2-3-4 Friday: Why we choose to turn away from the poor we see

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1 thought

Last Friday, I was at Teo You Yenn’s public forum where I heard something insightful.

What if social policy wasn’t meant to help, but meant to harm?

Ng Kok Hoe lays it out,

I mean harm as we intend it, harm as policy design, as policy decision.

What if some parts of this were true?

In my first job as a family social worker, I saw some really painful things.

To apply for financial assistance, the poor family had to scramble the bank statements of all their family members, their pension (CPF) statements, their payslips, and bring them down to the Social Service Office.

Many of these people were illiterate. They didn’t even know how to apply for a job online. Nor to access their bank statements online.

So they would come to us, and we’d slowly print it out, and then take a big stack to the office.

We had the technology to easily pull these data. In fact, we already do it for National Service, where we take employee CPF records, tax records, to quickly calculate how much to pay them. Or SGFINDEX, which pulls all your various monies into one place.

Why won’t we do it for the poor?

I started to hear conversations like,

we cannot make it too easy for them.

We need to have some friction.

Sure, we had to prevent abuse.

But I thought the closest analogy was this. If a Singaporean had been living in the desert for 10 years, and finally, the government got to them, and found that they were struggling to make ends meet, what might it do?

What the Government seems to be saying is,

okay, we need to ration out the water we give to you because you might abuse it.

Does this make any sense?

Yet we’re saying the same things of poor families, who live in 1-room flats. They’ve lived in so much scarcity. I’ve seen so often the mother figuring how to stretch a $100 NTUC voucher from us, buying in bulk, when there are offers, eating less, so that her kids can eat more.

Yes there are definitely abuses.

It is distressing to see that we’d assume the worst of them.

We’re saying if we give them more than the minimum income to survive, they would abuse it.

We expect them to fail, even if they were helped.

Why do we do this?

Kok Hoe explains that it’s down to political voice.

People who don’t count, can be ignored.

We see the irony.

On one hand, Singapore would go to lengths to fly Singaporeans back from distressed areas. Chartering flights, paying for them.

Cost? Maybe $500 per seat.

They would fly 400 hawkers to cook local fare in London, California, New York, for Singapore Days, to remind overseas Singaporeans of home. It brought together 5000 Singaporeans for a single day of fun. The 2016 budget was $4.4m, which led one forum writer to opine that “Perhaps it is more pertinent to improve living conditions here so that fewer Singaporeans leave.”

A budgeted $880 per Singaporean living abroad, for a single day.

In contrast, to support 20,825 low-income families (not individuals) in 2024, MSF spent $94m.

Divide 94m by 20,825 families, over 365 days, and you’d get $12 a day.

Of course, this is napkin math. You can point out the holes in how I calculate.

I confess it’s not the most accurate proxy of how we value the poor, vs the rich.

But I hope that it’s clear in the difference between how we value the poor, vs the rich, and the lengths to which we’d go for them.

What can we do? And does it even matter? After all, if you’re rich, you’d win. Why bother about the poor?

1 talk

People who don’t count, can be ignored.

• Ng Kok Hoe

1 tip

It can be depressing to read this. It can be depressing to read this. Often the immediate question is, "What do I do?"

Maybe it's not about doing anything. Just being aware is the first step. As you look around you, and begin to consider how certain policies may not always help, you begin to exercise your own thinking, rather than accepting what the official narrative is.

That can lead to frustration - feeling like you can't change anything. Yes, these are big systemic issues. Nothing changes so quickly.

But as You Yenn shared on stage, she was often asked, "What is the Government's response to your book?"

She shared that this places an inherent assumption that you need the Government's ear to effect positive change. She's learnt to "lean on a modified theory of change that banks not just on the government, but on the ears of ordinary Singaporeans."

Because not many of us even bother to look at the poor.

The migrant worker standing under the hot sun. The tissue auntie sitting by the road, selling $1 tissues to get by.

When we see these uncomfortable situations, we turn away, we walk away, and we kill a little of our own humanity.

We barely stop to think:

Why is this even happening?

If you’re more interested to make a difference, take time to mentor just one.

Or donate to charities doing good work. Or if you see stray kids hanging around, take time to know them and to invest into their lives.

Recently, I met a lady who was talking to the boys at the street soccer court. They were living in the nearby rental flat. She would sign up for soccer trials for them. She would buy drinks for them. Tutor them.

She wasn’t part of any organisation. She just wanted to help.

So she rolled up her sleeves and did what she knew.

You too, can. Don’t wait for the Government to do something. You can too.

John

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