Singapore — The newly-minted Progress Singapore Community Fund (PSCF) is working to help struggling hawkers and needy households as part of its first project.
PSCF is a registered charity to aid the needy, sick and underprivileged.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday (Jan 4), Francis Yuen Kin Pheng, a businessman in his seventies, who heads the fund, explained that its Give A Treat (GAT) project was rolled out as part of the official launch of the fund in December.
“The Progress Singapore Community Fund was founded as a separate entity and registered as a charity. Our first project Give A Treat, reached out to the elderly poor and needy children while at the same time helped hawkers badly impacted by the pandemic”, he wrote.
The project gave out meal vouchers to residents in a few HDB estates, which they could redeem for meals at participating hawker stalls. The fund then reimbursed the hawkers in full.
“This falls in line with the tagline of the PSCF – ‘A little help, a greater hope’, Mr Yuen said recently.
Mr Yuen, who was a lieutenant colonel when he left the Republic of Singapore Air Force for a career in aerospace engineering, describes himself in his Facebook profile as a “semi-retired business executive who likes to share his views on social, economic and business matters”.
He thinks that in 2022, Singapore “can do with less extravagance for example on showcase projects and exercise more prudence and frugality… cultivate a mindset of curbing costs, replacing the convenient approach of passing down costs to the people”.
He added: “More taxes, levies and GST increases is not the answer. A relentless pursuit of productivity and prudent spending to lower costs is the answer!”/TISG