Tag: Workers Party

Workers’ Party Lee Li Lian Mooted Idea Of More Aid For Single Mothers In 2013 By-Election Rally

Social and Family Development Minister Tan Chuan-Jin’s new agenda for his ministry is to put vulnerable children high on the priority list of those to receive help.

Currently, a review is being conducted by MSF so that unwed working mothers may soon get the same benefits as married ones.

This was revealed in an interview with Channel News Asia on July 29, 2015:

REVIEWING BENEFITS FOR UNWED MOTHERS

Besides vulnerable groups in society, Mr Tan also revealed that unwed working mothers may soon get the same benefits as married ones under a review being conducted by MSF.

It is the lament of unwed mothers that they do not get the same benefits as married mums. And that just because they are single, why should their children be penalised, is their argument.

Among the differences is how unwed mothers get eight weeks of maternity leave paid for by their employers, while married mothers get 16 weeks. Unwed mothers do not benefit from the Handicapped Child Relief, nor the Baby Bonus cash gift.

The minister asked for a review of current policies: “My sense is that the public understands and sympathises with single unwed mothers; I see it on the ground. When I came in, I asked my colleagues to see whether we can review some of these things. Some of the differentiation that exists, could we harmonise it?”

SINGLE PARENTS STILL NOT THE NORM

It has been a long-standing principle of the Singapore Government that policies should support and encourage parenthood within the context of marriage. But as traditional family structures change, policies too need to be re-looked, he said.

But Mr Tan said he is mindful about the kind of signalling any change in policy sends: “Is it an indication or signal that we condone single-parenthood? That is something that you bear in mind. I do believe that society is sympathetic to single mums but we also need to be careful not to appear to encourage it as something that you could do.

“We do see in other countries, individuals choosing as a matter of lifestyle: ‘It’s ok, I’m not married, but I don’t mind having a child.’ I don’t think we are there yet as a society. I’m sure there will be individuals and some who may disagree, but I don’t see that as a norm and I don’t personally feel that some of these changes would open the floodgates if you will, for that particular lifestyle to develop.

“But be that as it may, it remains one consideration. But recognising that single mothers do have vulnerabilities, how best do we support?”

Mr Tan said the review involves a whole-of-Government approach, bringing together agencies that take care of housing and manpower policies.

He said the help rendered needs to be holistic: “The support provided for single parents, single mothers, unwed mothers really isn’t just about that Baby Bonus – I know there are differences, but actually the help extended needs to be much more extensive.

“It’s about healthcare availability, it’s about education opportunities and the support that comes with it. So, on the one hand, while there are some differences that exist today the help isn’t just in those areas. Actually the more fundamental issue is that broader extent of help.”

For example, all mothers, including unwed ones are currently eligible for infant care and childcare subsidies. Government-funded education programmes are also extended to all children.

“I’ve not met a single child who is not going to school because they couldn’t pay school fees,” said Mr Tan. “Schools fees are provided for. Uniforms are provided for. School books are provided for. Pocket money. Consistently. And that has been really encouraging for me.”

Mr Tan did not say when the review will be completed, just that an announcement will be made soon and it will likely be before Budget 2016.

However, the idea that single parents should receive same benefits as married ones was mooted by Workers’ Party Lee Li Lian in 2013 during a rally speech for the Punggol East SMC by-election:

Our inclusive society has also forgotten the 2nd group, single parents, who are Singapore citizens and whose daughter and son will bear and nurture future generations as well as serve National Service.

Did you know that single parents can only purchase HDB BTO Flats only when they are 35 and above? Regardless of marital status, all parents love and want to provide their children with the best they possibly can. Some single parents need caregivers too, but they are excluded from working mothers’ child relief, grandparent caregiver relief and foreign maid-levy relief.

Babies from single parents are also not eligible for Baby Bonus.

While having children outside of marriage should continue to be discouraged in our society, children born to single parents should not be denied the benefits that children of married parents receive. The children are innocent parties and should not start life being disadvantaged. Single parents should receive the same parenthood benefits packages as married parents.

Allow me to quote our pledge, ‘happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation.’ How can there be actual progress when stay at home parents and single parents are being left behind! We, the citizens of Singapore should move together as one people under one Flag!

Currently, the Parliament is made up of 80 PAP MPs vs 6 elected Opposition MPs. There is a great imbalance in Parliament right now. That is why there is an urgent need to vote more Workers’ Party candidates into Parliament.

Source: http://mothership.sg

July 31, 2015
Goh Meng Seng: Workers’ Party Should Contest Fewer Seats

While I know most of my haters and detractors here are mainly WP supporters, but I would like to put this perspective forward to you.

