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Price Of Baby Formula Milk Has Doubled Over The Last Decade

It costs twice as much to feed your baby today

The average price of baby milk has more than doubled in the past decade and parents say they are feeling the pinch.

In 2004, the average price of formula, including that for infants and for babies six months and older, was $22.66 for a 900g tin. It has climbed steadily to hit $50.01 in October this year from an average of $44.30 last year, according to figures obtained recently by The Straits Times from the Department of Statistics.

Baby milk showed the steepest price rise among dairy products.

According to Department of Statistics figures, prices went up by 11 per cent for eggs and 68 per cent for condensed milk over the last decade. A one-litre pack of fresh milk increased by 14 per cent from $2.53 in 2004 to $2.89 this October.

Echoing the sentiments of many mothers, housewife Sharon Tan, 30, said: “The price increase of baby milk is ridiculous. It is not cheap and is considered a staple for many babies.”

Parents globally spent an estimated US$11.5 billion (S$15.1 billion) on baby milk in 2010.

Milk powder companies Abbott, Nestle, Wyeth Nutrition, FrieslandCampina and Mead Johnson attributed high prices to factors such as product innovation, nutrition research – which makers of simpler dairy products might not do as much – and rising business costs. Dumex did not respond to queries.

Nestle, which manufactures the popular Nan brand, said it made price adjustments over the years “due to price increases of raw materials and other business costs such as labour, production, distribution and even packaging”.

“In addition to milk price increases, the cost of raw materials like vitamins and minerals has also been on a steady climb,” it told The Straits Times.

The rising prices of baby milk here have made some mothers more inclined to breastfeed.

Ms Suriana Rabu, 29, a merchandiser, fed her first child formula from when she was a month old, but said she would be breastfeeding her second child for as long as possible to save costs.

An infant can consume about four tins of milk a month costing about $200, while breastfeeding equipment, including a breastpump and milk bottles, means a one-off cost of between $300 and $700.

In any case, paediatric experts from KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), Mount Alvernia Hospital and the National University Hospital said though infant and follow-on milk may be heavily fortified with nutrients, a mother’s breast milk is best for the baby.

“Despite recent advances in formula research, breast milk still contains more than 100 ingredients which the infant formula industry has not been able to replicate,” said Dr Chua Mei Chien, a senior consultant in KKH’s neonatology department.

But some mothers say they find it hard to breastfeed. “For us, milk formula is essential,” said housewife Shirley Loo, 29.

Many also turn to milk formula when they return to work a few months following childbirth.

Earlier this year, at least 31 mothers reportedly fell prey to an online scam in which customers were offered milk powder that was often never delivered.

“All we wanted to do was to save money on milk as it was expensive,” said Ms Jasmine Ling, 32, a stay-at-home mum.

Parents with babies born from Aug 26, 2012 have received a larger baby bonus to cope with rising costs. They have also learnt to save a few bucks on formula – such as by buying it at Chinese medical halls, which offer slightly lower prices. Some go to Johor Baru where baby milk can be 30 to 40 per cent cheaper.

Said Ms Angie Ng, 36, an IT consultant, who goes to JB once every two months to buy milk powder: “It is cheaper. My nieces and nephews in Malaysia drink the same milk formula and they grow up as healthy as kids here.”

Source: www.straitstimes.com

December 16, 2014
MND Plan For Integrated Multi-Religious Building May Cause Problems

Small religious group to share places of worship will create more problems

Very soon, small religious groups could find themselves sharing places of worship. In a land scarce country like Singapore, it seems just a matter of time.

No doubt that you have guessed correctly, this idea came from the Ministry of National Development (MND) to accommodate several places of worship of the same religion in a multi-storey building, sharing common facilities. The purpose is to help these groups to cut rental costs. Off one glance, it seems like a fantastic idea for religious groups as they depend greatly on offerings and donations. Furthermore, every penny counts in one of the highest cost of living like Singapore.

However, sadly to say, I hardly see this will be good for the religious groups in other areas. They will not have autonomy in operations over the place. This disempowered them in having the opportunity to be exposed to operations management and this will hinder them from moving to permanent place in future. More unforeseeable by MND, restriction in autonomy does more in depth damages. Small religious groups are impaired from building or maintaining their unique identity. For example, these could be decorations and extended worship services. Due to these, believers whether existing or new loses their sense of belonging. This bodes badly on small religious groups not only on struggle to keep the existing worshippers but also attracting new ones as well.

