
his kidney though he cycles regularly to improve his health
condition. He can only make do with a part-time cleaner job paying
$500/month so naturally alot of the bills go unpaid for months…
They show me the reduced water flow tap which they have endure
for close to almost 8 months since December last year. They could
only rinse or wash their body after collecting water in big pails
and it was tough seeing how they could live like this for so
long.
These are really tough people I thought. Fancy living with a
reduced water flow for the past 8 months!
You can’t bathe properly, brush your teeth nor clean the
house…you have to handwash your clothes as there is not enough
water for the washing machine to work.
But that’s not the worse of their problem. The wife is more
concerned with the rental default of 2 months – each month the rent
payable to HDB is $160 and they are fearing the worst that one day
they have to live outside at the park or beach when their rental
default accumulates over time.
The rental default is their biggest fear – much more than the
reduced water flow or the blackout – not having a roof for the
family will be devastating and the 2-month rental default is
disturbing them.
They told me that once they received the GST $300 credit
recently, the first thing they paid is the HDB rental default
followed by repayment to some loans from friends.
The $300 GST credit each of them received was used up within a
flash due to the huge amount of backlog bills they have to
repay.
In fact, the meagre $500 monthly salary is usually used up
within a week or sometimes less as truly its not alot of money for
a family of eight to spend on.
The more shocking piece of news came when the family confided
that sometimes the children have to walk to school at Tg Katong and
they have to wake up at 5am to start the arduous one-hour journey
to school by foot in the dark due to a lack of transport fare.
Sometimes, Mr Rosli the father would send them to school in his
bicycle but the three just couldn’t fit in the small bicycle and he
has to ferry them in two trips.
The school bus costs $85/month and sending the three kids via
this channel is simply not an option. Fortunately, another
school-going child studies in a nearby school within a short
walking distance.
The worst nightmare came when they could not go to school
sometimes due to the tiring long walking distance and they will
simply skip school altogether for the day – this happens almost
weekly.
The teacher and vice-principal of the school dropped by to
investigate but strangely only one out of three children studying
in the same primary school receives the school’s pocket fund of
$50/month. The other two were rejected perhaps due to a 24-month
limit imposed on the fund’s dispersal.
The kids often have to go through recess without any food and of
course a Macdonald meal is something like a luxury for them.
Weekend is usually a family gathering at home watching a TV
programme or walks at the East Coast Park nearby – also a regular
feature for the family.
As we went through all the bills together – which amounted to
more than $1500 in total – the family seems to be resilient and
resigned to living in such dire straits. Many others may have
simply broke down long time ago but yet I can see the worry and
strain on their faces as they live from hand to mouth not for
months but many years.
Another worrying point is how can our meritocratic system
ensures that the kids do not stay trapped in such a porous poverty
cycle and will they ever get out of it given the situation they are
in right now?
We have advocated all along that only by having a good education
can one forge ahead but yet this family seems to have miss the boat
with regular absenteeism from classes and lessons. They have
precious little to hang on to and their future does not look
bright.
One puzzling fact out of the 2-hour visit is also the denial of
basic human necessities eg water, electricity and housing if you
don’t pay up on time for them.
After 3 to 5 months of continuous default, Singapore Power will
come up to your home and reduce the water flow to a trickle till
you pay at least half of the bill before they will open up the
normal water flow.
If you can’t pay up the electrical bill, they will instal a Pay
U power meter so your electricity will be curtailed once you have
no money to top up.
If you don’t have money to pay your rent, HDB will send
threatening letters to foreclose your house so you fear the day you
will end up homeless and need to live in the park or beach with
your family members.
Someone did a quote at a Hong Lim Park event years ago…it read
“Our country is so rich but the people are very poor”.
Its so apt and as for Mr Rosli’s family my heart goes out to
them and God knows how many of such families we have right now…they
are simply living from hand to mouth.
Pity the kids…
