Poverty in Singapore

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:

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, 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 buy 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:

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 people—a 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.

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 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.

Share this article:

Comments

RSS

Foreign Observer -

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 1:29 am

I am wondering whether Singapore government's current policy towards the less privilleged really works. There are many schemes being offered to help poor families but most of the times, the criterias itself are so many that it would disqualify many who are really in need.

Taking a stroll at Waterloo Street, Chinatown and old housing estates and one may discover that life is extremely hard for many old Singaporean. Maybe they are not poor in the sense that they may die of hunger, but imagine their feelings when they see the rapid develoment of the economy yet could not participate not benefits from it. Most of them ended up as tissue paper seller, tin cans collector who go around begging for mercy.

Anonymous -

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 6:53 am

In the spirit of 'Winner Takes All', 'May the Best Man Win', "The Best Job (Pay) Goes To The Best Man' (not of the wedding type lah, eh goondu), 'We Must Never Fear The Foreign Talents', 'It's To Do With Globalization; There's Nothing We can Do About It', et cetera et al, might Singaporeans also consider not outsourcing their Cabinet and Government Leaders?

I mean, there are already so many functions with which you contract out (to the 'best' suppliers at the 'best prices), what's there to stop you guys from sourcing from the larger outside world
- and a more capable and able and more international - GLOBAL, my boy - and hopefully more humane non-Singaporean human race -
the best candidates to run your country.

What's stopping you?

One has got to stop talking the talk and start walking the walk: get the best to fill the job at hand!

That very exceptional family cannot be all there is in this world to lead your country to even more 'remarkable achievements', can't they? Too long in the seat to realize the folly upon folly they continue to formulate, quietly and in an unseen manner as yet bringing disaster after disaster to your people - this house of cards will very soon manifest itself, by which time it'll be too late.

Get Clinton. Get Blair.

(Get anyone - for anyone would do those 'very demanding' jobs just as well, if not better.

Even Anwar would do better.)

And neither would clamor for the kind of shamelessly obscene amounts your vey capable leaders are now getting, be assured.

Go ahead. Change.

There's no better time than now - when your system of administration is breaking down, as evidenced by the simpletons' breakouts from detention
(suggesting the men in uniform have become very so disillusioned, as with the general populace with the pittance and raw deal they are getting, explaining why nothing works anymore in your country),
the non-functioning of many public facilities (and their departments' nonchalance about them, eg. cave-ins on simple road projects, traffic pay system not tested fully before being put out to collect your money, etc, etc),
the surfacing of 'black' guns a la The Great Showdown between One-Eyed dragon & Milky Pig Showdown, The Bukit Timah NTUC Fairprice Singapore Pools Outlet Aunty Robbery, plus God-knows how many more such better-equipped-than-S&W revolver-wielding-Force criminals out there,
ever rising costs of living in everything (and we haven't yet seen Abdullah & Gang demanding higher prices for their water, for that'll spell certain doom for you)
- frankly the profiteering voraciously-greedy merchant aren't to be blamed for trying to fix the poor working-man Singaporean by incresing prices every time just one of his many costs rises;
it's monkey see, monkey do, and he does see what those monkeys at the top of The Big Tree are doing.

The Singapore Story - sad and getting sad-der.

Sometimes, you folks do wish you lived in a kampung like those Malaysian cousins of yours you used to kmake fun of, don't you?

Even Burma would be better. At least it has a Nobel Peace Prize winner in Aung San Suu Kyi to whom the West can hold up as a shining example of democracy so that if ever the Burmese people decide one day to topple Than Swie
- erm, btw, how many prime propeties has he and family bought so far in your country, do you know? -
and Company private limite, you can be sure US warships will be there on the ready.

Not though your puny little Red Dot - no one will shed a tear for you guys when your little rock out of the water sinks back in.

Sorry but that's the sad fact. Because you've allowed yourself to be denigrated for forty years +++ - plus GST, plus government cess, plus tariffs and tax, plus excise, plus greedy merchant's mark-up, plus pay-and-pay scheme, plus plus plus, please don't mind suffering another forty - the story continues, after the young lieutenant graduates, comes back, joins the party fold, wins a GRC, wait for another caretaker to warm seat for him, then takes over as Leader Supremo.