In terms of proximity, religious groups will prefer sites of worship to be near from MRT / bus interchange and neighborhood malls due to convenience for their worshippers. But this is unlikely to be so as the MND announced that the facility is likely to be located within or at the fringe of industrial areas.

Disruption to their worshippers’ plans will likely to reduce their attendance rate to these inconvenience sites. Poor attendance rates could be attributed to the timing of worship services. Instead of the regular worship timings, religious groups rents the facility based on a first-come-first served basis and many could find themselves with less prime timings. Fixed timings could also creates barriers as too often; worships can be longer than usual depending on the “holy” touch.

The MND can also consider building a integrated facility building comprising meeting rooms, children’s play room etc. so that the spirit of bonding and communal are not sacrificed at the expense of cost. Come to think of it, since the community clubs are long established since post-independence, can’t they be used for religious purposes. This can also create inter-religious bonding indirectly too.

As much as MND wants to save up the precious land for “others” developments, a discussion is needed between the MND and the various religious groups to sort things out as I believed any outcome will be much better than the one proposed by MND.

Aaron Chan

*The author wishes to write regularly for TRS and he hopes to write for a better Singapore.

Source: www.therealsingapore.com

December 16, 2014
More Flexible CPF Minimum Sum System In The Future?

Factoring in one’s income level, gender and marital status in setting the Minimum Sum for different individuals could be one way to inject flexibility into the Central Provident Fund (CPF) system for different members. In addition, contribution rates and ceilings should also be tweaked to ensure retirement adequacy, said experts, in response to the Government’s consideration to move away from the one-size-fits-all format.

If members are free to choose how much they want to save based on what they think they need in their later years, it may result in the state having to give out more in public assistance for vulnerable groups or make the CPF system even more complex, they added.

“Giving them too much choice isn’t necessarily good because we can’t ever predict the future for ourselves,” said Institute of Policy Studies research fellow Christopher Gee, who specialises in policy implications on retirement adequacy, housing and healthcare.

In an interview last week, Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin hinted that the advisory panel set up by the Government to review the CPF is mulling the introduction of varying levels of Minimum Sum and payouts because “actually, people do have different needs and people are looking at different requirements”.

The panel is expected to submit its preliminary recommendations to the Government in February.

Yesterday, experts interviewed welcomed the idea of moving away from a common Minimum Sum for all CPF members.

The Minimum Sum is the amount each member has to meet at age 55 to be able to make withdrawals. It is set at S$155,000 now, but will be increased to S$161,000 next July.

Pointing out that the Minimum Sum could be set at a “more realistic” level for lower-income groups, Nanyang Technological University economist Walter Theseira said: “It is extremely difficult for them to have any chance of meeting the Minimum Sum. But we have to accept that if we want to give them more flexibility to withdraw their money earlier, we probably have to help them more in retirement.”

Assistant Professor Theseira suggested that one’s gender and marital status could come into play, noting that other countries have retirement adequacy systems that are conceived on a family basis, unlike Singapore’s CPF system, which is more individualistic.

“Under the United States’ Social Security system, the state gives additional benefits to married households. You can claim half of your spouse’s benefits (from the state) or all of your own, depending on which is higher,” he said. “It is extra income just for being married. Our system is not like that.”

Associate Professor Hui Weng Tat from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy noted that a higher Minimum Sum for the middle-class group would provide a more comfortable retirement. But the “relatively low” contribution ceiling of S$5,000 now would have to go up in tandem, he noted.

On the minister’s point that the advisory panel is also studying having payouts that increase progressively to mitigate the effects of inflation, Assoc Prof Hui said the change would require the returns on special government bonds (which CPF monies are invested in) to be inflation-indexed or inflation-protected.

Such a practice is already common in overseas bond markets, Assoc Prof Hui pointed out.

Asst Prof Theseira also noted that rising payouts means purchasing power is preserved over time and not that one can consume more goods as one ages. “(It means) I can buy the same basket of food today as I can 10 years from now,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Gee suggested that contribution rates and ceilings should also be tweaked to boost retirement adequacy.

As employer contribution rates decrease with age, “there’s less incentive for employees to continue working and this goes against the idea of encouraging people to work longer”, he said.

Allowing withdrawals only when an individual retires — instead of from age 55 as is the case now — could be an option. “The reality is that people are living longer. The average Singaporean could retire at 55 years old and live for another 30 years,” Mr Gee said.

