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The Shape of Cracks, and the Eggs We Eat
Mr Speaker:Thank you for your inspirational speech for all of us to come together, and to stand against polarisation. This reflects the President’s call towards unity and common purpose.
If I can be frank Mr Speaker, this is an aspiration, but it is one that may not be politically possible. Let us not be naive and pretend that the drama of politics and disagreement is something that cannot be constructed. There is no “common purpose” to be found unless there is a will to do so.
Our hope therefore, must be that here is not just a common purpose, but a will for this common purpose to be found.
But while this commonality may be hard in politics, it can be easy and abundant in public life.
Mr Speaker sir, you, Mr Pritam Singh, and I - we all love football although we support different teams.Having played football with both of you, I can say that Pritam is the best player among the three of us by far. But we all love football. And, of course we all served in the SAF. Mr Speaker, you were a Brigadier General and both Pritam and I were many ranks below that.
We all have different vocations, but in our own ways, we all love our country and want to help make lives better for all.
So too my aspiration for Singapore. Our unity must lie in the small things - care for each other, love for our family, fighting for the person next to you. And in difficult times, to help, to be kind and perhaps harder than it sounds, to cut one another some slack.
This is the bedrock and the simple philosophy behind two suggestions I would like to make for this new term.
Discretion in civil service
The first concerns discretion in civil service. There is a rising culture of blame, finger pointing, and moral panic in our society. As a result, there is a corresponding increase in risk aversion among our public servants. This is not a criticism but a vote of sympathy on my part. If you do not make an exception for a case, you are hard-headed and ruthless. If you do, and you are taken in by a fake application, you are a simpleton being duped and lax with public monies.
The pain is real.
Let me give you an example. Suppose you had a case, an appeal for subsidies for a sheltered home for an old man. He is already in a home and under the care of a social worker. You speak with the man’s wife, and his daughter.
One of the eligibility criteria for a subsidised sheltered home is that the senior is living alone and does not have any family or caregiver. This man has family support and is therefore not a suitable candidate for a subsidised sheltered home. You discuss with the case officer some more and decide the day care services would be the best option for the old manat the moment.
This is how it appears to a busy officer, who has hundreds of cases on his desk. And for him to deny subsidies is entirely sensible.
But this is not how it appears to me. I come to this case via a resident of mine who had a fall and was then admitted to hospital. During her stay there, doctor found that her condition was bad due to overwork, advised her to stop working and rest so as to let her body recover.
But she needs to support the family. After discussing with her supervisor and employer, they arranged for her to work for 4 hours per day instead of working full-time and so her pay dropped to about S$1,200 per month. After she was discharged, she still had to take care of her husband in his daily needs with her daughter's help.
Yes, this resident is the old man’s wife.
The old man had had a fall and was admitted to a hospital, and later a community hospital. To be allowed to go home, he needed someone who can take care of him at home. She cannot take care of herself, let alone her husband. So, they have to put him in a home.
What about the daughter? She unfortunately had major surgery and a serious illness but does not want to tell her mother and add to her worries. She works as a freelancer but does not have many jobs now because of the current pandemic.
Looking at this family from the outside, the social worker may think they want to push away their responsibilities and put the old man in a nursing home. The fact is that they have no ability and no money to take care of him.
What follows is a heartfelt note from my RC Chair who knows the family well and has been helping them for a while. She wrote to me, and this was just a few days ago, and I quote: “I feel for them, can understand how helpless they are now. They wanted to take care of their father and husband but their own health does not allow them. They felt sad sending him to a home but they are left with no choice.”
I read this email over and over again - especially the last line:
“I really don't know how to move forward to help them after trying all I can; Mr Seah, you are our only hope now. So sorry you need to read this, like an essay with so many words. Thank You. Stay Safe.”
All of us on both sides of the house would have read or seen cases like these - so many words, but still, not enough to write out a solution.
This is the emotional labour which defines our days and nights as MPs. It is our mission to bear what cannot be borne alone, and to be the “only hope” for our residents, so that they do not lose hope, and the will to carry on.
It is an honourable purpose, and I ask for the civil service to join us in this in one very specific way. I ask for civil servants, and officers in statutory boards to be given more authority to exercise discretion.
I also ask that they be given some leeway to “make mistakes” that is, to err on the side of being kind. I also urge for all of us, members of the public, everyone, well to put it bluntly, to calm down!
Every couple of days, there is a moral panic - someone showing how virtuous, how right, how generous they are, and how hard they fight for the underdog. Often, there is a villain of the piece - the rich driver of the big car, someone who is the wrong place, said the wrong things, the heartless hapless civil servant, or the politician. Politicians signed up for this and we must be tough enough to take whatever criticism whenever we are called to account.
But for agencies and officers, if they are to exercise greater discretion, it might perhaps be useful to have and rely on groups of volunteers and social workers who visit and assess hard cases, so those who fall through the cracks will receive the help they need in an expeditious manner.
These cracks they fall through are not wide, indeed, over the years MCCY, MSF have already covered many holes and made any cracks very narrow. The current cracks are not just narrow but very now specifically shaped. We cannot address these by ever increasing the number of rules.
President Halimah had said in her address: “We are entering an era of volatility, uncertainty and disruption in people’s lives. Individuals will need greater social support than before.”
The temptation is to construct this support by having yet more schemes, yet more rules. What I am arguing for is the reverse of rules - fewer rules, more discretion and kindness.
SMEs: Looking out for each other
Next I want to talk about SMEs and how they can look out for each other. The same philosophy of kindness and looking out for each other can also apply in the world of business.
Putting on my hat as Group CEO of NTUC Enterprise, let me share how in our own ways we have done so through our various NTUC entities. Orange Aid, which is part of NTUC Income, works with community partners through social investment in programmes that contribute to empowering youth-in-need through education. Orange Aid’s flagship, Future Development Programme supports tertiary students from ITE and Polytechnics from the lowest income households in Singapore.
Beyond providing financial assistance for their school fees and living expenses, Orange Aid also equips them with financial literacy skills, and giving them personalised career guidance.
For this year, Orange Aid will be giving out bursary awards, amounting over $1m.
Moving to education, our NTUC First Campus’s Bright Horizons Fund, they give out about $1.75m this year, 50% higher than last year and in the process, this will help some 4,700 children from lower-income households.
And for NTUC FairPrice Foundation, we will also be increasing our donations this year to the tune of over $6m.
But it is more than money which no doubt is useful and will complement the various support schemes that government is extending to help the many different groups of individuals. So beyond this, I would also call out to companies and organisations who are doing well, to also help others especially the SMEs to do well too.
For example, NTUC FairPrice has in place the SME Suppliers Support and Development Programme primarily to help small local SMEs. First introduced in 2009, the program gives more favourable trading terms to some 485 SMEs such as paying them earlier than normal.
Here, I would like to make a shoutout to all to where possible, support local firms, support local producers, support local products. This in part to help our local economy, create jobs, strengthen our local products resiliency plans and more. So again, as you know I’m also the CEO at NTUC FairPrice Group, we do try to play our part. As an example, whilst Singapore imports some 75% of eggs from overseas [mostly Malaysia], at FairPrice 55% of all eggs sold are from local farms.
An egg is an egg but I feel proud each time I eat one from local farms. But I do love eggs.
President Halimah said: “Singapore can endure and secure her place in history, only if Singaporeans feel passionately about our country, and put our hearts and souls into making this a better home.”
This feeling for Singapore is not something abstract. It lies in the friends we play football with, the eggs we eat, the trust we have in our public servants; it is that feeling of when we are being kind to one another, and perhaps most of all, when we are proud of the “Made in Singapore” brand.
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