Story sounds familiar? Of course it does. It's called The Singapore Script, it's been executed before!

And it will be executed again - you guys, whether at the bottom or at the top of the pecking order, just don't have things other humans possess: creativity and imagination.

So, just bear with it, won't you be good, Mr Ong, Mr Beng and Mr Seng and Miss Florence Hwey Ah Lian.

Anonymous -

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 2:42 am

Sorry to sound heartless but did these senior citizens not, directly or otherwise, contributed to their present plight and state of affairs in some way?Were they not responsible, collectively, for voting in your present government by giving the ticket to Lee and his party to rule many elections ago that then, after successive landslide victories, having (almost) absolute zero-opposition in your parlaiment?

LOH SOH MAN - Addressing all issues - poverty in Singapore inclu

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:17 am

Before I begin - and lest you think I am anti-you - please be let known that I was the first to ‘thumbs-up’ your comment :cheer:

Now, let's take a look at your contribution, shall we?

Quote:

In my early days, I had thought PAP is the best. Till recently, when the issue on judge Belinda Ang goes into public, it trigger my interest to read more on politics. Life is never fair and SDP leaders need really to re-look at your approach.

There is never a hard and fast rule about what or which approach to use when dealing with a persistently obstinate and aloof government that comprises people who think, behave, as if they were born with the divine right to rule and go on to run the country as though it was a private enterprise for full blocks of five years just because they won the game in which they not only invente the rules for but rules which they keep changing to suit themselves and their circumstance.

Quote:

I don't think the people of Singapore thinks too much of human right (at least in my personal opinion) and but focussing on it, you are barking up the wrong tree.

We agree. You can't eat human rights per se, but that is just what's so wrong - sorry; shallow a better descriptive? - about our fellow Singaporeans' thought process.

Just as every thing has its fundamentals, human life has its too, and human rights, rights of the individual as an equal human being, is one.

Talk about food, an everyday issue. Yes, living things need food for their physical well-being. But it is how you get that food that is equally important, if not more important, is it not?

Slaves get to eat too. Would you rather be a slave and be fed food - "It's food aftr all, what, so why do I care what kind of pigswill my master feeds me with?" - or would you rather know that, first, as a human being, you have the right NOT to be enslaved by another huamn individual, but have the right to choose what you can be, how you go about doing what you can to become that person you aspire to be?

In Singapore, you don't have many of that kinds of rights, freedom.

Take food, for example - since you talk about bread-and-butter issues (which PAP thinks it has got people over to their side by doing a stranglehold on the subject).

They dictate what you eat, to a certain level, do they not? By cutting traditional sources of fresh pork supplies from Malaysia which had ensured ample meat supply for us, they are basically forcing you to eat non-traditional, frozen or chilled pork for example, which we all know are not as fresh, never mind the argument about nutritional content - fresh is fresh, frozen is frozen, cilled is chilled.

Why they did what they did - ban Malaysian pork, and for so long after Nipah 1997-8 too, making us eat from 'their sources' - we do not want to delve into further; we may yet uncover more 'untold, un-revealable' secrets.

But go ahead and ask your MP/Minister, when you next bump into him, her or them, if they really think frozen/chilled pork is better or even just as good as fresh pork; ask them if their families, with the kind of salaries they are drawing, REALLY EAT AND ENJOY FROZEN MEATS, can they swear?

Freedom to choose - includes freedom to elect who you want to represent in the nation's highest decision-making body. Do you have that?

Hands up, all who were already of 'eligible voting age' in the last GE (as well as preceding GEs) but who have never even felt what the ballot paper paper (the material) feels like, much less how it is like to fully exercise your citizen's right to vote???

What do your friends in other countries think when you tell them you are sixty this year but have almost never cast a vote to ELECT YOUR OWN MEMBER before?

Quote:

It is the bread and butter in the current daily issues you should be focussed on. You brought up good point of asking govenment to remove or reduce GST for essential items like food, medical and transport, consider lowering the GST by large, consider having minister taking a pay cut especially the super scale grade as a gesture to show support and understanding of the nation at large. (The argument on well paid Minister is less likely to be corrupted is a statement getting less and less sustainable).

