Another new social service centre
According to the Straits Times news report “New social service office opened to help needy Serangoon residents” (Jan 31) – “Along with family service centres islandwide, the offices will put help within 2 km of where 95 per cent of needy residents live or work.”
We keep opening more offices to “put help within 2 km of where 95 per cent of needy residents live or work”.
More needy people, but less assistance?
But, the amount of financial assistance relative to the increasing number of needy people never seems to increase.
Spending more money to deliver assistance than assistance?
Are we spending more money on the infrastructure to deliver financial assistance than the amount of financial assistance?
Never ending more people, more initiatives to raise more funds
Almost every other day, there is some news report of some more help for some more people (“20 needy families to receive free meals for a year“, Channel NewsAsia, Jan 31)
And almost every other day, there are news of new initiatives to raise funds (“Malay/Muslims mark jubilee with SG50Kita events”, Straits Times, Jan 31).
Has there been any other countries in the world that celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence and economic achievements by going on a “donations” overdrive?
Inadequate financial assistance
All these probably highlights the fact that our financial assistance schemes are inadequate, such that more and more people have to raise more funds to help more needy people.
According to the Today news report “Almost 80,000 benefited from ComCare in the last financial year: MSF” (Today, Nov 4) – “ComCare has helped 41,036 unique households or 79,333 unique individuals in Financial Year 2013.
In September, the ComCare annual report said that about 72,000 needy Singaporeans and their families tapped on more than S$102 million in ComCare assistance in Financial Year 2013.”
Real financial assistance dropped?
This works out to an average monthly assistance of less than $200 per family (estimate due to insufficient data) or $107 per person.
According to ComCare’s annual report for FY2008 (page 10) – it spent about $41 million to help about 21,000 cases (families) in FY2006.
This works to an average monthly assistance of $163 per family.
Since inflation from 2006 to 2014 was about 28 per cent – in real terms – does it mean that the assistance per family has decreased by about more than 10 per cent (estimate)?
Lowest welfare spending in the world
By the way, we have the lowest welfare spending as a percentage of GDP in the world on a per capita basis, and the lowest government spending among developed and developing countries.
Win battles lose war
TRS Contributor