The CPF LIFE scheme, which will start in 2013, will provide qualified Singaporeans with payout at least $350 per month for those with full Minimum Sum in their Retirement Account.
I would like the Minister to consider helping elderly Singaporeans who do not have much in their CPF and are not covered by CPF Life.
These Singaporeans have less than the minimum sum at the draw down age. As the rules require whatever small savings they have to be drawn over 20 years, many of them will draw down less than what a PA recipient will receive of $360 per month.
Take for example the case of Mdm A, an elderly Singaporean aged 70 years old with less than $24,000 left in her CPF savings and living alone in a rented flat. Currently, she is drawing down less than $300 a month from her CPF to survive. She worries when and where her next meal will come from every month.
The PA allowance is a useful reference point as the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports says it is ‘calibrated to provide for the basic living needs of PA recipients.’ If the Government thinks that $360 is what a PA recipient needs for basic living a month, it cannot expect an elderly Singaporean like Mdm A to subsist on just $300?
I would like to ask the Minister to seriously consider allowing elderly Singaporeans who do not qualify for CPF LIFE and PA to draw down on their CPF savings an amount equivalent to the PA allowance every month. We should not make these people worry about how to make ends meet every day in their old age.
I am not asking the Government to fund the basic living needs of these elderly Singaporeans. I am only asking the Government to allow these people to draw down on their OWN CPF savings an amount that can sustain their basic living needs as determined by the PA allowance.
The Government may worry that these elderly Singaporeans will exhaust their CPF savings in less than 20 years. Well, if these elderly Singaporeans outlive their CPF Savings, they can join the PA scheme after that. After all the PA scheme is designed for ‘Singaporeans who are unable to work owing to old age, illness or disability to get government support’.
(Note: this speech was delivered in Parliament on 13 Feb 2009.)