WP has apparently taken more than what it could chew. Sylvia Lim has admitted that the management of WP’s Town Council is far from good as mistakes have been made. It is only wise for WP to focus on its current turfs of 7 seats, fortify themsevles further instead of going into expansion mode and step into other unfamiliar turfs.

I do not wish to see WP losing its current seats just because of its unwarranted ambition to win more seats. And I do not think WP can convince voters that it could manage ADDITIONAL constituencies well when it is currently struggling with the present 7 constituencies’ municipal management. WP may risk a total collapse of credibility if it won more seats but in the end TC management become a horrible nightmare. This will in return destroy WP totally by the elections after next.Stay focus on the current 7 seats will be its best strategy. I believe LTK will want to fortify his positions in these current seats instead of having the ambition to win even more seats.

Having said that, it would be natural to expect WP not to contest more seats than it has done before. In fact, it should be contesting less seats instead.

So I do not expect to have problems in multi-corner fight,especially with WP as long as they are rational and not that greedy or overly ambitious unless WP has other agendas which are not about winning more seats but disruption of other party’s chances of winning seats and growing the pie of opposition presence in parliament.

I am pretty optimistic that we have people with very rational and responsible heads in WP who would put the overall development of democracy for Singapore as top priority over party’s interests.

Source: Goh Meng Seng

July 12, 2015
Workers’ Party Youth Wing Forum SG100 Conference

As Singapore celebrates her golden jubilee, the Workers’ Party Youth Wing calls on fellow young Singaporeans to share their dreams and aspirations for the next 50 years. More than a dozen young Singaporeans will offer their personal views on Singapore’s future development in three panel discussions. We hope to create a forum for conversation on alternate paths for Singapore — to paint a shared vision and provide inspiration to shaping Singapore’s future to realise community ownership and citizen participation. We hope to provide the catalyst for deeper discussion on the Singapore we want in 2065 and the roadmap to get there. Together, we can build a nation that we can be proud of calling home for generations to come.

Venue: The Agora, Midview City, no. 18, Sin Ming Lane
Date: Saturday, 22nd August
Time: 1pm to 5pm, registration begins at 12pm, doors will close at 12.55pm
Enquiries: [email protected]

This event is open to everyone.

Pre-registration is required due to limited seating capacity at the venue. Pre-registration begins 20th July. Please check back here.

Programme

1pm: Opening Statement by WP Youth Wing President Daniel Goh
1.10pm: Session 1 – Super Urban Singapore (VISION)
2pm: Session 2 – Community & Heritage (OWNERSHIP)
2.50pm: Tea Break Session and Art Competition Voting
3.20pm: Session 3 – Participating in Our Identity (PARTICIPATION)
4.20pm: Summation and Q&A
4.40pm: Closing Remarks

Information about the panellists and their presentation titles will be made available closer to the date

Session Abstracts

Super Urban Singapore

Several major developments that are being planned for the next few decades will transform Singapore’s cityscape. Paya Lebar Airbase and Keppel Port will be relocated, opening up prime land for redevelopment. The current government projects the population will hit 6.9 million in 2030 and is planning to further build up Singapore to accommodate the influx of migrants. By 2065, the 99-year lease clock would be ticking for many HDB estates, where over 80 per cent of Singapore live. The extensive redevelopment of our old heartland regions beckons, as is already happening in old estates such as Queenstown. Would we see the island dominated by 50-storey HDB flats with sky gardens to match the towering skyscrapers of the downtown district? Would most of us live, work, love and shop underground, turning street-front living into a luxury good? What are the environmental, social, cultural and political implications? What should we do to co-create our vision of a super-urban Singapore?

Community and Heritage
We frequently use the term “community” in our public debates to refer to stakeholders in policy and political matters. The government regularly calls upon communities to act on a social problem or for the government to act on, and sometimes both. However, are communities empowered to act or by the government’s action? What forms a community and how can a community be empowered with ownership to realise its social aims and aspirations? SG50 has seen an outpouring of commemoration of Singapore’s heritage, which is seen as intimately connected to communities. The Botanic Gardens was recently inscribed as our first UNESCO world heritage site, a place of significant combined natural-cultural heritage. This island that we call home has more cultural capital than we realise. But are we able to go beyond nostalgia and buildings to value cultural traditions and values as our living heritage and use these cultural assets to foster community ownership as we head to SG100?

