S$1.2b donated by Tote Board to social sector in last five years: Josephine Teo
Minister of State for Finance Josephine Teo said the Tote Board has donated S$1.2 billion or almost half of all its donations to the social sector in the last five years.
She said this in response to a question in Parliament by Non-Constituency MP Lina Chiam, who asked why S$400 million was donated towards building the Gardens by the Bay.
Mrs Teo said the Tote Board board supported the development cost of the gardens, but the donation does not cover the cost of operating the conservatories. The conservatories make full recovery of operating cost through the collection of admission fees.
She added that a large proportion of the board's donations go towards social support.
Mrs Teo said: "In financial year 2012 alone, donations to the social sector were about S$500 million or 46 per cent of donations for that year. This includes the Tote Board social services fund, through which programmes for the needy and disadvantaged are supported.
"Another example is the Tote Board Community Healthcare Fund, which supports community based preventive healthcare programmes and builds capabilities in the intermediate and long-term care sector to enable providers to offer better and more affordable care."
She added that the Tote Board "positions itself as complementing government programmes and not substituting for the government."
Mrs Teo said: "In fact, the board doesn't fund programmes which it deems to be basic government programmes. Instead, it seeks, for example, to uplift capabilities and work with its community partners to pilot new or innovative programmes to help the needy and disadvantaged. The government plays the major role in supporting social services and programmes to help the needy.
"For fiscal year 2012 alone, the government spent about S$1.25 billion on targeted benefits for the bottom 20 per cent of Singaporean households or about S$6,000 per household. It includes the workfare income supplement, childcare subsidies, educational bursaries and means-tested healthcare subsidies."
~News courtesy of Channel Newsasia~
