Under The Angsana Tree: ESM Goh: "Who are going to clean the tables?"

Update 21 Apr 2020

What is Ho Ching's Salary then? If $99m is FALSE then what is the Truth?.....

Transcript of Remarks by ESM Goh Chok Tong During the Southeast CDC District Conference on 2nd August 2018

Transcript of Remarks by ESM Goh Chok Tong

Elderly folk clearing dishes at Kopitiam Vivocity

Old uncle toiling hard at food court

I was amazed by how fast my elderly colleagues were doing their work, but there was no denying how tired it left them as well

Who Cleans Your Singapore? - A Day in the Life of a Hawker Cleaner

Video of elderly cleaner at food court raises questions again

Cleaner at Vivo City Kopitiam

We have all seen them – the elderly folks who toil away at our food centres such as hawker centres, coffeeshops and food courts, cleaning tables, collecting dishes and sweeping floors. They have become such a ubiquitous feature that we hardly notice them anymore.

But even so, sometimes certain situations we witness still raise questions about our society and how we treat these folks.

At about 10pm on Saturday night, Ms Jenny Quek was at the Kopitiam food court at Vivo City. The unusual thing about what she witnessed was the number of tables which were littered with used and uncollected dishes - and that there was only one elderly cleaner toiling away trying to do her best to clear the tables. Ms Quek took a video and posted it online:

“It was rather depressing to see only one cleaner at the section where I was seated,” Ms Quek told The Online Citizen (TOC). “I looked around hoping to see another helper but there was none.”

read more

The elderly should not work for one simple reason because they are human like us

It was an early morning and I was at the food court having quite a heavy breakfast. I sat there eating away when a commotion started at a nearby table involving the cleaners. Being the curious guy I am, I turned and looked. It turned out to be just a normal conversation happening between the elderly who happened to be the cleaners. Normally, I would shrug it off as a common occurrence as a majority of cleaners and helpers in Singapore are from the older generation, however, I continued to observe them. One of them is an elderly man which I am guessing is about 65 years old, he moved from table to table slowly clearing plates and wiping tables. Then, I realised that I am looking at more than just a normal cleaner but instead, an aged human being with a life of his own. If I had shrugged my curiosity off, I would not have been able to look past the exterior of this elderly man as a cleaner to discover something more. That elderly man is not a cleaner. He might be a husband, a father, a grandfather and a man who had worked hard to provide for his family. This goes the same for the other elderly cleaners and helpers out there. They are more than just that. All of them had worked hard for decades. So I began to wonder is it not the time for them to retire and enjoy their golden age?

For an elderly man who had worked hard during his younger years to still be working past his retirement age just to survive on a daily basis is inhumane. It is even more so when the government encourages it. You might say that working is a choice made by the elderly themselves and no one can force them to but have you ever thought that working might be the better of two evils: working to have food versus being hungry?

It is okay if the elderly enjoy working casually but it is inhumane if an elderly has to work just because he is unable to have food on his table on a daily basis. I believe that it should be a right for retirees to spend the rest of their golden years doing whatever they like free of responsibilities. We are so used to the sight of elderly working that it did not bother us anymore. It should not be accepted as normal that our elderly have to go out to work and that mindset needs to be changed.

read more

True Story: A Day In The Life Of An Aged Hawker Centre Cleaner In Singapore

Who cleans your Singapore?

If you’re at all familiar with hawker centres in Singapore, you would’ve noticed that the hawker cleaners are mostly elderly folk, the oldest of whom are already hunched, frail-looking hands with crumpled skin labouring to clean up after each patron.

For many of these unsung heroes, their long and arduous work hours could be made much easier with a little more consideration on our parts as diners.

And there’s much that we can learn from them too. For 67-year-old Madam Tan, a simple greeting can brighten up her day. She shares with optimism, “If you can live happily and embrace each day as it comes, that’s what’s most important.”

read more

Singapore's 'silver tsunami': how the city-state depends on its elderly workforce

In 2015, 12% of Singapore’s workforce was over 60 – with a concentration of elderly workers in low-wage work. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

In Singapore, where life expectancy is soaring, the elderly are encouraged to exchange retirement for arduous jobs that often pay badly – yet many of its citizens, including Wong Kuan Ying, are only too keen to oblige.

At first glance, Wong Kuan Ying looks like a typical Singaporean boss, with her smart, full-length trousers and impeccable posture, even at the end of a nine-hour shift. Her colleagues in Singapore’s West Coast Market Square food court are dressed more casually, in shorts and T-shirts. Some of them look past the working age: you avert your eyes from their tired knees; they avert their eyes when you thank them. Kuan Ying tells me she is 72 but she doesn’t look it. Each day when she gets home, however, she has to unscrew her right leg from below the knee. Acute diabetes has left her missing the lower part of one leg, and all the toes from her other foot.

