Paying the price for freebies

ADAM is a teenager studying in a neighbourhood school. His family is not well off. His father works as a cleaner and Adam is on a financial assistance scheme.

Under this scheme, his school fees are paid for, his textbooks are provided free and he is given pocket money. One would expect him to be grateful for this opportunity to continue his education, yet he spends most of his afternoons hanging out at his void deck or playing games on the computer at home.

He does not care or realise that using the computer adds to the cost of electricity. Needless to say, he did not perform well in his studies, although he was expected to, based on his PSLE results.

There is more than one Adam in our society. They are so used to receiving financial assistance from the Government or various organisations such as the Town Councils, HDB branch offices, schools or the Community Development Council, that they have come to expect help as part of life.

The saying "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime" comes to mind when I encounter teenagers like Adam.

Why is he wasting this opportunity while others in a similar situation are working hard to get out of the poverty cycle?

Why does he not feel embarrassed or ashamed that he has squandered it?

Why does he think handouts are a right and not a privilege?

Maybe we should approach this problem in another way. Financial assistance, if not devised carefully, can be reduced to becoming a mere handout.

Such assistance is the beginning of a complex process that can help someone like Adam break out of the poverty cycle — but it is not a sufficient condition for this to happen.

Perhaps, we can learn from a less-developed country such as Bangladesh and see how it has managed to break the poverty cycle for so many families.

The Grameen Bank (GB) provides credit to the poorest of the poor in rural Bangladesh. No bank in Singapore will even consider this option as the poor cannot provide any collateral. But it is precisely these people who need a helping hand.

At GB, loans are provided collateral-free and the bank views credit as a cost-effective weapon to fight poverty. GB believes that if financial resources can be made available to the poor, with terms and conditions that are appropriate and reasonable, they will be able to break out of the poverty cycle.

Every year, the bank's staff review the cases and check whether the socio-economic situation of its clients is improving. It also evaluates the poverty level of borrowers using 10 indicators, which range from whether a family uses a sanitary latrine to whether they are able to put their children through school.

Similarly, appropriate indicators for Adam to achieve could be drawn up, so he continues to receive financial assistance. The concept of the handout scheme could be redesigned so that he is taking a loan from the Bank of Society — that is, he would be expected to return the loan but this need not be in monetary terms alone. He could do community service during his free time or aim to produce good results in his examinations.

The same amount of money, when given out as financial aid, might rob a person of his dignity and develop the handout mentality.

But when it is converted into a loan, a sense of responsibility and accountability would be tied to it. Recipients would then have to ensure the opportunity that society has given them is not wasted.

Tragedies in the news often pull on the heart-strings of many Singaporeans and many have been motivated to donate money to the needy.

But are we just giving them fish, or making an effort to teach them how to fish?

This article was published in TODAY on 31.10.2006