“Smaller flats have not lowered quality of life: HDB CEO”
I recently read this article from TODAYonline (http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC111111-0000071/Smaller-flats-have-not-lowered-quality-of-life–HDB-CEO)
This article strike a chord with me because me and my fiancee had applied for a flat together and one of our key concerns is the cost of the flats and the cost of living..
To me, the talks about promising us small flats but yet high quality of life feels like salt on fresh wounds.
To quote what Housing Development Board (HDB) CEO DR Cheong Koon Hean said: “Our families are smaller. IN the old days, we have very large families living in a flat. Today, the family is two, three, four,”
Well to this sentence, me and my girl, as part of the lower income group in Singapore, we say that why we don’t wanna have children is because of the cost of living.
If the price of the medical care and milk powder isn’t so high, we would wanna raise a football team. LOL! Maybe just 2-3 kids so I can afford enough space for both of them in the tiny flat we are going to get.
Dr Cheong gave another comparison with the average number of people living in a flat in the 80s and 00s.
I think the same issue is valid here loh.. The cost of living.
Long time ago though people earn less, but they don’t need a lot of money to sustain and they don’t need to pay fees for tertiary studies. They can come out and start working at a younger age and earn as much as I’m earning without spending the extra 3 years going to a polytechnic and incurring additional debts for taking a diploma.
Nowadays the cost of living is rising so fast and in order for us to have a better life we have to at least have a degree to live comfortably. A diploma holder like me is like ‘stucked’ at the below average level for life. But I can’t afford a university education with my current situation.
To make matters worse, the cost of living is even rising faster than my annual increments, so we will get poorer and poorer. This led me to think about the “Singaporean comes first” talk our country’s leader said. Actually, when you think about it, majority of Singaporeans fall in the ‘lower-income’ group. How many of us actually take home more than $3k a month? So shouldn’t there be more thoughts spent on the majority instead of just satisfying the better-off groups?
Quoted from Todayonline: “PropNex chief executive Mohamed Ismail concurred with Dr Cheong: “The modern Singapore family is much smaller and living in a bigger place compared to previous generations, and with amenities. The quality of life is not affected.”
Mr Ismail added: “And people have a choice to buy three, four or five-room flats.”
Still, Mr Ismail noted that with the high property prices, the lower income with many children will be most affected as they have “no choice but to buy within their means, and that means a smaller flat”. ”
So? What are you going to do about it after making such a comment? Or maybe you’re not a Government official, so what do you suggest the “lower income with many children” group to do? I do agree that there much more amenities around us nowadays but then they take a lot of space. Why not give some of the space to our flats? That would also increase our ‘quality of life’ wouldn’t it?
There are so many contradictions in all these issues in Singapore. This person say consider Singaporeans first, that person say bobian (can’t be helped) if they no money = cannot go study = lesser income = no money (no talk) no chance = you no money you take care of youself ok? So in the end is this all just words and no actions? We can only wait and see…
The more I read the more ‘cheng xim’ (very disappointed) i get.. But what can I do? I am a Singaporean, and I’ll probably die a Singaporean too. For now I just try to live life as best as I can and provide as much as I can afford to my loved ones. I know that in the end I can only sigh…
Simon Tey
