Unhappy with an international index showing the Singapore government being ranked one of the worst governments in the world addressing poverty and low income, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat hit out slamming the report as “erroneous”:
“The Oxfam report erroneously measured performance by the amount of money spent by the public sector… Since resources are limited, it is very important that we can achieve good outcomes with the required inputs and not to wrongly measure inputs, and then treat it as outcomes. That is a completely wrong analysis.”
The millionaire minister then denied the report, claiming that his government has achieved “outcomes” and done “well” in addressing inequality in Singapore:
“Outcomes, not measures of input, are what matter.”
According to the Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2018 by international poverty watchdog group Oxfam, the Singapore government ranks 149th out of 157 countries on addressing inequality. The Singapore system ranks lowly in the protection of low income workers (there is no Minimum Wage and labour rights are sub par). The corrupted Singapore dictatorship is also revealed to have given ample tax reliefs to companies, which was reflected in the 2018 Budget where S$2.27 billion of tax cuts were given. Singapore also ranks lowly on healthcare and social spending, that could be anecdotally seen in the Singapore streets where many elderly Singaporeans sell tissue paper for a living. The report damned by the PAP Minister also matches local poverty statistics, which reported a drastic 24% rise in poverty rate in four years.
Unable to address a growing poverty poverty and criticisms, the Singapore dictatorship engages itself in denial mode and then ramp up on propaganda lying making baseless claims to improve its reputation.