Some days, she says, the prosthesis feels like a hard, heavy stone biting into the soft wrinkled folds of her stump. Even on the days it fits well, it is a relief to take it off and let her skin breathe. “I am much better now,” she says. “In the early days, I would hold this stump and cry.” Kuan Ying’s job could have easily have gone to a younger, stronger person – or a foreign worker willing to work for less. But the Singaporean government is actively pushing its elderly to continue working.

read more

Why do elderly persons work as cleaners in Singapore?

From third world to first world. That’s the simple answer.

Singapore jumped from a third world country to a first world country within a single generation. Many of the old folks were from then. They did not have a proper education, and were stuck in simple blue collar jobs which did not pay CPF (Central Provident Fund, the local 401k). I know because they represented a large number of my immediate family.

Here we are now. A first world country. With first world cost. No one begrudges the achievements, but this group (with the “hallowed” title of Pioneer Generation) now finds themselves in an alien place. Some of them want to still feel relevant, some just need money to get by.

read more

Why do so many elderly Singaporeans work daily wage jobs like cleaning up at food courts?

By that I mean jobs like cleaning up at fast food restaurants, janitors and a host of other such jobs. I've been here for a couple years and this is something that really makes me uncomfortable.

I come from a generally poor country as well but don't see such a trend there. One explanantion given to me was that in SG, young people don't want to do 'menial' jobs, so the elderly have to do it.

What about their children? Anyone who takes care of them? Do young people not want to do such jobs? Does the government provide any benefits? Could they? Would love to get your views on this. Thanks!

read more

People in China & Taiwan discussing S’pore’s working old in Chinese the past few years

Which is why, since 2016, a blog entry written in Chinese about Singapore’s working old has been making its way around the Mandarin-speaking parts of the world, namely in Taiwan and China.

It is about the jarring reality of seeing old people working as odd job labourers in food centres here, cleaning tables and clearing trash, in a city-state that is supposedly luxuriating in unfathomable amounts of good fortune.

The piece that attempts to explain Singapore is not always accurate, but sweeping enough to be believable.

read more

Why are there so many old people working in hawker centers in Singapore? I noticed some old people cleaning tables who are having a hard time walking

In Singapore, there is a saying called ‘Money No Enough’, popularized by a locally-made movie by a Singaporean director. This the crux of the predicament faced by the poorer, older folks in Singapore.

The various answers given here by other contributors brilliantly summarized the gist of the issue. But not all is damned and doomed. The government does realize this societal issue and hence, governmental aids are being dished out in the form of various monetary handouts and subsidies to ease the situation. For such lower income folks, young and old alike based on certain criteria, they qualify for quarterly monetary handouts credited directly to their bank accounts, such as the Silver Support Scheme, etc. As for subsidies, for rental and small HDB flats, they get subsidies in rents, purchase prices and even utility bills. Very worth mentioning is the medical subsidies whereby consultation fess are heavily subsidized together with cheap medications [sometimes just for a few cents/dollars instead of tens].

So, back to the topic of old people working at hawker centres, it is either they are in need of more money for various reasons [that can include survival, hand-to-mouth situations or simply wanting a better life-style or for mon-monetary reasons [such as maintaining their humanistic ego and pride of being ‘useful’ or ‘usefully employed’, keeping health at bay, from deteriorating by staying at home or simply the boredom of staring at 4 walls or the TV for the rest of their lives. So yeah, I believe given a choice, such old cleaners who ‘are having a hard time walking’ would rather not work if they are certain they are in no financial need for the rest of their lives. Money still No Enough Mah! [Singlish here]

read more

Aging, but Still Working, in Singapore

The food courts in the basements of shopping malls and the ubiquitous “hawker centers,” covered markets where scores of stall-holders sell cooked food, are a mainstay of eating out in Singapore. At one of my regular lunch spots, I watch the cleaners diligently tidy away the trays. They scrape leftovers into bins and wipe the tables and floors with disinfectant.

They perform these unskilled, repetitive tasks with often surprising enthusiasm. What is striking is, first, that the workers are local Singaporeans, not the foreign-born recent immigrants one might otherwise expect to do such work in a wealthy country like Singapore. More important, they are frequently of, or even beyond, retirement age.

The cleaning staffs have names, of course, but whenever I speak to them, I address them as “Auntie” or “Uncle” — the honorific terms used here when one is speaking to someone of an older generation.

read more

Goh Chok Tong:If Singaporean elderly don't clean tables,who are going to clean table?

