by Yashaswini Arvind Rao, AWARE intern

From 28 February to 6 March 2019, a team of interns from AWARE visited Parliament to follow the 2019 Committee of Supply (CoS) debates.

The CoS debates occur after the National Budget is announced. They comprise an examination into each ministry’s plans, during which individual Members of Parliament may request to speak on issues relating to each ministry.

Below, we highlight three areas of interest to AWARE’s work:

Population strategy: supporting families and raising total fertility rate (TFR)

The week kicked off with a discussion about Singapore’s demographic problem, with several Members of Parliament (MP) expressing concerns about the persistently low fertility rates. As AWARE has argued over the years, to address TFR, a gender lens needs to be applied to all areas of policy. Gender equality should be prioritised so that the challenges of fertility and caregiving are not placed primarily on women. To that end, we were glad to hear suggestions from MPs to make workplaces more family-friendly, legislate flexible working arrangements, and extend childcare and parental leave, which would allow workers to better balance work and care. It was disappointing, however, that the ministry’s response had no mention of gender inequality, and displayed no urgency to address it as the driving force of low TFR.

Women, work and care

MPs raised concerns about the ability of self-employed persons, caregivers and homemakers to ensure their own retirement adequacy, as they do not contribute to CPF and would have to rely on private savings for retirement. In particular, NMP Walter Theseira noted how women have no statutory entitlements to retirement assets in divorce or widowhood, and asked how the government could ensure that CPF becomes the basic retirement system for these groups.

MPs also had recommendations on how to better support caregivers to younger children and to older people.

NMP Anthea Ong and MP Louis Ng both called for childcare subsidies to be made more accessible to low-income families—for example, by allowing all parents who earn less than $2,500 or a per capita income of less than $650 to have access to subsidised childcare for free, regardless of the mother’s working status. In our own research, we found that low-income mothers faced multiple hurdles in acquiring documented proof for childcare subsidies—a point raised by NMP Ong in her speech. In response, MSF announced that ECDA would be providing more subsidies to non-working mothers who are looking for work, or who are unable to work because they are caring for a younger child.

During the Ministry of Health’s COS session, MP Tin Pei Ling and MP Charles Chong highlighted the situation of caregivers to older persons. Two points were raised: negotiating flexible working hours to alleviate caregivers’ burdens, and looking after the financial needs of caregivers. MP Tin hoped that the action plan for caregivers could be implemented as soon as possible to alleviate their burdens.

More support for marginalised families: single parents and transnational families

We were encouraged by calls for more equal treatment of families, regardless of nationality and parents’ marital status.

On greater support for single parents, MP Louis Ng requested that rental housing be made available to lower-income, single unwed parents under the age of 35. He described how the case-by-case basis by which these parents are offered housing is bound by strict rules, such as having to earn a median household income of only $600, while the applicant may not be receiving enough family support. This, he argued, causes unnecessary stress.

In response, MND said that applicants have other options if they were earning above the income ceiling, and that taking a case-by-case approach allows the government to holistically assess the applicants’ situations.

MP Ng also repeated his call to waive the mutual consent requirement for divorcees when shared care and control of a child is awarded by the courts, while MP Cheryl Chan asked to enhance social mobility of those living in rental flats wanting to own their own homes—identifying that most of those who lived in rental flats are single mothers and the elderly.

One change we were heartened to see was the announcement that divorcing parties may start applying for a new HDB flat if they have obtained an interim judgment of divorce and settled ancillary matters, instead of having to wait until they obtain the final judgment of divorce. This shortens the time it takes to access a new home.

Other recommendations included calls to extend to single parents the Baby Bonus cash gift and tax reliefs currently available to married parents and mothers.

With a rising number of transnational families, concerns were raised about how those with foreign stepchildren may be disadvantaged. MP Png Eng Huat pointed to the higher school fees and lower subsidies these families receive, compared to those with Singaporean children. On the other hand, MP Lily Neo hoped for greater focus on Singaporean children despite their parents’ nationalities or the structure of their family units.