What prices food or other essential items? Just the cost of making them, transporting and delivering them to you via the supermarket or neighborhood shop, tangible things you can see or know about?

Somebody said rent? Yes, very good. Rents and other costs of running a business in Singapore - eg. registration for a business, application to the various government bodies and agencies for permits, this and that.

We all know such costs are high here, and we are told sorry, it is just like that, costs of doing business in Singapore are high, can't help it, period. Or so goes the official explanation each time such issues crop up and the Minister, whoever assigned the unfancied job of 'explaining' away such annoying topics, will always OFFER TO ATTEMPT the public with.

Just like how they explain their sky-high salaries - "Can't help, it is globalization. Everywhere, top talents get top money, top footballers get top paychecks, blah blah blah."

But have you every sat down and seriously gave thought:
That if these ministers and their PermSecs, ParSecs, these PAP top dogs and their oh-by-now-so-infamous-and-so-embarrassing-whenever-their-foreign-counterparts-in-similar-positions-hear-about-it-and-tease-them-about-it,
if they had been paid less, would their ministries, agencies, bureaus, etc, then can charge the citizens - you and I - less for the permits, the application fees, the what-nots, etc? Yes, including rent on your shop that would be drastically reduced if the bloated bureaucracy were as creative in finding solutions to Singapore's "land-scarce problem
(another excuse used to point to high costs of land, forgetting conveniently they themselves go to play golf on HUGE TRACTS OF LAND used for their golfing purpose instead of 'sacrifing' such meaningless luxury of trying to sink a ball into a hole hundreds of yeards away to free up land for the squeezed proletariat)
as they are CREATIVE in drawing up prposals to up ERP, up ELECTRIC TARIFFS, up THIS, up THAT ...
UP OUR SALARIES, again, please.

Quote:

Foreign talent things will never go away as far as they are cheaper than than local. This is nothing personal and is pure business. Unless the government is willing to put a cap on it to let its citizen to compete on level ground.

Foreign talent is an issue that won't go away - and it mustn't - for as long as Singaporeans are so clearly disadvantaged against in this anti-Singaporean worker deal of a stinking foreign talent policy that they craftily crafted up to protect their own interests - "Who cares about yours? If you have money,

Anonymous -

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 8:04 pm

mpcy -

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 1:32 pm

Singapore is not a welfare state. Never was. Moreover, like the guy above me asks, what is the solution?

You ended off saying that "without any rights, their problems will persist."
What rights are they lacking? And how should they be given the rights. How will that affect Singapore, positively and negatively if any, in the immediate future and in the long run?

Anonymous -

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 8:55 pm

crazy singapore

Ito -

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 6:35 pm

"A young divorcee cannot find enough money to but schoolbooks and food for her children."

There is a typo in this sentence.

Yoursdp Moderator - re:

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 6:56 pm

Ito wrote:

"A young divorcee cannot find enough money to but schoolbooks and food for her children."

There is a typo in this sentence.

Typo [buy] corrected. Thank you.

Anonymous - Outdated

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 5:26 pm

This article is seriously outdated. The UNHDI ranks Singapore as 102 as compared to the result (28) years ago

anon - this article is misleading

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:08 pm

"The 1998 United Nations Human Development Index showed that Singapore ranked 28 on the list behind countries like Barbados and Malta."

1998? That's TEN YEARS AGO. In the 2006 UN HDI, S'pore is no. 25 (ie we have improved). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index)
ABOVE Barbados & Malta (even though this shouldn't really be a point). Recent stats would be more relevant.

P.S. I'm not discounting the fact that there ARE poor people in S'pore. But this article makes it seem like NO effort is being done to alleviate the situation. But there are things like the ST Pocket Money Fund and the Public Assistance Scheme for instance. Granted, there are definitely improvements to be made for all the poor to have access to adequate help, but unless you have way superior plans, please do not discount the efforts of the current government.

Please login or register to post your comments.

Awesome Words

“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.”

Winston Churchill

Other languages

Blogs of the week

Uniquely Singapore: Papmandering Article 14 Racing off with S$500,000,000 Gimme Some Truth 50 Years of PAP - on the idea of 'Foreign Interference in Internal Affairs' Edsperience Losing touch and sense of proportion Simply Gab
Read more