Participating in Our Identity
National identity is represented in the culture, language, traditions, history and politics of the people. It is the sense of the nation as a whole, a description and a proposition expressing a strong sense of belonging and belief amongst the people. Our Singaporean identity has developed strong roots over the past fifty years and continues to evolve. What are the main features of our identity and what foreseeable evolution of our identity in the next fifty years can we expect and should embrace? What challenges to our identity do we face and are there gaps we need to fill? One key foundation for national identities around the world is political culture—the values, institutions and practices associated with governance to keep the country running and secure. Is our political culture solid and stable enough to support our identity? How are we, as citizens, going to participate in the political process and shape our identity?

Source: http://wpyouth.sg/sg100

July 11, 2015
Andrew Loh: Are Actions On AHPETC Really Not Political?

If you haven’t been following the AHPETC vs MND court case, it is like this, in a nutshell:

MND wanted to appoint an independent accountant to oversee AHPETC’s spending of S&C grants. MND laid out some terms. AHPETC agreed to all the terms, except one – that PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) not be the accountant, which is what the MND wants.

AHPETC explained that this is because PwC was also the auditor engaged by the AGO to go through AHPETC’s account during the AGO audit.

A potential for bias, AHPETC said. This is indeed a reasonable concern. AHPETC suggested having a retired judge or a senior counsel appoint the independent accountant instead.

AHPETC made all these suggestions in a letter to the MND on 29 April.

But MND refused, and preferred to take AHPETC to court.

I think you can judge for yourself if all this is not political and a waste of everyone’s time.

Source: Andrew Loh

May 6, 2015
MND Legal Counsel: AHPETC ‘Technically Insolvent’

The Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council (AHPETC) is “technically insolvent” and its chairman Sylvia Lim had been “economical with the truth” when she said in Parliament in February that the town council has been making transfers to its sinking fund for the 2014 financial year.

These were the charges levelled today (May 5) by the Ministry of National Development’s (MND) legal counsel — and were unchallenged by AHPETC — during the second and final day of a hearing on the ministry’s application to the courts to appoint independent accountants to safeguard government grants to the town council.

AHPETC had not made payments to the sinking fund for two quarters of FY2014, even though these were “mandatory obligations”, as the Attorney-General’s Chambers deputy chief counsel for litigation Aurill Kam, who is representing the MND, put it.

The court had heard that AHPETC’s income from service and conservancy charges (S&CC) was insufficient for it to make the quarterly sinking fund transfers. If the town council had made the transfers as required, it would not have enough money, Ms Kam noted. “From that point of view, it would not be an overstatement to say that (AHPETC) is technically insolvent,” she said.

The MND has withheld the service and conservancy charges (S&CC) grants to AHPETC for financial years 2014 and 2015. Its application was meant to safeguard fresh grants disbursed, following a report in February by the Auditor-General’s Office (AGO), which found major lapses in AHPETC’s financial management, governance and compliance with the Town Councils Act.

“There is a suggestion that (MND’s application) is unprecedented. We submit that the adverse findings in the AGO report is unprecedented. The conduct of the defendant is unprecedented. Their response to calls to do the responsible thing is unprecedented,” Ms Kam said.

She added: “We say that unless these independent accountants are appointed, no serious steps will be taken to credibly review whether there has been any wrongful payment, breach of duty or unlawful conduct.”

Referring to Ms Lim’s comments in Parliament, Ms Kam said: “The reality was that at that time, the January 2015 transfer had already been missed. This wrong impression was reinforced when the defendant informed this court on March 27 this year, that it did not need fresh S&CC grants urgently, and could do without the funds for the next three months.”

AHPETC lawyer Peter Cuthbert Low had argued on Monday that the courts do not have the power to assign independent accountants to co-sign payments a town council makes using government grants, and that the Town Councils Act was intended to give elected Members of Parliament and town councillors full autonomy in managing town council funds — and to be accountable only to their residents.

MND had proposed that the court appoint Mr Ong Chao Choon and Mr Chan Kheng Tek from accounting firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), to be the independent accountants, or any other people the court deems fit and proper.

Today, Mr Low objected to the ministry’s nomination of the two individuals because PwC was involved in the AGO report. “So my client’s position is that there is a suspicion of bias,” said Mr Low. “We are not saying that… they will be biased, but because they came from the same auditing firm and PwC was the firm which was engaged.”

He added: “They need not come with preconceived notion, but as long as there is a perception…” Instead, the town council proposed that a “neutral” third party such as a retired judge or a Senior Counsel should nominate the independent accountants.

To address weaknesses in its accounting practices, AHPETC has hired Audit Alliance as its auditors and sole-proprietorship Business Assurance as its financial consultant. Lawyer Terrence Tan, who is also representing AHPETC, said the town council is on track to submit its overdue accounts for the FY2013/2014.

Judgement was reserved. After the hearing, Ms Lim told reporters that the town council looks forward to a fair outcome.

Source: www.todayonline.com

May 6, 2015