PM Lee Hsien Loong at the Comcare Appreciation Lunch 2010

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports,
Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, Minister of State (MCYS) and Chairperson of the ComCare Supervisory Committee,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,

I am delighted to join you today for the 5th Anniversary of the Community Care and Endowment Fund or ComCare. After lunch, you will be meeting to discuss social security issues and I hope that from your discussions, you will come up with more good ideas to help us to do this task better.

Every society has to take care of its aged, its disabled, its less fortunate and the lower skilled. We too have them among us and we too have a duty and a responsibility to take care of these weaker members of our society. Our society should be known not only for how far our talented can go but also for how we support one another and especially those who need more help. Over the past decade, stresses and strains internationally and within our society have impinged upon us. We have seen globalization go further than ever before. Overall a great plus for Singapore, but at the same time it is putting pressure on our low-wage workers and widening the income gap. We are seeing our population ageing and therefore a growing need for care services and also a worsening of our dependency ratio - fewer working people to take care of each elderly, retired and ill person. We are seeing some dysfunctional families. It is adding to the financial hardship which these families feel because once a family quarrels, splits up, all their financial problems multiply. It risks perpetuating their poverty and their problems into the next generation. Therefore, we have worked hard and progressively enhanced our social safety net to address these concerns. We have improved the public assistance scheme. We have built up Medifund, introduced Workfare and ComCare and we will continue to seek ways to improve our system, learning from the experiences, positive and negative, of other countries.

The West invented the welfare state and they saw this as they progressed in this path as a high water mark of civilisation -- generous unemployment benefits, high social payments and state pensions and heavy taxation to fund them. Not all countries went along exactly the same path. If you look at America and Europe, they have different models. In America, somewhat less welfare and greater emphasis on self-reliance. In many countries in Western Europe, a very comprehensive welfare state. You can see the result of these different approaches and the way the two societies and two economies feel. America has a more dynamic and competitive economy with fiercer competition. Europe has more generous benefits, more solidarity, not so strong competitiveness but the Europeans believe that they have made a rational choice, a rational tradeoff. In return for less growth, they enjoy more welfare, more solidarity and they felt that they were the happier for their circumstances. But it was not entirely as happy as that. In fact, Europe was living beyond its means. It took some time for the problems to show up but I think Judgment Day has been brought forward by the financial crisis. After the huge hole in their budgets because of the rescue of the banks over the last couple of years, the Western Europeans have woken up to a very serious problem and they have been forced to make very tough choices.

The UK has cut back on government spending by one-quarter. Their university fees have gone up by three times, which we have never done even in Singapore. In France, the state pension age is going up by two years to 65 and probably will have to go further. But even two years has caused riots and demonstrations. Portugal has applied a painful austerity budget and they are hoping that they are now safe, but that is yet to be seen. Ireland, having had two very difficult years, has had to go further, accept a bailout from the IMF and Europe and, amongst other drastic measures, has had to lower its minimum wage and it also has had demonstrations on the streets. It is not just a matter of making decisions or governments being brave or having political will. These are very painful things affecting the lives of millions of people. Citizens have grown used to these benefits and now to roll back the welfare state, it is going to cause a tremendous upheaval and hence the strikes and demonstrations.

Singapore started with a different approach. We knew from the start that we could not afford what the Europeans were trying to do. No hinterland, lacking in natural resources -- every schoolboy and schoolgirl in Singapore learns the reasons why we have to work hard. We live in Asia, a very different environment from Europe and so we depend on the talent, the energies and the drive of our people and therefore it is vital for us to strengthen our work ethic and do nothing to weaken it. But it does not mean in Singapore, it is everyman for himself, because ours, while it is a meritocratic system, it is also a community helping one another and progressing together. In our own way, as we have developed and grown, we have evolved a comprehensive set of social safety nets with three key elements – keeping people in jobs, saving especially for old age and many helping hands. 

First of all, if we want to help our people, we want to give them good jobs and keep them working productively. So we have grown the economy in order to create good jobs for Singaporeans. We have trained our workers to be able to do these jobs and progressively we have upgraded these workers in order to lift their skills to take on higher jobs. For those who cannot move up, who are still at the bottom end - low-skilled workers, low-wage workers - we give them extra help, especially Workfare, which we have been talking about and try to get people to understand and take advantage of. There are also many other grants and subsidies will help the lower-income Singaporeans in terms of housing, transport, healthcare and education. 

