SINGAPORE: The country’s biggest opposition party responded to Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s first National Day Rally speech on Sunday (Aug 18), welcoming the policy shifts announced and pointing out their similarities to WP’s past proposals.
The party nevertheless called for deeper reforms.
WP noted three announcements in particular, those concerning the new SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support Scheme, the 10 additional weeks of shared parental leave, and the inclusion of singles in schemes prioritizing those applying for Build-to-Order (BTO) flats.
The new SkillsFuture scheme aims to provide lower- and middle-income workers who’ve lost their jobs with temporary financial support up to S$6,000 for as long as six months.
The WP noted in its statement that it agrees with PM Wong that job loss poses the threat of serious destabilization for workers and their families and pointed out that in 2016, it had published a policy paper calling for the implementation of a Redundancy Insurance scheme, repeating this call during the 2020 General Election and in last year’s Budget debate.
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As for the extended shared parental leave scheme, this will be progressively implemented beginning in 2025.
In 2020, the WP proposed a shared parental leave scheme of a minimum of 12 weeks for the mother, four weeks for the father and a maximum of 24 weeks of government-paid leave. Two years later, Sengkang GRC MPs Louis Chua and Jamus Lim repeated this call.
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Furthermore, Sengkang GRC MP He Ting Ru also noted in a speech in October 2020 that the present government policy of fathers sharing only up to four weeks of the mother’s leave “reinforces the outdated notion that childcare is primarily the mother’s responsibility, rather than promoting equal parenting roles.”
In 2020, a call to lower the eligibility age for singles to apply for a BTO flat to be lowered from 35 to 28 years was also part of the WP’s Manifesto, which was further expounded on in Parliament in September 2022.
PM Wong announced in his speech that single children and their parents would be given priority access to BTO flats, effective mid-2025.
“We urge the government to make this deeper policy reform sooner than later to more comprehensively allay concerns among singles regarding housing access,” The Workers’ Party said. /TISG
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