Under The Angsana Tree: 'Tissue and Cardboard' Sellers

Ex-GIC chief economist Yeoh Lam Keong talks about SG’s elderly shame: Tissue and Cardboard Sellers at Midnight

Yeoh Lam Keong, former chief economist of GIC, and current adjunct professor at National University of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew School of Policy, weighed in on a rather heavy issue plaguing Singaporeans – the number of elderly homeless or having to sell tissue packets or collect cardboard boxes for a living.

In a Facebook post on Friday, November 9, Yeoh shared the story of an elderly tissue seller. He titled his post, “Singapore’s Elderly Shame : Tissue and Cardboard Sellers at Midnight”.

In his post, he shared the story of Lim, who “would leave her home at 5.30pm each day to sell her tissue papers. It is a cooler time of day. She would only go home close to midnight. She makes about $10 or slightly more daily, just enough for her personal expenses”.

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Lam Keong Yeoh 9 November at 00:01

Singapore’s Elderly Shame : Tissue and Cardboard Sellers at Midnight

The Silver Support Scheme currently pays the elderly poor the miserly sum of around $200 a month

Raising it another $600 would cost an additional $1bn annually or about of 0.2% GDP rising to around 0.6% of GDP by 2050 as our population ages.

The modest fiscal cost that we, unlike the cardboard collector in the real story below, refuse to pay so that seniors like them can have a more dignified retirement.

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Tissue seller at midnight

We were having a late supper at a 24-hour food court in Hougang on Thursday. It was about 11:30pm when an elderly woman approached us. “Want to buy tissue?” she asked in Hokkien. The voice sounded familiar to me. I turned around and indeed it was the same elderly lady whom I have seen in other parts of Hougang at other times, peddling her tissue packs at the neighbourhood coffeeshops.

She didn’t wait for a reply. “2 packets for S$1.20,” she said in the local dialect, Hokkien, as she laid the 2 tissue packs on the table. I reached into my wallet and gave her a S$2 note. “You are working late,” I said to her, as she took the money and place it in her purse. “I just came out of the hospital,” she replied. “The other day I fainted and fell. They called an ambulance and sent me to the hospital.”

She had been doing one of her rounds at the coffeeshops when it happened, three weeks ago. “Tan Tock Seng Hospital,” she offered. “I had to stay there for three weeks and was only discharged three days ago.”

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Plight Of The Tissue Peddlers

Old Lady Selling Tissue Paper

I had earlier posted about the PRC man begging (updates below). Curiously, the day after, I met an old lady selling tissue paper outside POMO. I spoke to her at length. She was reluctant to share her personal info but I managed to glean out some. She was going to turn 82 soon. She claimed that both her children didn't give her much hence her need to come out to sell things. She sounded scared to share details even after I assured her of our help because she seemed fearful of her daughter who she claimed had locked her out before. She later said that she was in not too bad a state and only came out to sell occasionally. She also added that she was selling to help someone.

She seemed in good condition and I couldn't determine if she was in financial distress...but at 82 and needing to do this? And with the fragments she shared...I was concerned at her well being from her children.

I asked the authorities to follow up and they found her there after visiting POMO twice. They got more details from her. The assessment is that she doesn't need immediate help but she knows who to follow up with if she does.

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Have you ever Spoken to a Cardboard Uncle or Aunty?

Encik is 82 and has 6 children but doesn't want to depend on them. His wife has some ailments. They are both managing. Our SSO knows of them

How much do we know about the cardboard collectors we see on the street, pushing along loaded trolleys, backs hunched? Recently Minister of Social and Family Development (MSF) Tan Chuan-jin accompanied a group of students to meet box collectors at Jalan Besar. Yet his findings has raised eyebrows among other volunteers.

Reading his post reminded me of a cardboard collector I’d met last year. It was raining when we met her, and she wasn’t going to get very far walking alone pushing her trolley in that downpour, so she agreed to sit down with us at a coffeeshop for a chat.

She’d earned just a couple of dollars that day. She said she wasn’t one of the regular ones because she couldn’t go around collecting cardboard all the time; her husband was sick and needed to be taken to the hospital, and couldn’t be left alone too long when they were at home. His trips to the hospital had become more and more frequent, but it was being deducted from Medisave, she said. Then she dropped the bomb: the last time he’d been to hospital, they’d been told that he had less than $20 left in his Medisave account.

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Hazards being a Cardboard Picker

Death by cardboard collection, more common than…

CARDBOARD collecting isn’t exactly a dangerous activity, but at least three people have died from doing just that over the last two years.

Yesterday (March 30), Madam Poh Ah Gin became the third fatality when a taxi reversed into her at high speed at a carpark in Bedok North Street 2. The 78-year-old was collecting cardboard when the taxi driver lost control of the vehicle while reverse parking and rammed into her twice, killing her.

In November 2014, an 86-year-old woman who had also been collecting cardboard was run down after walking into the blind spot of a bus in Marsiling Lane. Madam Ching Guan Eng was dragged for a short distance, and her trolley and stash of cardboard were stuck under the bus. The coroner ruled her death as an “unfortunate traffic misadventure”.

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Collecting Cardboards from "a form of exercise" to "protecting our environment"

Have you ever Spoken to a Cardboard Uncle or Aunty?

They shared with me that they were surprised by their own findings! The normal perception that all cardboard collectors are people who are unable to take care of themselves financially is not really true. There will be some who do this as their main source of income. Some do so to supplement what they have. Some prefer to earn extra monies, treat it "as a form of exercise" and activity rather than being cooped up at home. They do this to remain independent, so that they can have dignity and not have to ask their families for help.

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When Cardboard Is Gold

NAMELESS: Few care or notice elderly cardboard collectors. More should be done to help these senior citizens

I was staring at the scene where the body of Zheng Yuan Ying, 86, lay pinned under a bus on Wednesday morning. She was killed while making her way to a cardboard-collection point in Marsiling Lane.

It is a grim reminder to me that a job, even as mundane as collecting discarded cardboard, comes with risks.

Barely 20m from where Madam Zheng's body was, three elderly women appeared oblivious that one of their own had been struck down by a vehicle.

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