Source: www.todayonline.com

December 16, 2014
11 Classmates We’ve All Encountered

Most of us spend at least 12 years in school. In that amount of time, we meet all sorts of people. You may even be one of those that other classmates remember:

1. Classmates who claim that they don’t study

2. The one who comes to school 15 minutes early for only ONE reason…

3. The one who never lets people copy his homework

4. The class belle/hunk

Behind every class belle / hunk…

is you:

5. The one who brings all his books everyday even if he doesn’t need them

6. The smart aleck who pretends to know everything

7. The rebel / joker who talks back to the teacher all the time

8. The super classmate

9. The teacher’s pet / sabo king / troll

10. The bully

Nuff said.

11. The Pao Toh Kia

*Bonus* The Dua Kang Kia / Big Cannon Fairy / King of exaggeration

Source: http://mothership.sg

December 16, 2014
Islamophobia Driving Expectation On The Need For Muslims To Openly Deplore Terrorist Acts?

There’s a certain ritual that each and every one of the world’s billion-plus Muslims, especially those living in Western countries, is expected to go through immediately following any incident of violence involving a Muslim perpetrator. It’s a ritual that is continuing now with the Sydney hostage crisis, in which a deranged self-styled sheikh named Man Haron Monis took several people hostage in a downtown café.

Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: “As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form.”

This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise.

The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion. This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry.

It is time for that ritual to end: non-Muslims in all countries, and today especially those in Australia, should finally take on the correct assumption that Muslims hate terrorism just as much as they do, and cease expecting Muslims to prove their innocence just because of their faith.

Bigoted assumptions are the only plausible reason for this ritual to exist, which means that maintaining the ritual is maintaining bigotry. Otherwise, we wouldn’t expect Muslims to condemn Haron Monis — who is clearly a crazy person who has no affiliations with formal religious groups — any more than we would expect Christians to condemn Timothy McVeigh. Similarly, if someone blames all Jews for the act of, say, extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, we immediately and correctly reject that position as prejudiced. We understand that such an accusation is hateful and wrong — but not when it is applied to Muslims.

This is, quite literally, a different set of standards that we apply only to Muslims. Hend Amry, who is Libyan-American, brilliantly satirized this expectation with this tweet, highlighting the arbitrary expectations about what Muslims are and are not expected to condemn:

As a Muslim, I condemn acts of sexual assault following time spent as a self-proclaimed spiritual healer specializing in black magic.

— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) December 15, 2014

This ritual began shortly after September 2001. American Muslims, as well as Muslims in other Western countries, feared that they could be victims to a public backlash against people of their religion. President George W. Bush feared this as well and gave a speech imploring Americans to embrace Muslim-Americans as fellow citizens. But while the short-term need to guard against a backlash was real, that moment has passed, and the ritual’s persistence is perpetuating Islamophobia rather than reducing it, by constantly reminding us of our assumption that Muslims are guilty until proven innocent.

The media has played a significant role in maintaining this ritual and thus the prejudiced ideas behind it. Yes, that includes openly Islamophobic cable news hosts like those in the US. But it also includes even well-intentioned media outlets and reporters who broadcast Muslims’ and Muslim organizations’ condemnation of acts of extremist violence, like the hostage crisis in Sydney.

There is no question that this coverage is explicitly and earnestly designed to combat Islamophobia and promote equal treatment of Muslims. No question. All the same, this coverage ends up cementing the ritual condemnation as a necessary act, and thus cementing as well the racist implications of that ritual. By treating it as news every time, the media is reminding its readers and viewers that Muslims are held to a different standard; it is implicitly if unintentionally reiterating the idea that they are guilty until proven innocent, that maybe there is something to the idea of collective Muslim responsibility for lone criminals who happen to share their religion.

Instead, we should treat the assumptions that compel this ritual — that Muslims bear collective responsibility, that they are presumed terrorist-sympathizers until proven otherwise — as flatly bigoted ideas with no place in our society. There is no legitimate reason for Muslim groups to need to condemn Haron Monis, nor is there any legitimate reason to treat those condemnations as news. So we should stop.

We should treat people Haron Monis as what he is: a deranged lunatic. And we should treat Muslims as what they: normal people who of course reject terrorism, rather than as a lesser form of humanity that is expected to reject violence every time it happens.

Source: www.vox.com

December 16, 2014