SINGAPORE: Fewer households received ComCare financial assistance from the government in 2023 compared with the previous year, continuing a downward trend in recent times, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) said in a report released on Tuesday (Nov 19).
ComCare supports lower-income households with basic living expenses, to help stabilise their circumstances.
There are three major types of ComCare assistance:
- Short-to-medium term assistance (SMTA): Supports households with temporary financial assistance to meet a family’s basic living expenses
- Long-term assistance (LTA): Supports people who are permanently unable to work and have little or no family support
- Student care fee assistance (SCFA): For children from lower-income families
According to the MSF trends report on supporting lower-income households, the number of homes supported by SMTA decreased from 27,392 in 2022 to 22,960 in 2023. This was below pre-pandemic levels of 27,989 in 2019, and down from the COVID-19 peak of 36,853 in 2021.
The amount of money disbursed through SMTA also fell from a peak of US$169.7 million (US$127 million) in 2020 to S$112.5 million in 2022 and S$105.1 million in 2023.
MSF attributed these dips to post-COVID-19 economic recovery, labour market expansion in recent years and government support from schemes such as the Workfare Income Supplement scheme and Assurance Package.
For households supported by LTA, there was a marginal drop from 3,857 in 2022 to 3,479 last year. Similar to the SMTA group, this was lower than the 4,175 in 2019.
Last year, a total of S$23 million was disbursed, down from S$24.9 million in 2019 and a 2020 peak of S$28.5 million.
These may be due to more residents working longer years, younger cohorts of elderly having more savings and increased government support for seniors through the likes of the Silver Support scheme and Pioneer and Merdeka generation packages, said MSF.
