The Community Care Endowment Fund and Income Inequality in Singapore

An email from a reader:

Hi Mr Wang,

I’m a student who have been reading your blog for the past two years. Recently, I've been reading online blog entries on income inequality in sg and it’s true that there are many elderly cleaners and tissue paper sellers around today especially when I’m dining at Bedok Hawker Centre.

But with existing schemes like Comcare, Workfare and Public Assistance Scheme to help the needy, I really don’t understand why it’s not helping this bad situation that has been ongoing for years. Why are these cleaners not going for workfare? Are they not informed or are they not eligible? I thought the govt has been pumping in $ for workfare all this while?

("The Community Care Endowment Fund, or ComCare for short, represents the Government’s commitment to do more for needy Singaporeans. Since the launch in 2005 by the Prime Minister, it has disbursed more than $200 million to help 160,000 needy Singaporeans, and the government has been progressively topping up the Endowment Fund which now stands at $800 million." taken from MCYS News Dec 3 2010)

I dunno much about this but is 800 million too little to provide safety net for the society? So what's the solution to the unequal income distribution in Singapore?

Firstly, I should say that I have not looked closely at Comcare, and do not know the details of its schemes. But we can do some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, based on this paragraph:

"The Community Care Endowment Fund, or ComCare for short, represents the Government’s commitment to do more for needy Singaporeans. Since the launch in 2005 by the Prime Minister, it has disbursed more than $200 million to help 160,000 needy Singaporeans, and the government has been progressively topping up the Endowment Fund which now stands at $800 million."

Firstly, $800 million is the amount set aside to help needy Singaporeans. But this is not money that has actually been disbursed yet. When will this money be disbursed, and under what circumstances, and in what amounts, and over what period of time? Your guess is as good as mine.

The amount that has actually been disbursed is $200,000,000. This amount was disbursed over five years. That money went to a total of 160,000 needy Singaporeans.

We don't know how long, on average, each Singaporean stayed on the ComCare scheme. For example, some may have received ComCare assistance for a year, while others may have received it for the past five years. Let's say that on average, ComCare recipents received help for 2.5 years.

Then, according to this reader's calculations (thank you), each person received an average amount of $1,250 per year, or about $104 per month.

This will be roughly enough to buy one packet of chicken rice ($3) per day, with a few coins left over for spare change. It does not sound like much of a safety net to me. But form your own opinion .......