I asked the question: what is the present poverty line? I inquired from persons. The first person I inquired was a single person living on his own. His answer was that he needed about $1,000 a month to live in Singapore to pay for the rent, for all the other things that went with a basic standard of living, not a living that affords chocolates, perfumes and luxury items, but basic needs. Then I spoke to another man and he said he had only one child. He said he needed at least $1,200 to $1,300 a month to maintain the wife and the child. Finally, I spoke to someone who had two children. His answer was, "Easily over $1,500. I need at least $1,600 or $1,700 a month." Have we made any study of the requirements in Singapore for a family of four, three or even just one? I was asking for a Commission to inquire into poverty in Singapore. I would suggest that we seek the help of somebody from the United Nations Commission to come and help us to make a scientific study. They who know about poverty can then make a proper study and show the comparison between Singapore and other countries. But we have got this income disparity report. I was not surprised when I saw that report, as we said in the press report that I made on behalf of the party. We knew all along that the people down below were suffering. What does this report now disclose? That for 30% of our members in the society, the average household income is just over $1,000 a month. 30% is not to be laughed at, Mr Speaker, Sir. How do you expect them to survive? When I say "survive", I mean a decent standard of living on $1,000 a month, when you consider that Singapore is one of the most expensive places to live in. This is even told to me, as I have said time and time again, not by people from India and Malaysia, but by people from the developed countries. They say Singapore is very expensive. If you set that level of income for the 30% against those in the top earners, Ministers and top civil servants, judges, I say it is a national disgrace. In the last sitting, again when I was not here, I see the Minister tried to minimise the report. Of course, we had seen that earlier by Government officials trying to minimise the severity of the report. He is reported to have said that the poor are not as badly off as made out to be. I find that difficult to understand. How badly must they be before they are recognised as being badly off? Should they be starving, dying on the streets before the Government recognises that we have a section of our people who are badly off? This, Mr Speaker, Sir, in a country which is by no means a poor country. We boast, and again we make much of it, that we have built up foreign reserves to $128,457,000. So we are not a poor, struggling country that finds it difficult to see that its people can afford a basic decent standard of life. All they need, as I have kept saying again and again, is a political will to do something about the condition of this 30% of our society. When I met the Prime Minister at the National Day reception of the President, and I told him I had this motion, he said, "We have got our programme ready. We have got everything ready." I said, "Great." I hope I shall be told what is it that the Government has got. What measures has it decided upon to check and correct this imbalance in our society? Then I saw at the National Day Rally the programme of the Government was to hand out lollipops. It is like handing out lollipops to children who are being querulous to keep them quiet. May I tell the Government that handing out lollipops is not the answer. Something more than that is needed, something which will improve the lives of these people over the long term. Of course, the local media, true to its role, highlights $3.2 billion, how generous the Government is. We forget that that is our money. All that the Government is required to do is to see that it is put to proper use, a judicial use that benefits all members of the society, not any particular section of the society. So we need to do something immediately. I intend to list, first of all, what measures that I say have to be put in place and then come back and talk on each of these measures a little. The first one which is quite clearly crying out is that we should put our workers in a position of equality with employers. I shall expand on this. But today the workers have no more rights than the serfs had in the middle ages under the common law, and I shall read an excerpt from the Second Reading of a Bill in 1968, as exactly what was done. We need to put the workers on an equality with employers. You have got to recognise that labour has a definite contribution to make. Labour is not subservient to capital. Labour is not subservient to land. It is these three factors which are necessary for production. So they must be given equal rights with capital. For that, I shall list out why we need a new Employment Act. Secondly, we need a new Industrial Relations Act. Thirdly, we need a new Act, the Unfair Dismissals Act, to protect the workers from exploitation by the employer. Fourthly, I am listing this out before I speak on each one of them. We have got to democratise our trade unions. Give them the power that trade unions in other countries have. We need to see that they are run on democratic lines. Let us remove the anachronism of a Cabinet Minister leading the trade union movement. How is that possible? The Government should be the biggest employer along with the statutory boards. And we have its Ministers leading the trade unions, the workers. It is laughable. The fifth proposal is to have a new Wages Council, where again the trade unions and the labour have equal rights. At the moment, they are outnumbered by the employer, 2 to 1. Sixthly, we have got to have a new Trade Disputes Act. I am aware that there should be some limit on strikes. But we should not take it out completely from the trade unions. Strikes still remain the most powerful weapon in the hands of the workers. But as I said, I concede that there should be some