Video: Wheelchair-bound uncle rummaging through food waste at Chinatown hawker raises questions

A short clip of a wheelchair-bound elderly man has been circulating on social media, drawing various reactions and raising questions from netizens.

The clip, posted on Monday (Jan 11), showed an old man turning over a bin at the utensil-return area in the hawker centre located at Chinatown Complex.

The hawker centre at Chinatown Complex is one of the oldest and largest hawker centres in Singapore, but is known for being unhygienic and often dirty.

In the short seven-second clip, the man was seen next to bins where the plates are usually cleared and leftover food is disposed of. While it is unclear if the man really was looking for food or tin cans to recycle, the act of his rummaging raised many questions amongst netizens.

It is also not known if the man was truly handicapped or if he simply was homeless and using a wheelchair as a means to get around, a netizen who commented on the post asked where the man was seen in order to head down to the location to help.

Others raised questions about the state of the poor in Singapore and why help was not given to the less fortunate.