Secondly, we have emphasised helping people to save for their own needs and their old age. The CPF is a major instrument for doing this and another avenue for this is home ownership through the HDB. Nine out of ten Singaporeans own their HDB flats. This is an asset which can help to see Singaporeans through into their old age provided they take good care of it and they do not frivolously sell it off in order to pay off debts.

Thirdly, we have gone in with a strategy of many helping hands. We depend on the family. We want the families to be strong and the family to be the first resort and the first line of support for people who need help. At the same time, beyond the family, we want the community to be one big Singapore family and to come together and help the less fortunate among us. Hence, we promote the spirit of volunteerism and charitable giving and have very strong incentives to do this. Beyond the family and the community, the Government stands there, partnering the community in its efforts, supporting VWOs and community groups, encouraging donations through tax incentives and matching grants and providing a safety net of last resort. It should not be the first place you turn to, but if all our other schemes fail -- and there are many other schemes -- the Government is there to lend a helping hand.

It is a system which has worked well. It has delivered affordable, targeted and effective help. We have avoided a massive welfare bureaucracy and we have built up four pillars of our social security system. The CPF is one. The 3Ms, to provide medical care -- Medisave, MediShield, Medifund – that is the second one. HDB housing is the third and Workfare is the fourth big pillar. And around these four pillars, we have also added ComCare, not as massive as the others but important where it counts to provide a flexible, targeted, community-oriented approach to deal with specific problems or new needs when they arise.

Through ComCare, we pull together the efforts of many different segments of society to help the needy and disadvantaged Singaporeans. We channel the assistance through the CDCs, through the VWOs and through the GROs. Many of you who have been involved in this process are here today and you have helped us to develop innovative ways to help the needy. Because we have had this ComCare scheme as an umbrella under which many different mechanisms can be developed, it has led to a flowering of community ideas. For example, we have one CDC doing an Adopt-A-Rental Block Programme. This is in the South West CDC which is helping vulnerable elderly residents living in rental blocks. The VWOs run mobile clinics and home nursing services for the residents; the ITE students get involved and they install safety gadgets like grab-bars and non-slip mats in their homes; and the neighbouring schools and neighbouring companies befriend the seniors and organize community lunches, concerts, excursions, help to brighten up their lives and help to meet their real needs. There are many other initiatives in the other CDCs, in the other wards, and through these initiatives, multiplied and spread all over Singapore, we bring hope and goodwill to all our citizens.

We have made a lot of progress in the five years since we launched ComCare. As you heard from Mrs Yu-Foo just now, we have spent more than $200 million helping more than 160,000 cases and the Government has progressively topped up the ComCare Fund which has now reached $800 million. It is an endowment fund. From the income, we have money to spend every year. Our objective is to reach $1 billion for the endowment and we will get there before very long. We will continue improving ComCare as well as our social safety nets, but we should always be mindful that welfare schemes start with the best of intentions, but over time they grow, they get bigger, they get more comprehensive and they build up into a taxing burden, because they are easy to implement, easy to expand, hard to trim, impossible to stop. That is the nature. You help once, you say, 'once only', then 'twice only', then they say, 'How can you not give me a hand? I have come to rely on this'. And so we always have to maintain prudence and discipline. The GROs and the VWOs have done a good job of this because they have a feel for who needs their help and who deserves more and who needs a firmer hand and more encouragement to take care of themselves. We should never encourage people to rely on handouts instead of their own efforts.

ComCare, of course, to make this work, depends heavily on the people sector, on the CDCs, the VWOs, the GROs who have worked tirelessly all these years and supervised by the ComCare Supervisory Committee which Mrs Yu-Foo chairs. I would like to commend Mrs Yu-Foo as well as her very hardworking volunteers who include the mayors, the leaders of the VWOs and some of the senior civil servants involved in MCYS and the other ministries. They have helped to keep ComCare focused on this mission. They have grown its programmes and they have ensured that every dollar is well-spent. Thank you very much, the ComCare Council, and thank you for all your efforts.

Let us continue working at this. We will have new ideas, we will build up ComCare, and under this broad umbrella we can continue to do more and more innovative things. If you have a good idea, we will find a way to make it happen. Let us work hard together and build a more compassionate and resilient society. Thank you very much.