The Workers’ Party

-HOUGANG SMC- Hougang MP Dennis Tan celebrated Mid-Autumn with residents on Saturday - with fantastic Mao Shan Wang mooncakes, game stalls, magic performances, and friendly neighbours, the celebration was a blast! https://www.facebook.com/share/p/S49S6zpEu1Yz2jSB/

-HE TING RU- 中秋佳节,美满快乐! Wishing everyone a very happy Mid-autumn festival filled with sweetness and light! #Buangkok #SengkangGRC https://www.instagram.com/p/DAAhjUqyXjt

-ALJUNIED GRC- That’s a wrap on a wonderful weekend of Mid-Autumn celebrations in Serangoon! 中秋节快乐 to all! Our heartfelt thanks to LO Pritam Singh , MP Sylvia Lim and our incredible volunteers for making not one, not two, but THREE community events possible at Serangoon North, Serangoon Avenue 4, and Chartwell Drive Park. It was great to see such a large turnout and so many happy faces. Our residents remind us why we do what we do – you make it all worthwhile! #MidAutumn #AljuniedGRC #Serangoon https://www.facebook.com/aljuniedcommunity/posts/pfbid0ZKukZAAWZDpfyzdTdY5wJ4dGE4oiU4YvqT2hdbka15TL9ErW8ZuYf35Zv64xumYzl

-PRITAM SINGH- A great morning with the team and our friends in Hougang SMC and Sengkang GRC! #hammertime #AHTCteawithmps #coloursinthepark https://www.facebook.com/pritam.eunos

-SYLVIA LIM- I'm very proud of our Sengkang MPs. For their first term, they have shown their ability to make important contributions to Parliament and care for their residents. At Colours In the Park, we seniors lent our voices to them too. #NationalDay #SengkangGRC #TeamWP https://www.instagram.com/sylvialim65

𝐖𝐏 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐲 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐬, 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐃𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐬 The Workers’ Party is encouraged to see the policy changes announced by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in his maiden National Day Rally speech on 18 August 2024. First, we welcome the announcement of the new SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support Scheme, which will help lower and middle-income workers who have lost their jobs with up to $6,000 in temporary financial support over a maximum period of six months, subject to training and other conditions. We agree with the Prime Minister that losing a job can seriously destabilise workers and their families. This is why we published a policy paper back in 2016 calling for the implementation of a Redundancy Insurance scheme. We reiterated this call in our 2020 General Election Manifesto and during the Budget 2023 debate in Parliament. In our 2020 Manifesto, we proposed that retrenched workers would receive a payout equivalent to 40% of their last drawn salary for up to six months. The payout would be capped at $1,200 per month with a minimum payout of $500 a month to benefit low-wage workers. Payouts after the first payout would be conditional on the worker actively seeking a new job or undergoing re-training. The WP’s redundancy insurance scheme was designed with a view to be funded mainly by premiums paid by workers while they are employed, rather than by taxpayers. Second, we believe all parents-to-be will welcome the 10 additional weeks of shared parental leave on top of their current maternal and paternal leave entitlements, raising the total government-paid parental leave to 30 weeks by 1 April 2026. WP’s 2020 Manifesto proposed a shared parental leave scheme that entitles parents to 24 weeks of government-paid leave, to be shared between mothers and fathers as they choose, but with a minimum of 12 weeks to be granted to the mother and four weeks to the father. Sengkang GRC MPs Louis Chua and Associate Professor Jamus Lim repeated this call in April 2022 during the parliamentary debate on the White Paper on Singapore Women’s Development. As Sengkang GRC MP He Ting Ru described in her speech in October 2020, the current government policy, which allows fathers to share only up to four weeks of the mother's leave, reinforces the outdated notion that childcare is primarily the mother's responsibility, rather than promoting equal parenting roles. Finally, we note that singles will be included in schemes that give priority to those applying for Build-to-Order (BTO) flats to live with or near their families from mid-2025. WP’s 2020 Manifesto called for the eligibility age for singles to apply for a BTO flat to be lowered from 35 to 28 years. This was subsequently elaborated on by Sengkang GRC MP Louis Chua in his Adjournment Motion speech in September 2022. We urge the government to make this deeper policy reform sooner, to more comprehensively allay concerns among singles regarding housing access. THE WORKERS’ PARTY 19 August 2024