Just a clarification though –

“…yet others are part of the system of generational poverty in which inadequate life skills are handed down from one generation to the next, resulting in an entire culture of people who do not know how to take advantage of the educational, cultural or employment advantages available to them.”

This statement takes a very ‘culture of poverty’ perspective. This perspective states that the problem of the poor is that they do not have the correct culture to be not-poor ie their situation has trained them to be lazy, shoddy, not opportunistic etc. While that is probably true for some poor people, I’d also like to point out my experience that other poor people cannot ‘take advantage of the … advantages available to them’ not because they have some poverty-culture character flaw but because they don’t have the resources to take advantages of the ‘advantages’.

Let me give an example:

I know a few people who hold education as vitally important, as it will help their kids to get out of the poverty situation they find themselves in. And so, these parents would do their best to send their kids to school. However, because – say, they had their hdb flat repossessed because of loans and so were forced to move into a open-market rented 500 dollar master bedroom far away from their kids school, when their household income is 700 dollars – they suddenly find it very difficult to pay the 26 dollar concession pass for their kid to go to school. Maybe one or two crisises happen during this time whereupon the family runs totally out of money (and this of course after they’ve already tried not too and found that they had to borrow money from friends) and so the kid ends up not going to school for a few days when his/her ez-link runs out. Then think about the teacher’s possible response – ‘what? you say you ponned school because your parents never gave you ez-link money? That is such a ridiculous excuse!’. And after several such incidents, the student becomes labelled as a ‘bad student’ and so does not do wonderfully in exams etc.

Anyway, my point is that blaming the poor’s inability to get out of poverty because of their own lack of motivation kind of cheapens the reality of their situation – that they have to work harder and against more constraints than we middle class people do to achieve the same result. So when we glibly say ‘they aren’t motivated’, we ignore that they’d have to be more motivated than the average person to achieve the same result.

Sorry Ravi – I’m not saying that you said the above in your article. I’m just adding to it by venting about this whole culture of poverty thing – it makes it easy and convenient for us to be judgemental.

This has been done for like the past 10+ years. If it works, why is the situation not improving?[/quote]

That is a complex question without easy answers. But one of the key reasons is because a substantial number of people who upgrade and retrain, often do not possess the accompanying mind-shift. They basically go back to the same pattern of living, work patterns, choices of life, etc. Another important factor is many who upgrade and retrain are not paid a living wage.

This has been done for like the past 10+ years. If it works, why is the situation not improving?

The MP’s should take a torch light and walk around the neighbourhood to really feel and understand what is going on after the lights go off. Please have a reality check after dark.

They should not come out every five years like vampires in hybernation to smile, shake hands and walk around with other peoples babies. (Sorry side tracked)

Once they identify the people that need assistance, they should personally see to it that from start to finish, this person has a better means of coping with life as a Singaporean.

They should then keep a case file on the party to render assistance at anytime.

This is how we can ensure we don’t have homeless people looking for food and tin cans in the rubbish bin.

Please note, this is just a suggestion I am sure the MP can do a better job with the full disposal of resources at his or her hand.

The MP can then produce stats with valid case studies for consolidation to understand the bigger picture of the lower income.