Helping The Lower-Income Group

What Govt shouldn't do - dole out more. More direct welfare would be a slippery slide to entitlement mentality, warns PM.

THE pressure to dole out ever more help to needy Singaporeans is very real and constant. But the Government must never yield unthinkingly, even a small step, lest it slides down the slippery slope to breed an 'entitlement mentality' among Singaporeans, warned Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday.

He held firm to this stance in an exchange with opposition MP Low Thia Khiang (Hougang), who was lobbying for basic health care for all Singaporeans, and financial guarantee to those who cannot get jobs.

Earlier, in his 80-minute response to the debate on Budget 2005 in three days, Mr Lee took pains to spell out the Government's strategy in helping the poor and jobless.

He acknowledged that since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, life has been getting tougher for the bottom 20 per cent of households here. Many have either lost their jobs or suffered sharp cuts to their wages, and among them are a number of families which are chronically unable to look after themselves. This has prompted MPs to voice their worry that an underclass may be forming.

Recognising their concern, Mr Lee said the best way to help these people was to create viable job opportunities for them, through job-matching, upgrading their skills and redesigning jobs to enhance the pay and attractiveness.

And to prevent an underclass from perpetuating into the next generation, children from such families must be helped to do well in school.

What the Government must never do, he said, was to adopt what Mr Low had suggested: give out bigger sums of direct welfare as an entitlement, as it is done in Europe and the United States.

That would erode Singaporeans' desire to be self-reliant, he warned.

Mr Low rose to clarify that he was 'fully aware of the pitfalls of a welfare state'. 'But looking at the situation of our economic volatility over the years, I do not think that there is a way out for people who really cannot get jobs.' It is, therefore, the fundamental duty of the Government to provide basic support for this group, he argued.

But PM Lee doused his call with a dose of fiscal reality.

'You have to raise taxes. You cannot do it with smoke and mirrors and you cannot just wave your hands and say somehow we can afford this.

'To say that it's our job to look after everybody who doesn't work... I think that is not something which any government responsibly can deliver. Those who have tried to do that have regretted and pulled back very painfully.'

'You can take a series of very well-intended small steps and end up in the wrong place with a result which is worse than you are today, and regret it, and take many years and maybe never come back.'
By Laurel Teo

from The Straits Times Interactive 3 March 2005