A desperately-poor technician resorted to stealing copper cables from the building he was working at to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment.
64-year-old elderly, Muhammad Resat Ahmad, now unemployed, started removing and selling electrical cables from Golden Mile Complex as early as 2006, but he was caught only a decade later last year in 2016.
The prosecution called for a 3 months jail sentence on charges of criminal misappropriation.
Muhammad’s wife began chemotherapy in 2003 when she was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. The poor technician was on a $1,280 salary with two school-going children. His family had to go without food and his utilities were cut off when he failed to make payment.
Poverty is widespread in capitalist Singapore with 20% of thehouseholds taking home loving off less than $2,000 in monthly salary. The country has the second worst gini coefficient when compared with OECD nations. The Singapore ruling party government is however the most expensive in the world with dictator Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong drawing $2.2 million in yearly salary.