Serious Sinkie Family of 8 Surviving on $500 a Month .... Guess the R&@$ ?

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Family of 8 living on $500/month with no water, $5 Pay U and limited transport fare

Post Published: 04 August 2017
Author: admin
Found in section: Latest Articles


Visited a needy family at Marine Terrace yesterday – I was fascinated by the beautiful sea view on top of the block though it houses three rental blocks for Singapore’s poorest. About 20 metres away are another two more rental units.

The five rental blocks for the poor are surrounded by our high-rise HDB flats with a 3-room unit selling easily at $380,000 minimum. But these poor families pay rent of between $50 to $300 each depending on the combined income of the family members.

There is a narrow common corridor leading to the unit and there is little hint of any poverty outside as its sparkling clean and like I mentioned earlier there is also the beautiful sea view.

A PayU meter – sign of a family in poverty – caught my attention as it hung on the left side of the main door leading into the cosy living room. A PayU meter is used by the needy so that they will control their electrical usage – it can only be topped up at the SingPost using a pre-set key.

The meter reads $5.90 so the family probably can use it to power their electrical household consumption till Saturday at the most as the daily usage is about $2 for the powering of lights, fan, fridge and other simple electrical appliances. I gave them about $50 to top up the Pay U before leaving.

They confided in me that there are periods whereby they live without any electricity as they simply have no cash to do the top-up – the longest they have to live with candlelight at night is close to a month!

Tears welled up when they say that as I remembered my own experience with darkness when my parents could not pay the SP bills on time when I was still in primary school. We light candles too to pass through the bleak nights and its no fun.

Furniture for the family of 8 is mostly hand-me-down and a nice cosy creamy sofa took up a main corner of the living room. A large plasma TV – another hand-me-down from the nearby FSC is the family’s regular entertainment time-buster. Canned food and parcels of rice filled up a large corner in the kitchen – donations from the FSC and some charity groups.

I met up with the wife whose four kids are at home with one taking the crucial PSLE this year. One other boy will join the schooling troll next year and the last one is a young toddler of four years old.

The husband later join us and says he has kidney pain after falling from a gondola cleaning job many years ago but strangely he refuses any medical treatment procedure even though many are keen to foot for the expenses.

He told me he fears knowing the truth if anything is wrong with his kidney though he cycles regularly to improve his health condition. He can only make do with a part-time cleaner job paying $500/month so naturally alot of the bills go unpaid for months…

They show me the reduced water flow tap which they have endure for close to almost 8 months since December last year. They could only rinse or wash their body after collecting water in big pails and it was tough seeing how they could live like this for so long.

These are really tough people I thought. Fancy living with a reduced water flow for the past 8 months!

You can’t bathe properly, brush your teeth nor clean the house…you have to handwash your clothes as there is not enough water for the washing machine to work.

But that’s not the worse of their problem. The wife is more concerned with the rental default of 2 months – each month the rent payable to HDB is $160 and they are fearing the worst that one day they have to live outside at the park or beach when their rental default accumulates over time.

The rental default is their biggest fear – much more than the reduced water flow or the blackout – not having a roof for the family will be devastating and the 2-month rental default is disturbing them.

They told me that once they received the GST $300 credit recently, the first thing they paid is the HDB rental default followed by repayment to some loans from friends.

The $300 GST credit each of them received was used up within a flash due to the huge amount of backlog bills they have to repay.

In fact, the meagre $500 monthly salary is usually used up within a week or sometimes less as truly its not alot of money for a family of eight to spend on.

The more shocking piece of news came when the family confided that sometimes the children have to walk to school at Tg Katong and they have to wake up at 5am to start the arduous one-hour journey to school by foot in the dark due to a lack of transport fare. Sometimes, Mr Rosli the father would send them to school in his bicycle but the three just couldn’t fit in the small bicycle and he has to ferry them in two trips.

The school bus costs $85/month and sending the three kids via this channel is simply not an option. Fortunately, another school-going child studies in a nearby school within a short walking distance.

The worst nightmare came when they could not go to school sometimes due to the tiring long walking distance and they will simply skip school altogether for the day – this happens almost weekly.

The teacher and vice-principal of the school dropped by to investigate but strangely only one out of three children studying in the same primary school receives the school’s pocket fund of $50/month. The other two were rejected perhaps due to a 24-month limit imposed on the fund’s dispersal.

The kids often have to go through recess without any food and of course a Macdonald meal is something like a luxury for them.

Weekend is usually a family gathering at home watching a TV programme or walks at the East Coast Park nearby – also a regular feature for the family.

As we went through all the bills together – which amounted to more than $1500 in total – the family seems to be resilient and resigned to living in such dire straits. Many others may have simply broke down long time ago but yet I can see the worry and strain on their faces as they live from hand to mouth not for months but many years.

Another worrying point is how can our meritocratic system ensures that the kids do not stay trapped in such a porous poverty cycle and will they ever get out of it given the situation they are in right now?

We have advocated all along that only by having a good education can one forge ahead but yet this family seems to have miss the boat with regular absenteeism from classes and lessons. They have precious little to hang on to and their future does not look bright.

One puzzling fact out of the 2-hour visit is also the denial of basic human necessities eg water, electricity and housing if you don’t pay up on time for them.

After 3 to 5 months of continuous default, Singapore Power will come up to your home and reduce the water flow to a trickle till you pay at least half of the bill before they will open up the normal water flow.

If you can’t pay up the electrical bill, they will instal a Pay U power meter so your electricity will be curtailed once you have no money to top up.

If you don’t have money to pay your rent, HDB will send threatening letters to foreclose your house so you fear the day you will end up homeless and need to live in the park or beach with your family members.

Someone did a quote at a Hong Lim Park event years ago…it read “Our country is so rich but the people are very poor”.

Its so apt and as for Mr Rosli’s family my heart goes out to them and God knows how many of such families we have right now…they are simply living from hand to mouth.

Pity the kids…

Written by: Gilbert Goh

Editor’s note: If you wish to help the family, please let us know. No amount is too small if its given out of a heart of love…the immediate need is to sponsor the kids’ educational usage so they can have some cash to fall back on monthly. Its $50/month and for a year commitment. The Rosli family has four school-going kids.


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