Goh Chok Tong’s speech defending high ministerial pay and defence budget at grassroots event

ESM Goh: I want to ask you, first of all, if the old lady and old men do not clean the tables, who are going to clean the tables?

Abdul Aziz: We have maybe youngsters or students who want to earn.

(ESM Goh turns to young people in the audience: “Do any of you want to stop education to clean tables? Any of you? Please put up your hands.”)

ESM Goh: This is a very populist kind of question, which will get you votes and make you President of Singapore! So it is a serious populist question which I want to debunk. Who is going to clean the table for you? Students won’t do it. Shall we have foreign workers to clean the tables?

read more

Why are there so many elderly people still working Singapore?

The fact that some answer the question by citing and acknowledging what the government said about some minorities shows you how successful half truths perpetuated by people in power can be.

Of course some elderly works, I know of many retirees that work even though they don't need money. Some work as freelance consultants, some work as taxi drivers, some work as volunteers etc etc. Some work for money, some work because they want to be social, some work because they want to kill time, some work because they want to keep fit, physically and mentally. There are myriad of reasons why people choose to work, elderly or not. The devil is in the details and that details is in the nature of work. Someone who is working for money is beholden by the work. They turn up everyday, they don't go on vacation, they look forward to payday, they tolerate negative work environment, they are fearful of losing their job. When you ask them why are they working, they will tell you everything except those reasons above because they like every unhappy beholden young employee would not acknowledge their less than desirable predicament.

So if you skim the surface, you think all is pretty. But when you go deep and explore why, you realise that plenty who gave some other higher order answers are really working because the social security/pension system did not provide sufficient cover for a large group of elderly who were informally employed and had little or no savings to sustain their daily livinghood.

read more

Elderly cleaner found dead with belt around his neck at Changi Airport T1

A 60-year-old cleaner was found dead at the staircase landing between the 3rd and 4th floors of the Changi Airport Terminal 1 carpark on Tuesday (27 Feb).

According to the Chinese daily, the cleaner was found with a belt around his neck, with the ends of the belt secured to the staircase railing. Cut marks reportedly covered the man’s neck as blood spatters surrounded the floor around him.

The cleaner’s death is believed to be a suicide, at this point. Police investigations are ongoing.

read more

Elderly female cleaner punched in foodcourt

She had told the foodcourt patron not to leave the used trays on the floor. For that, 72-year-old cleaner Lim Geok Kim got a volley of vulgarities from the woman and a punch in the face. The incident took place at the Kopitiam outlet at Tampines Mall on Sunday afternoon and left the elderly cleaner with a cut near her left eyebrow. One of her colleagues, Madam Poh Beng Chu, 52, saw the attack and told The New Paper that the patron had earlier called for the cleaners to clear her table. But they could not attend to her as there were many patrons and it was a busy day, she said. "She (the patron) then impatiently put the used trays on the ground. Madam Lim went to tell her not to do that, as we would get scolded by our manager," said Madam Poh.

According to her, the woman, whom they described as big and plump, then unexpectedly started scolding Madam Lim in English, calling her "stupid" and using vulgarities. Madam Lim walked towards the tray return station and told the other staff about it. The woman, who was with a man and another woman, allegedly became even more aggressive and stomped after her from her table about 10m away. She allegedly continued to hurl abuse at Madam Lim and then suddenly threw a punch at the elderly cleaner, said Madam Poh. Madam Lim suffered a small cut near her left eyebrow and it bled.

More than 10 patrons rushed to split the two up and held the female patron back, while Madam Lim was escorted to the office to get her wound treated. Someone then called the police, who arrived and spoke to the parties involved. A police spokesman confirmed that they received a call at 2.05pm. The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) said it sent an ambulance to the scene and took one woman with bruises and a small cut on her forehead to Changi General Hospital.

read more

US Media Applauds Singapore For Letting Our Elderly People Work As A Way To Deal With Ageing Population

Singapore Deals With Ageing Population By Making Them Work

Many people have felt disturbed by the sight of elderly people working in Singapore instead of spending their golden years at home with their families.

But while Singaporeans may see this as an embarrassment, those from another country see this in a totally different way — that Singapore is actually dealing with an ageing population in a good way — by putting the elderly to work and making them still-productive members of our workforce.

2 years ago, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke on Singapore’s ageing population at a lecture hosted by the Singapore Management University. This is part of what Today reported him saying:"

Based on trends, if we project into 2050, even with immigration, the population pyramid will be inverted… We are going to be growing old faster than any society in the world."

read more

27/08/2018

ESM Goh: "Who are going to clean the tables?"