Recently the MInistry of Social and Family Development (MSF) issued a POFMA Correction Notice against Leong Mun Wai (LMW) over a Facebook post he had put up about an older disabled couple. LMW said they had told him the only Government support they were receiving was a Home Caregiving Grant.

MSF said this was false and that the couple had actually “received approximately $39,000 in cash and vouchers from various public sector agencies and community partners. This included $21,000 in
ComCare assistance from May 2021 to April 2023.” It said they were currently receiving “financial assistance… from various public sector agencies and community partners. These include the
Home Caregiving Grant, South West Community Development Council Utilities Vouchers, and
NTUC supermarket vouchers from the People’s Association, as well as cash of $300 per
month from a temple. They currently receive a total of around $830 per month in cash and vouchers.“

However $830 a month is only $9960 a year and if the couple had received this amount from May 2021 to date, then the total amount would only be about $28,000. MSF doesn’t explain this apparent discrepancy nor provide a breakdown between vouchers and actual cash. Vouchers to spend at PAP-affiliated supermarket NTUC Fairprice are obviously less valuable than cash and the couple might not have been able to use all the vouchers. It’s not clear that NTUC vouchers cost the Government anything since they might be funded from the excess profits earned by NTUC Fairprice from Singapore consumers who pay substantially more for basic foodstuffs than consumers in many other developed countries. I have highlighted how much more expensive some basic foodstuffs like chicken are in Singapore than in the UK despite the low paid in Singapore earning maybe to a third to a half of the UK minimum wage per hour. (Please see my article “Should Singaporeans Be Loving It in LHL’s Dynastic Totalitarian Dictatorship?”. As the link probably won’t work courtesy of the PAP Government which doesn’t want you to find out the truth, you will have to copy and paste the title into a search engine.)

Equally noteworthy was that $300, or nearly 40% of the assistance, and probably most of the cash, came from a temple. Unless the temple was state-funded, this is not money from the Government but from private donations and validates the truth of what the couple are reported to have told LMW, namely that they don’t receive much from state agencies.

In any case even $830 a month is barely one third of what the LKY School of Public Policy said was necessary for an elderly couple to be able to maintain a basic standard of living back in 2019. They calculated that an elderly couple needed a minimum of $2,351 a month. Today that figure would probably be at least 20% higher, so aroung $2,800 a month.

The fact that the couple had more than $100,000 in total in their CPF accounts is irrelevant to their needs now, since they cannot draw out more than $5,000 unless they each have the Basic Retirement Sum. The rest has to go to buy a CPF Life annuity. As the husband is 60 and the wife 55 they will only be able to access this money through the purchase of an annuity in 5 years, in the case of the husband’s savings, and 10 years in the case of the wife. That does nothing for their cash needs now. In any case $100,000 in CPF savings, when converted into an annuity, will only likely result in an income of around $1,000 per month.

MSF is deliberately disingenuous. As a nation we should be able to invest more in our people. We should be able to provide more help for the elderly and the disabled to live lives of dignity without having to beg for it. PM Lee said during the recent debate on the reserves that it was up to Singaporeans to decide how much of the reserves they wanted to spend and how much to save for a rainy day. But if he refuses to divulge the information then how can we make decisions? He also claims that we are already spending 50% of the returns on the reserves. However he conveniently glosses over the fact that the Net Investment Returns Contribution (NIRC) is only UP TO 50% of the REAL return AFTER inflation. Furthermore most of the NIRC is allocated to long term endowments and trust funds and spending from those funds is only about 50% of the amount allocated. In addition subsidies to HDB to allow it to purchase land from the Government go straight into the reserves as land sales revenues. I have also pointed out the unexplained discrepancies in the MOH Budget in which only about half of total expenditure seems to go to the public healthcare system.

If the reserves are $3 trillion or more, as I have calculated, then we should be able to spend at least 3% of that which would mean an addition $90 billion of spending. I will not subtract the NIRC from this because as I have pointed out it doesn’t represent real spending, just a transfer from one pocket to the other. This could and should pay for more generous provision for the old and the disabled, child benefit, free university education for those volunteering to do NS, and free healthcare (when combined with Medisave where unspent balances have already reached $120 billion.

Finally it’s outrageous that MSF thinks that it’s OK to leak confidential information about the couple without their agreement (MSF says that LMW identified them but he only published a photo as far as I am aware) including how much they have in CPF and Medisave. This reminds me of when Hri Kumar, who was a PAP MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh at the time, leaked the address of an old woman (see here and here) who complained about not being able to withdraw her CPF at a forum held in 2014 that I attended. He told the press that she lived in a landed property and this was followed by one of the PAP internet brigade (I think it was Fabrications about the PAP) put up a picture of her front door on Facebook. Hri Kumar lost his temper when I asked him questions about the Budget he couldn’t answer. He tried to shut me up and ended up resigning as an MP at the 2015 election, citing personal reasons. He’s now the Deputy AG. As a lawyer he should have had a better understanding of data protection, particularly where vulnerable people are concerned.

Here MSF have leaked confidential information about the couple that would be criminal in most developed countries. In the UK and the EU it would be a breach of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations). Singapore has the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) but Government are exempted from the law. This is clear from the website of the Personal Data Protection Commission which says that the PDPA does not apply to

• Any public agency in relation to the collection, use or disclosure of personal data.

Releasing the couple’s confidential data serves no other purpose than to allow the PAP Government to score a political point by using it in a highly selective and disingenuous manner. SIngaporeans should decide whether this is appropriate or whether it should be made a breach under the PDPA.

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam