Chan Chun Sing
Singapore
“Since 2002, the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) has worked with the autonomous universities (AUs) to establish arrangements that minimise disruption to National Servicemen (NSmen) who are pursuing full-time studies up to the undergraduate level, while meeting the Singapore Armed Forces' (SAF's) operational and training needs.”
“Secondments help to build up the range of competencies and work experiences of public officers to strengthen their longer-term employment relevance and resilience. The Public Service Division's guideline to agencies is to support public officers even while they are on secondment.”
“The priority of our National Servicemen must be their military duties and operational training, to meet the Singapore Armed Forces's (SAF's) operational requirements.”
“In January 2026, I had informed this House that the Government had convened an independent committee to conduct a review of the political salary framework that was laid out in 2012. The Committee has completed the review and submitted its recommendations to the Government in April.”
“All countries seek to develop mutually beneficial partnerships, and the United States-Indonesia Major Defence Cooperation Partnership is one such example.”
“Since the Singapore Armed Forces Volunteer Corps (SAFVC) was established in 2014, over 1,500 men and women have completed training and served as SAFVC Volunteers (SVs). Presently, there are about 1,100 in-service SVs, comprising 52% male and 48% female. About seven in 10 of our in-service SVs are new Citizens or Permanent Residents.”
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“One of the ways in which this Government has sought to achieve this is through the NCMP scheme where the best losers in a General Election can still enter Parliament, participate in the debates and participate in the decision-making for the good of our country. Even if a single party today wins all 89 seats in this Parliament, we are assured of nine NCMPs and nine NMPs, by law, for them to join this House to participate in our decision-making. When we first started this scheme, we started modestly. To be frank, at that point in time, no one really knew what the future would be like. Over time, we grew it to six NCMPs and then to nine. Two days ago, the Prime Minister proposed to further strengthen this scheme by further increasing the number NCMPs from nine to 12, and also to give NCMPs equal voting rights as those of elected MPs in this House. If Parliament accepts our Prime Minister's proposal, it will mean that 20% of this House will come from parties other than the governing party, in any electoral circumstances, even in extreme circumstances where one party wins all 89 seats. Second, there will be no difference between elected MPs and elected, I say "elected", NCMPs. NCMPs will have the same voting rights although they do not need to look after a constituency. NCMPs can continue to contribute to the debates and the decision-making in this House regardless of whether they have a constituency or not. So, the question is: why? Why does the Prime Minister, having just led his party to an election where his party won 69% of the votes, want to do this? Is it for selfish partisan political reasons or is it for something more? We have always said the primary concern, the number one concern for the PAP is the longevity of our country, Singapore.”
“Mdm Speaker, I rise to speak with a heavy heart. As the hon Member Er Dr Lee Bee Wah said, none of us, none, would like to see this House criticising each other. This is not the purpose of why we are gathered here. We are gathered in this House because we want to make a difference to the lives of fellow Singaporeans and we want to leave behind a better Singapore for our children and generations to come. The Motion before us goes beyond the procedural issue of filling an empty NCMP seat. The Motion that stands before us has far more fundamental implications. It goes to the heart of the rights and responsibilities of all of us being elected Members of Parliament (MPs), be it MPs or NCMPs. We are all elected by the voters into this House, including NCMPs. In response to Mr Low's earlier point, I would be the first to say that if any of my PAP MPs dare call an NCMP a second-class citizen, I, as the Whip, will put them in their place. But on the other hand, please do not call them duckweeds because even in a pond, duckweeds have a purpose. Let us respect each other. Let us respect the different roles that we play in this House, be it as MPs, NCMPs or Nominated Members of Parliament (NMPs). We may play different roles but we can all be united by a common purpose to serve Singapore and Singaporeans. Mdm Speaker, our primary concern and focus for this House in the coming years will continue to be the continued survival and success of our country, Singapore. Many Members in this House have spoken, including our Opposition colleagues, and everyone has pointed out that for Singapore to continue to enjoy success, we must continue to have the diversity of perspectives. We must continue to have robust decision-making in this House.”
“Mdm Chair, the answer to the first question is yes. The answer to the second question about private operators, you have to convince us that if you are a private operator, you are not taking the public's money for your profit. That will be my basic guideline. I think I am accountable to the public on how we spend money, and I am prepared to spend money so long as it leads to stable prices, affordable prices for my families, quality education for my children and fair remuneration for my teachers. But if the private operators come and make us a proposal that does not meet these three criteria, but instead benefit from enriching their profits, then my answer is no. So, I leave it to the private sector to make me a proposal. And I want to reiterate what I have said. I am committed to operators who put the social mission of caring for our children first. That is my first priority. I want to make sure that their services are affordable for the families, quality is assured and teachers are paid well. But it will not be in my remit to help private operators make profit. On the third issue of student care, we will be announcing more initiatives in the later part of this year. I think Minister Heng Swee Keat has already said that we will expand the suite of student care services in the schools, and MSF is committed to working closely with MOE to expand this suite of student care services in the school system.”
“Let me assure the Member that there is no penalty for those who withdraw from the Scheme. Training grants that have been given will not be clawed back. The aim of the Scheme is to encourage young families, the low-income families, better plan for the future, for themselves and for their children, and we fully recognise that some of them may not be able to stay on the Scheme. If they cannot stay on the Scheme, we do not penalise them. We will transit them to other help schemes as necessary.”
“On the other hand, we have to help them settle their housing options, their school options, so that their children have a stable platform to get out of the problems that their families are having now. So, the Member is absolutely right to say that we need to increasingly go on this integrated approach, one family at a time. This is why I want the SSO to play a greater role in coordinating the local services at the local family level, taking care of each family's needs respectively.”
“Indeed, for the increasing number of elderly who have no family support, there are two things that we can do more and do better. First, for those who are still ambulant, able to walk and step out of their own house, we have to see how we can expand the suite of services at the community level for them to be kept active and engaged. But, then, there will be another growing group of people who can, perhaps, no longer so easily step out of their own home, but we do not yet want to institutionalise them in the nursing home – this is where we need a new care model whereby, perhaps, having a pool of care workers that can go on rotation in the community and just watch out for them. In the interim, we have piloted the "Care for Your Neighbour" scheme in Jalan Kukup, whereby able-bodied neighbours help to take an interest, to care for those who are less able. This also keeps the able-bodied ones active and healthy with a sense of mission. So, that is an area that we need to do more. On her second point, indeed, for the chronic needs cases, if Members have watched the programme "Don't Call Us Poor" by CNA, you will know that many of the poor families have multifaceted problems. In order for us to provide help to them, this is where the SSO, the local planning team, comes in to have the case conferences with all the agencies involved – from WDA to MOE to FSC and so forth – to provide that integrated care management. Page: 43 The SSO can give the short-term ComCare assistance. The longer-term plan requires us to place them on jobs, to get WDA, to get e2i, to come on board to train them and place them on jobs. Even after they are trained, we need to make sure they continue to stay on the job, so that the family situation is stabilised.”
“The best thing and the most important thing that we must do for the child is to provide education opportunities, good healthcare and a good social environment for them to be brought up to fulfil their talent as much as possible. Within that context, how do we balance providing more support for parenthood within the context of marriage? Some countries have decided to forgo the second objective. It is something that we have to think about. But if we say that we want that objective, then how do we moderate that gradient between the first objective and the second objective? As Mr Seah Kian Peng said, it is an evolving journey. Let us continue this evolving journey but, at the core of it, even if there is a gradient, because of the two different policy objectives Page: 42 between supporting the child as the centre of what we do and supporting parenthood within the context of marriage, then let us use the third policy objective of the social service support to give our children the best chance. I think that is what we are committed to do, and MSF will continue to work with Members of this House and our society to find that balance between these three valid policy objectives. We have to continue to find that balance. 1.15 pm”
“Mdm Chair, I thank Mr Seah Kian Peng for speaking up passionately for the single mothers. It is an emotional and emotive topic. I just want to assure Members of the House that I understand what single mothers go through. I grew up in a single-parent family. The journey is not easy; and, often, it goes beyond providing sufficient monetary benefits and incentives. For children growing up in single-parent family, there are many challenges, including the social and emotional upbringing of the child. We are committed to do what we can to help all Singaporean families, particularly those more vulnerable families and those more in need. In this House, we have heard various calls for us to provide better support for single unwed mothers. I think there are merits for us to consider this seriously. In this House, we have also heard various calls by Members to better support parenthood within the context of marriage. That, in itself, I think, is also valid and worthy of consideration. In this House, we have also heard even more calls for us to provide the best support for all Singaporean children, regardless of their parentage. Indeed, children do not select the families that they are born into. Between and amongst these three policy objectives, we will have to continually find that balance. I looked through all the things that we do to support our children. I asked my staff to give me a table of things that are being done. The bulk of all our support focused on the child as the centre because we believe that the child is innocent and should be given the best support possible.”
“Mdm Chair, as usual, we do not carry analogies to extremes. But I must say this. Even hands, hands are not just to serve, hands also feel. What we want is to have every part of our body acting as one, feeling the ground, listening, making collective decisions to best serve the individuals and put the beneficiary, the client who needs help, at the centre of what we do. It does not matter how many hands we have. We must act as one, be one in body, in mind. And I see all hands not just as working hands, but the hands also give us the feel on the ground – the eyes, the ears. This is how we want to work. And for this year, we will be piloting this in Taman Jurong. Taman Jurong will have an SSO side by side with the FSCs and WDA. The next one we are looking at is Kreta Ayer whereby we have a more integrated model. Already, we see that they have weekly and monthly conferences to take on the most difficult cases to make sure that all agencies, be it the Government agencies, the VWOs or the FSCs, are all working as one, making a common assessment and providing the integrated help as necessary.”
“When we are good stewards of the resources entrusted upon us, I trust that MOF will open their hearts and their wallets to support all the good work in this sector. The third measure of success is not just about helping those people in need. It is also about our ability to mobilise the community to come together as one to take care of our fellow Singaporeans in need. Page: 38 But, finally, our greatest measure of success is not how many people are still on our schemes. It is how many of our people who have gone through our schemes are able to stand independent once again and, perhaps, to reach out to help others who are more in need. That will be our greatest measure of success – the people who have gone through the system and are independent once more, rather than have more and more people in the system. Members, I thank you for your support for the work of MSF. Let us walk this journey together not just to celebrate SG50 this year, but to celebrate SG100 in time to come. Inequality, social stresses and strains will not define us. On the other hand, what makes us stand out as Singaporeans and Singapore is our commitment to social mobility, helping all according to needs, and being good stewards of the resources, time, talent and treasures entrusted upon us. What makes us stand out, what will define us, is how we anticipate our challenges, put in place services, systems, organisations, legislation and professionals to be ready for tomorrow's challenges. If we can do all this together, then I think we will be proud of ourselves as Singaporeans not just at SG50, but also towards SG100.”
“Our first measure of success is not how many people are being helped now. Instead, we should measure ourselves by the number of people in the entire system that are able to stand independently and do not need help from society. We can divide the whole society into three parts: those who need help; those in the middle; and those who can provide help. The more that we are able to expand the centre – the broad middle – to take care of themselves and to take care of their families, the more successful we are. Once we have expanded the centre to as big as we can, then we can focus our attention and bandwidth to get those who are most able in society to help those who are least able. Therefore, our measure of success is not how much we transfer from those most able to those least able. Yes, that might be a matrix, but, actually, the biggest success for our Singapore story is when we can expand the broad middle so that the broad middle can take care of themselves; and we will have fewer people requiring assistance at the national level. Our second measure of success is to make sure that whatever we spend on will do the maximum good for all the people that we want to serve. I will be the last one to go to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to ask for more resources if I do not think I can do justice to the resources that MOF can give me. On the other hand, I will never be shy to go to MOF to ask for more resources when there is a pressing need and when we can do justice to the resources entrusted upon us. I think the Care and Share Movement is a good testimony of the faith that MOF has given MSF. They have given us $250 million, in addition to the $250 million last year, because they can see the good work being done.”
“We target to increase the MSF-funded therapists at the Hubs to 125 by 2017. We will also be setting up a new Community Psychology Hub to help VWOs to deliver quality psychological services in the social service sector. VWOs will be able to tap on the Hub for qualified psychologists to provide needed services. We will invest $8 million to fund this Hub from 2015 to 2017. It will be located at SG Enable and will start deploying psychologists to the sector from the second half of 2015. The Hub will first focus on disability services, especially EIPIC. As we scale up, we will cater to other areas of emerging needs, such as family services and elderly services. Mdm Chair, let me now round up for MSF and also, perhaps, for the whole COS debate. There has been much talk over the last two weeks about us shifting left, shifting right, increasing funding for social support and so on and so forth. The Government is committed to providing all support necessary for Singaporeans and their families. We have never been shy to spend money. It is not about being hard-hearted or soft-hearted. But we have a duty to make sure that whatever we spend on gets the greatest impact on the beneficiaries that Page: 37 we want to serve. Our benchmark for success in the social service sector and, perhaps, in the larger Singapore system, is not and cannot be framed in any philosophical or monetary term. I have never judged MSF's success based on the amount of money that we spent, the number of Social Service Offices (SSOs) that we have built, or even the number of people that we are currently helping on our various schemes. These are not my measures of success. 1.00 pm I think that, as a system, our measures of success should be the following four.”
“MSF and the family services sector will also develop a Code of Social Work Practice that will be implemented across the Family Service Centres (FSCs), so that there is a common language and common professional standards when it comes to protocol. This will fit in nicely with the work that we are doing in SSNet, where we have the vision of having "One Client, One Record; One Sector, One System". This year, we will also be rolling out a new Social Service Fellowship programme to better recognise our accomplished social service professionals. This will recognise the top echelon of social service professionals. They will inspire the younger professionals to aspire towards the apex of their professions. This will apply to all social service professionals, such as social workers, therapists, EIPIC teachers, psychologists and counsellors. This Fellowship will not only recognise their higher level of competencies and contributions to the sector; it will also tap on the expertise of these Fellows to do work at the sectoral level to help us improve the sector as a whole. They will supervise and mentor younger professionals; they will partner MSF to develop the Continuing Professional Development frameworks. We expect to appoint about 50 Fellows by 2017. We will also be expanding our Therapy Hubs to have a third Therapy Hub. We will be investing $7 million over the next three years to expand the two existing Therapy Hubs at Society for the Physically Disabled (SPD) and Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities, and also to fund a third Therapy Hub. This will allow us to pool the services provided by a finite professional pool of therapists in the sector. This will also provide our professionals a better career path because they now can devote maximum time to their professional area of work.”
“We are seeing signs of improvement but I still want to push further. This year, we will, once again, revise the salaries for social service professionals, for them to be closer to the market benchmarks. MSF will increase VWO programme funding by $16 million in 2015, starting from 1 April. Twelve million dollars out of this $16 million will go into supporting the VWOs in raising the salaries of their social service professionals. The rest will go towards helping the VWOs cover their operational expenditure. Adjustments to programme funding in subsequent years will also take into account market wage movements, among other factors, for the salaries of our social service professionals. For the social service professionals in the sector, they can see a salary adjustment from 3% to 19%, depending on their level of professional competency and also depending on the sector which they are in. For example, a junior therapist will get about a 9% increase with this new funding arrangement. Beyond salary remuneration, we will also strengthen the professional development opportunities for our social work professionals. The Social Service Institute (SSI) will be providing more training courses for our social service professionals to undertake bigger roles, for those who are going on to the leadership track, and for the rest who are on the specialist track, to deepen their competencies in order for them to be future-ready. MSF and MOH will be rolling out the National Social Work Competency Framework for social workers this year. It will map out all the core competencies of all the social workers at Page: 36 different career milestones across the community and health sector.”
“Today, the families need to go to Court to get an order, and it can be a laborious and expensive process. We will work with the Court to simplify the process and improve the accessibility of the court processes, and also to reduce the cost to make it easier for the families. Finally, for mentally incapacitated persons who do not have family to be their decision-makers, we will form a group of public-spirited persons, who will apply to the Court to act as deputies for the mentally incapacitated adults with modest assets but no family support. They will be known as the Panel Deputies. So far, we have 16 of them – lawyers, accountants Page: 35 and social workers. We will put in place all these legislation by the end of this year. On the fifth prong, let me talk about the heart of our social service delivery, and that is our social service professionals. They are the heartbeat of all that we do. In order for us to have good social services, we must make sure that we have a strong social service professional core. They must have meaningful career prospects, good professional development opportunities and receive recognition from society. We will be rolling out various initiatives to further this. In terms of salary norms, we will be reviewing the salary norms for social service professionals this year. Following our review in 2012, the MSF-funded VWOs have made progress to better remunerate their social service professionals. For example, shortly after our adjustment in 2012, the median salary increment for employees of these VWOs was 8%. In 2013, the median increment was 4.5%, slightly higher than the national average. Between 2012 and 2013, the percentage of employees paid within NCSS' recommended range has also increased from under 80% to more than 86%.”
“Family members can also apply to Court for some of these orders. MSF will build up the capability to perform these statutory functions under the Vulnerable Adults Act; but most importantly, we hope most of these cases can be resolved amicably without using the Act as a last resort. We must also respect the individual's right to self-determination and this Act must not replace other Acts. In fact, this Act will complement the Mental Capacity Act, which we will also update and amend in the later part of this year. For the Mental Capacity Act, we will first want to encourage and empower more individuals to plan ahead before they lose their mental capacity. We have since simplified the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) Form 1 in July 2014. It has led to more than 30% increase in the number of applications. It has served the vast majority of the people well. As part of our regular process of updating our legislation, we will continue to take in feedback from all sectors. In fact, in this regular process, some of the suggestions that Ms Sylvia Lim made, will be taken into consideration. But whatever we do, we must make sure that we continue to have a rigorous system that can cater to the needs of the vast majority to enable them to act. On the other hand, the system must be robust enough and have a risk management matrix that can catch the outliers and to flag out those outliers for us to take a deeper look at them. We must continue to find the correct balance, as we have an increasing number of LPAs being done up to take care of our future elderly. Secondly, we want the Mental Capacity Act to also support families who are taking care of the mentally incapacitated individuals who did not or could not make an LPA.”
“Where families are unable or unwilling to care and if there is abuse or neglect, or if the vulnerable adult neglects himself or herself and is unable to care for himself or herself, then the community comes in. For the community, we need to build the common screening and assessment tools, and common training programmes for the community to help us pick out those instances where the vulnerable adult may be abused. We have started this programme to equip many community partners with the detection and intervention services. We will continue to push on. Social workers have also highlighted to us that there is a legislative gap today, as we are not allowed to intervene. For example, we came across a case of a Mdm Tan. She is an 80-plus-year-old lady who is invalid, bedridden. She is taken care of by her son, her primary caregiver, who has been abusive and who has been depriving her of her medicine and, sometimes, food. The son did not allow the social workers or the community partners to Page: 34 access her, to give her help. In today's situation, it takes a lot of moral suasion, a lot of hard work by all the social workers and community partners to reach out to this elderly lady. With the law in place, as a last resort, we will have the authority to go in and intervene before harm befalls the elderly lady. Under the Vulnerable Adults Act to be enacted by the end of this year, we will also cover adults who are incapable of protecting themselves from harm arising from abuse, neglect, or self-neglect. We will have the powers to conduct social investigations, enter homes and possibly relocate vulnerable adults to places of safety, if necessary. We will enable the application to Court for intervention orders to help those in need.”
“Page: 33 This one-stop centre will bring together all the partners, from the previous Social Enterprise Association, Tote Board, NCSS and staff from MSF. They have laid the foundation and we will build on this foundation to further the cause of the social enterprises. The new Centre will be situated at the JTC LaunchPad@one-north. It will be a single touchpoint to help sector-wide development. It will provide a wider range of financing options to meet the evolving needs of the social enterprises across different stages of growth. It will help to link up with other mentors and other successful enterprises to help make sure that our social enterprises get the best chance to succeed commercially. Let me now touch on the fourth area of being future-ready and that is legislation. We have all spoken about the increasing number of elderly amongst us. I am glad to say that the rate of elderly abuse has been stable over the last few years. But because the numbers of elderly are growing, we must eventually expect that there will be more such cases in time to come. This is where we have to get our legislation ready, not because we are in a crisis today, but because we want to build up the capacity, the capability, the common language, the common referral protocol, before the problems even emerge in Singapore. This year, we will enact the Vulnerable Adults Act to help better protect our vulnerable adults, as mentioned by Dr Lily Neo. There will be a three-pronged approach to this Act. First, to better support the families, to better support the community, and as a last resort, for the Government to come in as required. The family plays an important and critical role – they provide emotional support, financial support and caregiving support.”
“To support this growth, each eligible VWO will be given $150,000 to $300,000 per year to help them hire experienced corporate professionals in areas ranging from IT, HR to Finance. This will help them professionalise such services. In parallel, NCSS will look into shared services to support other VWOs. NCSS has already rolled out the Compensation and Benefits consultancy in June 2013 to help VWOs with remuneration matters. NCSS has also piloted small consultancy projects in five capability areas – financial processes, community engagement, client empowerment, utilisation of space and services and process delivery – and they have appointed consultants to help 12 VWOs. We will evaluate the success of these schemes before we roll out more. 12.45 pm The Care and Share Movement will also be extended for another year to help us build up the capability and capacity of the social service sector. With the one-to-one matching, we will have up to $1 billion to build and deepen the competencies of the social service professionals and have our infrastructure ready for tomorrow. Miss Penny Low has also spoken about the third organisational framework of being future-ready and that is the role played by social enterprises. We thank Miss Penny Low and Mr Seah Kian Peng for championing this cause all these years. Over all these years, we have had various measures to help many of the budding social enterprise. And I applaud all these founders, because they have now decided to come together to provide a one-stop centre, called the "Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise", to be set up by the second quarter of this year to help our budding social enterprises to do good and to do well.”
“There will be no need for clients to repeat their stories and there will be no need for us to search for files, to see the kinds of social intervention that had been given previously to those clients. With that, we save manpower and we can deploy the time savings to better interface with the families in need. But I must also urge patience. It will take us some time to transit into the new system. We will need time to download and upload all the records onto the new system, just as how we did it for the medical system many years ago. So, we will do this progressively but, in time to come, I am confident we will reach our vision of "One Client, One Record; One Sector, One System." Page: 32 Beyond the level of future-ready services and future-ready systems, let me talk about the third issue of future-ready organisations. I think Ms Denise Phua and Ms Chia Yong Yong had also talked about this. We expect no less from all the VWOs in terms of corporate governance. We want to professionalise our front-end services; we want to systematise our back-end functions; we want to ensure business continuity from leadership to operations; and we want to manage risks just like any well run organisation. In order for us to do that from this year, we will invest $6 million per year under a Corporate Development Funding Scheme to target VWOs that can scale up to help support their back-end functions so that we can level up the corporate governance in all the VWOs, especially those that utilise time, talent and treasures from the public. We will set high benchmarks in order to inspire confidence in the sector. Only when we are good stewards of the resources given to us, will we engender more resources to be entrusted upon us.”
“This is the reason we have set up the SSO network; so that services can be closer to the ground; so that the needs of the ground can be heard more immediately. Going forward, the SSOs will also act as a nerve system to help coordinate case management, especially for the very complex cases on the ground. They are already doing this in many of the towns that the SSOs have been set up. The SSOs will coordinate not just the work between the different VWOs, they will also coordinate the back-end support by the different Ministries and the different agencies; so that for someone or some families who need the help, they need only to access one point of contact. Over these few years, we have also aligned the boundaries of all the Family Service Centres and the Senior Cluster Networks. With aligned boundaries, we can provide more localised and integrated services at the town level to avoid our "Many Helping Hands" approach being seen as uncoordinated. In fact, I am always inspired by the image of the "ThousandArms Bodhisattva" who is compassionate, who reaches the ground and who hears the cries of help. We may never reach that but we must strive that all the hands, be it hundred hands or thousand hands, are all coordinated, all working closely together, all with their ears on the ground to meet the needs of our fellow Singaporeans. This is also the reason why we are improving our system with the Social Service Net, which we will roll out in the second half of this year. We have one vision: "One Client, One Record; One Sector, One System." Once the system is rolled out, first to the SSO and the FSCs, then subsequently to the VWOs, we will have an integrated case management system across the entire social service sector.”
“Second, for those who cannot go onto employment, we have to see how we can revamp the care model for them at the community level. This will allow us to better use the finite resources that we have. Finally, for those who need very specialised home-based services, we have to look beyond the current model that is dependent on foreign domestic help, which is highly labour intensive. We will be tapping on the ideas of the Enabling Masterplan Implementation Committee to see whether the models that we have going forward will be future-ready for the new demands that are emerging. Let me talk about the second issue – building future-ready systems. I will share a story. Many of you in the House would have probably noticed that I have not used the phrase "Many Helping Hands" in my last three years in the Budget and Committee of Supply (COS) debates. And that was because when I first came on board, some of you told me that the phrase "Many Helping Hands" was a "bad" word. It was as if the Government had washed its hands or did not want to do anything. I have another version for the "Many Helping Hands" approach. I want the "Many Helping Hands" to be like the "Thousand Arms Bodhisattva" or the “千手观音”. We can have Page: 31 many hands but we must have a body and a central nervous system to coordinate the helping hands. Like the “千手观音”, we must also be close to the ground and to be able to listen and discern the needs of the people on the ground. Over the last few years, we have worked quietly behind the scenes to put in place these systems. While we have many outreach points and many helping hands, we must put in place a nervous system and a body that can continue to provide that help as needed.”
“We need the family and the pre-school teachers to be more involved, and this is why in the second half of this year, we will be developing a new model to provide services for the entire early intervention sector. This new model will involve a common assessment tool, a common tracking tool, a better system to allow those with milder needs to be supported by the upskilled Learning Support Educators, thereby dedicating the professionals to help those with moderate to high needs. This will better utilise the finite manpower resources that we have, to provide the best services available to our children in the EIPIC programme. So, we will need to upgrade the skills of our Learning Support Educators, we will need to change the way we make our assessment and track the progress and we will need to deepen the competencies of the professionals, and at the same time widen the pool. Ms Denise Phua and Dr Lily Neo also talked about the issue of adult disability. Indeed, we also need to rethink the model to provide such services including day care services and how we can mobilise the community to provide help for these adults with disabilities. Our challenge is how to provide those services to those who completed their time at SPED schools and are above 18 years old. It is a long journey as we will need to provide them with home care, community care and if possible, open opportunities in the job market. We will adopt a three-pronged strategy to up our services for adult disability. First, for those who can find jobs, we should do our best to work with employers to redesign the workplace to allow them the best opportunities to be integrated into the core Singapore workforce. We have to work on partnerships with employers to redesign the work processes and get the employers on board.”
“Mdm Chair, let me now touch on the second thrust of MSF's work this year. That is, to build a future-ready social service sector. I will touch on this at five levels – future-ready services, systems, organisations, legislations and professional development. We have talked about the evolving challenges to the family structure and also our ageing demographics. For services, we cannot just scale up what we do today. We need to think of new models to provide those services given our finite manpower resources. I will use two examples to illustrate this: (a) Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children, or EIPIC; and (b) adult disability. For EIPIC, our early intervention programme for children with special needs, the diagnosis rate has been going up. Part of it has been due to a greater awareness of the services provided. We have earlier diagnosis and we have more seeking services. This is a good sign because the earlier we can help our children with special needs, the better their chances of leading a fulfilling life, just like any other normal Singaporean. The benefits of early intervention are clear. However, our professional manpower is still lacking, and we cannot just replicate and scale up the current model. We have discussed this in the Enabling Masterplan Implementation Committee and the committee members have given us many good ideas on how we can improve on the continuum of services given to these children. We need a common assessment tool. We need this tool to track the progress of all the children under the scheme so that we can give Page: 30 them targeted help.”
“My commitment to all the operators is that the Government will help you raise the quality and scale up your operation as you put the children at the forefront of all that you do, so long as you take the Government's subsidy and translate this into lower fees and higher pay for the teachers. But if the operators are in this sector for pure profit, then I must say that you are probably in the wrong sector and it will not be my job nor my interest to help you succeed; if profit is your only goal. We will also need teachers to take ownership of their own development. If we can all chip in, I am quite sure that we will have an even better early childhood sector in years to come. Let me now invite Parliamentary Secretary, Ms Low Yen Ling, to give an update on Persons with Special Needs and our Family Support and Services.”
“However, no matter how good these policies and schemes are, there are families who may not be aware of them, as Mr Zainal Sapari mentioned the other day. Hence, at the end of the day, we still need the help of the community to reach out to those in need and raise their awareness about these schemes. The community should reach out to such children and families and encourage them to attend preschool. They can also tap on the various subsidies available. For those who need additional help, they can also approach the Social Service Offices or the Family Service Centres. We believe that with these schemes, together with the cooperation and support from the community, these families get to build a brighter future that is full of hope. (In English): Let me round up this segment by thanking Members for their suggestions for us to make further improvement to the early childhood sector. We are committed to ensure that we give our children the best opportunities and fulfil their potential. But ECDA cannot do this alone. We cannot raise the quality, affordability and accessibility of the entire Page: 21 sector by ourselves. We need everyone's help – as Dr Intan and Er Dr Lee Bee Wah said yesterday, we, as parents, can do our part. We can recognise and respect the contributions of our early childhood professionals to provide a good foundation for our children. We can give them the respect and, in turn, teach our children the sense of respect that we give to our teachers. We need the help of operators to play a part, to work hand-in-hand to uplift the quality of this sector and to make sure that our teachers will be paid competitively.”
“Parents will have greater assurance of the standards in ECDA-licensed kindergartens and childcare centres. Operators will similarly benefit from having a clearer and more consistent requirement regardless of the type of early childhood services that they provide. ECDA will Page: 20 continue to work with the sector on the specific changes and we aim to introduce the Act in the second half of this year. Mdm Chair, may I have your permission to say a few words in Malay? (In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Madam, the early years in a child's life are crucial in providing a strong foundation. The Government is committed to ensuring that every child has a good start by uplifting the quality and accessibility of early childhood care and education, regardless of a family's financial situation. Our priority is also to ensure preschool fees remain affordable, especially for childcare, to better help working parents with their childcare arrangements. With the enhanced subsidies available, low-income families pay as little as $3 a month – just $3 a month – for a full day childcare service. With the enhanced KiFAS, these families pay only $1 to $2 a month in kindergarten fees. To complement the Anchor Operator scheme or AOP, ECDA will introduce a new Partner Operator scheme. The appointed operators will receive Government funding to reduce their fees and keep them affordable. They also have to improve the quality of their services and show their commitment to the professional development of their teachers. I would like to encourage more families to seize this opportunity to benefit from this newly enhanced Government investment into preschools to give their children a good start in life.”
“We will choose the most competitive proposals from the submissions based on the fees that they propose, the track record of the operators and the grants required from the Government. The lower the fees, the more substantial the reduction in the fees, the better. The longer the track record, the better. The lower the grant required to achieve all these, the better. Applications will start with immediate effect. Dr Janil Puthucheary asked about the provision of Mother Tongue in the preschool sector. Indeed, this is one area where I think we can also try to organise ourselves better and attain economies of scale. Anchor operators with enough scale in the same locality, are already doing this. There is much scope to encourage the independent, small-size and mid-size centres to similarly to come together to provide the Mother Tongue services as a cluster in a particular locality. I have seen this in Pasir Ris Town when I last visited one of the anchor operators. They may not be able to provide Mother Tongue in every centre but they can provide the service across different centres by pooling the resources. Last but not least, to raise the overall sector quality, we will have a new Early Childhood Development Centres Act. Some of these key features will be to harmonise the regulation of childcare centres and kindergartens. Kindergartens registered under the Education Act today will be licensed under the new Act, similar to childcare centres. The Act will also require the registration of all early childhood professionals and ECDA's regulatory powers will also be enhanced to uphold higher standards required for the sector. Both parents and operators will stand to benefit from this harmonised legislation.”
“After studying this issue and talking to the operators and teachers in the sector, we have decided to adopt a very targeted approach to provide more funding to support childcare operators who are committed to doing three things for us: first, to keep the childcare fees affordable by stabilising and/or reducing fees; second, a commitment to raise the quality of early childhood care and education in their centres; and, third, to improve the career and professional development opportunities for teachers. We will invite applicants to come and join us on the Partner Operator Scheme. What must they do? Three things. First, they must reduce current fees and promise to keep future fee increases affordable. They must maintain a fee cap of $800 for full-day childcare service. This means a sizeable reduction of at least $100 for centres at the median fee of about $900 today. 12.00 noon Page: 19 Second, we are looking for operators to raise quality, including attaining SPARK accreditation as soon as possible. Third, they must agree to develop their teachers professionally and benchmark the teacher's salary according to ECDA's advice. We have already seen the benefits of economies of scale enjoyed by the current five anchor operators. Many of the mid-size operators can benefit from economies of scale, and I would encourage the smaller operators to come together to take on the challenge and to enjoy the benefits of economies of scale. A fragmented industry structure does not allow us to develop our teachers well, does not allow us to enjoy the economies of scale to keep fees affordable and it does not help us to raise the quality that we so desire. The selection of the Partner Operator Scheme will be a competitive process.”
“The Professional Development Programme (PDP) will be progressively rolled out from 2016. Besides the teachers, we will also be working out a professional development Page: 18 programme for our edu-carers and leaders. ECDA will be working with the sector in close consultation in the coming months and will release details in the later part of this year. For Dr Intan's question, apart from the PDP, ECDA has also many opportunities for teachers to engage in innovative practices through the Innovation Grant and Early Childhood Research Fund. Having dealt with the manpower issues, the next and most critical issue that we need to think further has to do with the industry structure for the early childhood sector. We need to ask ourselves: will more demand-side subsidies lead to inflation of prices but not lead to improvements in quality and assurance for families? Is the current structure of the industry helping us to moderate costs, pay competitively and to develop our teachers? I personally think that it is good for us to have a variety of learning models since children at this young age learn very differently and have very different needs. It is not easy to standardise learning needs and systems. On the other hand, while we desire to have greater variety in the sector, is having more than 600 different brands of operators a bit too many for us to create the efficiencies of scale required for us to keep prices competitive and affordable, and to give the best opportunities for our teachers to progress in their career? For example, does it make sense for us to have more than 600 sets of different curriculum requiring so many teams so much time to develop those curricula?”
“The progress has been uneven with the AOPs leading the way and the rest following. This year, we will also introduce a new Professional Development Programme (PDP) for our early childhood professionals with at least three years of experience to encourage them to deepen their competencies and stay in the sector. This is a structured three-year upgrading programme to equip kindergarten and childcare teachers for larger job roles to help them to realise their potential. Teachers, nominated by their employers, will undergo certifiable training and receive monetary incentives at key programme milestones to recognise their skills and encourage them to stay in the sector. Details will be announced by ECDA subsequently. ECDA will further explore how we can facilitate a system where we can provide more opportunities and time for training. This includes, for example, setting up a register, very much like how MOE does it for their relief teachers, so that our teachers who are already doing their work can have the time-off to go for their upgrading courses. Once the scheme is in place, I expect employers to do their part to nominate suitable teachers and give them the time and space to undertake this training. Once they have completed the training, recognise them with greater responsibilities and salary progression as they move on in the sector. This is a tripartite partnership between the operators, the teachers and ECDA. Operators will need to give our teachers the time and the flexibility to attend the training and to attain deeper competencies in their respective areas. On the other hand, the teachers will also need to take ownership of their own training and to commit to enhancing their skills for the sector for the long term.”
“Members Mr Ang Hin Kee, Er Dr Lee Bee Wah, Dr Intan Azura and Dr Janil Puthucheary have all spoken about this issue. Currently, we have about 14,000 edu-carers and teachers in the sector. We will need another 1,500 more by 2017. From our analysis, we know that many of the young teachers that join the sector typically find it most challenging in the first three years of their time in the sector. Many of them cite the challenges in career progression, pay, professional development and meeting the high expectations of the public. I agree with Mr Ang Hin Kee's point that we need structured training and better career opportunities for our teachers and edu-carers taking care of our children. Thus, we will do more in the coming year. We have already introduced more courses and internships to attract more people to join the sector. Senior Minister of State Indranee Rajah has also Page: 17 highlighted that ECDA will introduce an Early Childhood Capability Grant to support operators hosting enhanced internships for the students. There will also be more opportunities for in-service professionals to continue their work in the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Masterplan. In the past year alone, one in two early childhood educators have already benefited from these courses. ECDA is currently working with WDA to jointly develop the Early Childhood Singapore Skills Framework to groom our many teachers in the sector. In addition, this year, we will appoint the first batch of ECDA Fellows who have been exemplary professionals to create a fraternity to uplift the quality of the sector and help mentor the young teachers and edu-carers in the sector. The salaries have been improving for the sector but I want to see greater progress.”
“The enhanced subsidies have helped to reduce the out-of-pocket costs, especially for the lower- and middle-income families. Thirty-one thousand children have since benefited from the additional subsidies, with the lowest income tier paying as low as $3 per month for a full-day childcare service and 10,000 have benefited from the enhanced KIFAS since January this year, and the lower-income families pay as little as $1 to $2 per month for the kindergarten services. Mr Pritam Singh asked about the fee schedules for those who want to increase their fees. ECDA has strict control over the AOP operators that are on the scheme. But the best way to check the fee increase and profiteering is not to micro-manage them because, ultimately, they are still private entities. The best way is to make sure that we have sufficient affordable, quality options in the market. Next, I want to touch on the CDA top-up. Beyond the new schemes to enhance affordability of our early childhood services, we will also top-up the Child Development Account (CDA) account for all Singaporean children aged zero to six years old in 2015. This will assist the families with the cost of raising their children, through kindergarten or childcare fees, or healthcare-related expenses. Today, 85% of CDA usage goes into either childcare or healthcare-related purposes. So, the top-up of $300 or $600 per child, depending on the annual value of the family's home, will be a big help to many parents in the low- to middle-income group. Parents will receive the top-up by September this year. That, basically, is the short update on what we have done for the quality, affordability and accessibility challenges so far. Let me now move on to the next challenge and, that is, manpower.”
“And we will continue to closely monitor the demand and supply as needed, especially in housing estates where there are many more young parents. Besides developing childcare centres at void decks, ECDA has also other schemes that will help to boost the supply in the estates. First, allowing developers to apply for bonus gross floor area if they set aside spaces for childcare centres. Second, providing grants for childcare centres located in workplaces. Third, helping some kindergartens to convert their centres into childcare centres if the usage for the kindergarten is not particularly high. Fourth, helping to defray the rental costs for childcare centres in high demand areas. On top of these four measures that we have implemented over the last few years, in 2015, ECDA will work with the Anchor Operators (AOPs) to develop large centres with a capacity of 300 to 500 childcare places. These centres will provide an additional 2,400 new places over the next few years and help to alleviate demand for parents living in these high demand estates. This goes beyond our original target of 20,000 additional childcare places that will be put in place between 2013 and 2017. As we build the new and bigger childcare centres, we are trying a new model, and I urge Members to give us your support and mobilise the community to address the issues that may arise from having bigger childcare centres. There might be issues related to traffic congestion, and I seek Members' support to mobilise your respective grassroots organisations to help us build and design such centres that meet the needs of the young Page: 16 parents amongst us. ECDA will be providing the detailed site locations in due course. Let me provide some updates on the affordability issue.”
“Second, we must build a future-ready social service sector, and I will elaborate on this in the second part of my speech. Let me start on the first thrust of MSF's work for this year. That is, to strengthen our investment in the early years of our children so as to give everyone the best possible headstart. Members of this House will remember that I always have the mantra of providing Page: 15 quality, accessible and affordable early childhood services for all our families. When talking about affordability, we want to focus our resources on those with less. We also want to make sure that the broad middle of our population has access to affordable and quality services to give parents peace of mind. Let me update on the efforts that we are going to embark on, and also, some of the challenges for which I seek Members' support. First, quality. We now have 360 SPARK-certified pre-schools. We have also introduced a new Commendation Category to recognise strong teaching and learning practices and we hope that this continues to grow and proliferate across the entire sector. We hear that many parents are now looking out for the SPARK certification. I am personally heartened by this because this is a better indication of quality compared to using price, bells and whistles as proxies, as these may not be in the best interest of our children. So, we are making progress on SPARK and we will continue to push for more centres to come on board. On the second issue of accessibility, in 2013, we had enough childcare places for one in three children. Since 2013, we have added 17,000 childcare places across the entire island. We will meet our target of having 20,000 new childcare places by 2017, ahead of planned schedule, providing places for one in two children for each cohort.”
“Mdm Chair, let me first thank all Members for the very many useful suggestions and support for the work of MSF. We would not have been able to do all that we want to do without their support. There are three critical social challenges that we have to confront in the coming years: first, social mobility; second, our evolving family support system; and third, our ageing population. Many in the House have spoken about the issue of social inequality. The way that we need to tackle social inequality is not just about transferring some help to the people at certain points in time. More importantly, we must ensure that the next generation has the best chance to move up the social ladder if they work hard and if they have the talent to do so. Our next challenge has to do with the shrinking size of our family. We are having fewer children in the average family. Many of them are living independently and many of our children may also be working or staying overseas. In a hyper-competitive global system, our families will face new stresses and strains in the coming years. Marriages have also transcended the traditional geographical boundaries. 11.45 am Third, we have an ageing population. Financial security and assurance will be key considerations for them. Likewise, how we integrate them socially will also be a big challenge. We have to re-look at our social systems and support networks in order for us to tackle the three challenges of an ageing population, social mobility and our evolving family structure. In 2015, MSF will embark on a two-pronged strategy to meet these challenges. First, continue to invest in the foundation years of our children. This is to provide all our children with the best opportunities to fulfil their talent, regardless of their starting point in life.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to report that the Committee of Supply has made further progress on the Estimates of Expenditure for the financial year 2015/2016, and ask leave to sit again tomorrow.”
“Mr Chairman, may I seek your consent to move that progress be reported now and leave be asked to sit again tomorrow?”
“All parents of Singaporean children, regardless of their working status, are eligible for basic childcare subsidies. Depending on their household income, they may also qualify for kindergarten fee assistance. Other forms of support, such as the Baby Bonus cash gift and child development account matched savings, are also available to help parents defray the cost of raising children. As working mothers require greater support, we provide them added assistance in the form of additional childcare subsidies. We recognise that some mothers who are not working full-time may have a great need for childcare services for various reasons. These may include long-term illness, disability or other extenuating family circumstances. For such cases, we exercise flexibility and consider their circumstances on a case-by-case basis for higher childcare subsidies. In 2014, 190 non-working mothers were granted additional childcare subsidies. Page: 112”
“The Maintenance of Parents Act takes a "conciliation first" approach, with legal action as a last resort. It provides for the Commissioner for the Maintenance of Parents to first help parents and children resolve their maintenance disputes through conciliation. This arrangement started in 2011. Between 2011 and 2014, the Commissioner conciliated an average of 264 cases per year. The specific numbers are 286 in 2011, 303 in 2012, 257 in 2013 and 213 in 2014. The resolution rate has been encouraging, at above 80%. With better upfront conciliation, fewer maintenance applications are being filed at the Tribunal for the Maintenance of Parents. In 2011, the number of new applications to the Tribunal fell to 110, from 183 in 2010. The numbers remained low in subsequent years – 84 in 2012, 63 in 2013 and 55 in 2014.”
“In 2013, 47% of civil divorces and 63% of Muslim divorces involved dependent children under 18 years old. The Ministry does not have detailed statistics on which parent has custody of children. However, in the best interest of the children, joint custody is commonly awarded by the Courts. Parents are encouraged to consult each other and make decisions jointly on major issues, such as education and significant health matters, even after a divorce. Page: 108 Married couples with Singapore citizen children receive benefits and support as part of the Government’s support for parenthood within marriages. Those who are divorced, including divorced fathers and granted custody and care and control of their children, will continue to enjoy these benefits. They include tax relief and rebates, healthcare and education subsidies, Medisave grants, Baby Bonus, preschool subsidies and childcare leave. For housing, a divorced parent with custody and care and control of a child is treated no differently from married households, although within three years of the divorce, only one party can own a subsidised flat, or apply for one after getting the ex-spouse’s consent not to do likewise. The need for consent is waived if the divorcee, including divorced fathers, has custody and care and control of all the children below 18 years old.”
“Mdm Speaker, indeed, for all the new towns, what we aim to do is to make sure that the space allocated and required for childcare centres are in-built and designed into the new buildings. For the new precincts, we have worked with MND to make sure that these places are already inside, so we do not need to go and look for void deck spaces. During the forthcoming Committee of Supply debate, I will reveal more details on other ways that we will alleviate the shortfall in childcare places for those precincts that have already been built and may not have sufficient void deck space. For student care, the issue will be dealt with collectively between MOE and MSF. We are fully aware that today, the lifestyle needs of many families have changed. Many families have dual-income parents working and what they need for childcare places today – at least, the majority of them – will translate into the same need for the lower primary student care and upper primary student care places. MOE has a plan in place to expand the student care services available to all the primary schools progressively.”
“The fact that I have residents coming to my MPS every week to ask for a place in a childcare centre shows that there are inadequate childcare places. I understand that the Ministry has been working very hard to build more childcare centres, to recruit teachers, but then, there must be a certain timeframe that the parents can look forward to settling down in their new home, getting their children from their old place to the new place. Is there any framework that the Ministry is looking at? The next question is on student care. I also have residents bringing up the issue of student care. Is this under MSF? If not, is MSF going to work with MOE on student care centres?”
“Mdm Speaker, yes, we have been working hard to bring down the attrition rate. We have a four-pronged strategy to reduce the attrition rate. First, it starts from the selection process. We are instituting new measures to make sure that people who come on-board to take the courses are generally interested in the early childhood sector and not just take up the course and subsequently leave for another sector. Second, we are continuing to make sure that we encourage the anchor operators to lead by example to help pull the sector along when it comes to fair remuneration for our teachers. Third, we want to put in a professional development pathway for all our teachers, especially in the early years, which is why we have instituted a mentorship programme to guide the young teachers, especially in the critical first three years of their career development. Last, but not least, the fourth prong in our strategy is to make sure that we continue to attract and retain good teachers and to have the community and all of us work together to give a sense of respect to our early childhood sector professionals. On the Member's second question on traineeship, yes, we are seeing a gradual increase in the take-up rate and we have also started some pilot programme to allow stay-at-home Page: 34 moms who are prepared to work part-time to come in and join the sector as edu-carers. And hon Member Er Dr Lee Bee Wah would know, in her constituency, she has managed to help us place a few of these stay-at-home moms who came back to join us on a part-time basis to supplement the edu-carer manpower pool within the Yishun area. Er Dr Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon): Mdm Speaker, in Nee Soon South, I have 109 new BTO blocks and about 60% of the occupants have shifted in.”
“Madam, our target is to add 200 new centres, or about 20,000 additional childcare places, from 2013 to 2017. We are on track to achieve this. Over the past two years, 17,000 new childcare places have been added. On average, childcare centres in Yishun and Sembawang housing estates operated at about 90% of their capacity in 2014. This is typical for centres with sufficient staff. The Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) closely monitors childcare centre demand and will continue to expand capacity in estates with many young families to meet their needs. To further expand capacity, we will need to attract and retain good early childhood professionals. ECDA has taken measures to support this. For example, ECDA organised an Early Childhood Career and Education Fair in 2014 which helped to fill over 200 positions. It also worked with WDA to launch a traineeship programme to give mid-career entrants an introduction to the early childhood sector. Fifty trainees have completed the programme to-date. More recent initiatives include the introduction of a new ECDA Fellows programme to provide good performing early childhood professionals opportunities to take on sector-level Page: 33 leadership roles, as well as a new training award for Institute of Technical Education (ITE) students undertaking the Higher Nitec in Early Childhood Education. ECDA will continue to work with the sector to put in place structured career pathways and develop early childhood professionals. Together, these initiatives will help us attract and retain the manpower we need for the sector.”
“Madam, may I have your permission to take Question Nos 13 and 14 together?”
“May I clarify: when the Member said we take care of those people who travel overseas to gamble, what does he mean? Oh, how do we keep track of people who go overseas and gamble if they have excluded themselves? Unfortunately, at this point, I must admit that I do not have jurisdiction beyond Singapore even if I would like to. I understand what the Member means. On a more serious note, I think for those who have excluded themselves, whether it is local or overseas, the question is whether we can Page: 40 have the proper family and community support structures to help them kick the habit. For very determined or pathological gamblers, they can always find some ways to circumvent this. But if we can have the family and the community all playing a part to try and come together to help the individual, then I think we will have another layer of defence rather than just depending on a policing system to do that. Increasingly, in the new forms of gambling, we are most concerned about not just terrestrial gambling, like casinos or gambling dens, but the issue of cyber addictions. We are most concerned about that.”
“Whether the form is exactly the same, I think we can work on it. By and large, the philosophy is that whoever opts to be excluded, they can opt-in to be excluded. Whoever chooses to be excluded may do so, so long as the application is premised on the principles of individual responsibility, accountability and individual decision. Whether it is all in one form or the organisation can help us distribute a set of forms to each individual and then we put it together for submission, I think those are mechanics that can be worked out. But as a philosophy, if an organisation – be it a church group or an employer – wants to conduct a session to encourage his or her employees or members to come and collectively sign up together, even today, we have no objection to such a practice. In fact, some organisations already do that. They may not have one consolidated form, but they will give out the forms individually to their members – and we have seen that before – whereby they compiled them and passed them on to us. So, philosophically, no difference. The issue is just how to simplify the amount of information gathered, bearing in mind that the person always makes a conscious decision because, subsequently, if the person decides to withdraw himself or herself from the scheme, then there is a basis for us to act.”
“I am just trying to think through the mechanics of this. Let me take this back and think through the mechanics of the Member's suggestion. But I just want to clarify that the Member is not suggesting a membership scheme when she talked about having an "opt-in" scheme. Because, personally, I will not be very supportive if you say that there is a term membership or opt-in scheme where, once I sign that, then I can go anytime I want. I do not think the Member is suggesting that.”
“Let me try to clarify this with the Member offline because I would have thought that, today, if you want to go in, you have to pay $100 and that is your act of inclusion. But the Member is suggesting that, on top of paying $100, you get an extra form to apply for inclusion.”