limit. But at the moment, it is completely taken out of their hands. I see that the then Minister for Labour, Mr Rajaratnam, referred to the strikes in the 1960s as one of the things that we could not afford in our society. But I ask the question: who were responsible for the labour disorder, if it was labour disorder, in the 50s and 60s? Sir, I was here, I have said this before. Our present Senior Minister was the legal adviser to a number of trade unions. He was advocating the rights of the workers. Seventhly, we got to give workers proper representation before inquiry tribunals, before they are dismissed by their companies. At the moment, it is all a farce. So all these measures are necessary to give our workers their rights which they deserve. My eighth proposal is that Government now considers seriously revising the CPF contribution rates. We have advocated that the employees should only pay 15% and the employers pay the same amount. I call upon the Government to bring up the employer's contribution to 15% immediately and to reduce the employee's contribution to the same level, so that they have a bit more money to take home and to spend. Then, I have a number of measures. These are all structural changes we have to make. Now, if I may touch on the measures to meet the needs of people who cannot afford them. I think it is time we seriously considered social security for those in need. The problem in other countries was that they give social welfare, medical relief to everyone, with the result that there was abuse of the system. But surely we can do something to see that only the needy get the benefit under the social security. Could we not provide social security and give benefits for those earning below $2,000 per month? They carry a welfare card to be entitled to all the benefits. And I am proposing that under that scheme, it should provide free medical care to those who qualify. Medisave does not cover outpatient charges. That is where most of the money goes. I hear complaints from people about how much they have to pay every time they go to a polyclinic for outpatient treatment. Then, there should be payment of a children's allowance, not just designed to increase the population. But a children's allowance - I have been calling for this many, many years - for those who are in need of this allowance, to see that they can bring up their children, and educate them sufficiently. Then, again, under the social security, I think the Government should seriously consider introducing old-age pensions for those over 65, regardless of whether they are CPF contributors or whether they have savings in the CPF fund. Another thing I am proposing is that the Government now provides free education to all our students whose parents earn below $2,000 a month. A claim has been made, and it is still made, and I see that it is in today's paper, that in Singapore, education is free. This is one of the false claims that is constantly made about things in Singapore. I check it up, and I have checked it before as well. But I checked it up recently, rang a family up. They have two children in a primary school. Do they have to pay any school fees? They say that they have to pay $15 every quarter. What is in a name? It does not matter. You do not call it school fees, you call it under some other name, and collect the money. But the money still has to come from the parents. At secondary level, they say they have to pay $51 a quarter, that is, $17 per month. So, let us stop this sham of saying free education for all, and see that families earning below $2,000 get their children educated free in Singapore. We can afford, if only we did not spend so much of our money on unnecessary things. Lastly, under the social security, we should consider unemployment benefits for those unemployed, perhaps limited for a number of months. If they are genuinely unable to get employment, they should be helped and not told, "Hard luck, poor chap! Just carry on, try and get another job. Try and improve your skills. We are all right, but you know, you just carry on. Soon enough you will get a job." This question of improving skills - how much more are you going to be able to teach or improve the skills of cleaners and road sweepers? So what are we talking about when we say that they have got to improve the skills and learn more? How much more can they learn? Can we have an answer to that question? So what are we going to do? Are we going to leave them just earning $400 a month, and not give them any benefits, and say go and improve yourself? May I say something about what I have listed first, and that is a new Employment Act that we need. We need a new Employment Act for the 21st century that will recognise the rightful place of labour in society. I see that a call was made by the NTUC. It was reported in the Straits Times of 23rd August 2000 that labour needed a new social contract. Well, that is it. But let us not just talk about a new social contract. Let us give them a new Employment Act. This present Employment Act was passed on 10th July 1968. Before that, there was the Employment Ordinance from 1955 which, let me tell Members, gave our workers more rights and benefits. But these were all curtailed under the new Employment Bill, because the British had pulled out their forces and we needed to improve ourselves, and so we needed to attract foreign capital, we needed multi-national companies to come in, and therefore the workers had to lose their rights. Mr Rajaratnam, moving the Second Reading of this Bill, acknowledged that there were quite a bit of criticisms outside Parliament of the Bill. But he dismissed that and he said, and I am going to read what he said: "But the people will respond provided they are convinced that the effort and difficult adjustments demanded are really directed towards eventually promoting the well-being of the people as a whole and not merely to enrich a privileged few - whether gay and fun-loving political leaders or the racketeering ruffians with whom they are allied."