Hansard, Tuesday, 29 November 2022

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections 1 Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Health in light of the US research paper suggesting that COVID-19 reinfection is more dangerous (a) what is the mortality rate and serious complication rate of those in Singapore catching COVID-19 for a second or third time vis-a-vis a first-time infection; and (b) how does vaccination alter the mortality and severe illness rate in both groups.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections Sir, the Member has referred to a US research paper, which according to media reports, found that second COVID-19 infections are more severe compared to first infections.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections I am afraid the media reports have not been clear or accurate. The paper cited by the Member does not compare the severity between first-time infections and reinfections. Instead, it compares the outcomes of those who had a first COVID-19 infection, versus those with two or more infections. And therefore, not surprisingly, the study found it is more likely for persons to develop adverse health outcomes after two or more episodes of COVID-19 infection, compared to people who had only one infection episode. Put it simply: getting sick twice is worse than getting sick once; but getting sick for the second time is not worse than getting sick the first time.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections In fact, from September to mid-November 2022, the mortality rate of reinfection cases in Singapore was four per 100,000 cases, lower than that for first-time infection cases at 35 per 100,000 cases. The rate of severe illness – those requiring oxygen supplementation, intensive care or death – was also lower for reinfections at 232 per 100,000 cases, compared to first-time infections at 282 per 100,000 cases.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections Our data also shows that achieving minimum vaccination protection – in other words, three doses of mRNA or four doses of Sinovac – lowers the risk of severe illness, whether it is a first infection or re-infection.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections Mr Yip.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections I thank the Minister for his clarification. Is there any data that the bivalent vaccine booster has helped to reduce severe illness and death? What is the uptake of the bivalent vaccine? And with the Singapore public treating living with COVID as a new normal, how can we improve the uptake of the bivalent vaccine?

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections The initial data from clinical trials of the bivalent vaccine and now, empirical data based on our actual lived experience, show that it has been effective in reducing severe illnesses. Today, when you compare, especially for the aged, those who have gotten full protection and up-to-date vaccination, versus those who have not, it still shows a significant difference between the prevalence of severe illness if they get infected. I do not have the data with me, but it is at least four to five times more likely to fall severely ill if you are not fully vaccinated or not update-to-date with the vaccination.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections Today, we are administering healthy numbers of vaccines – about 20,000 a day in uptake; it is quite good. This includes both mono-valent and bivalent. I do not have the breakdown, but the take-up has been encouraging for people keeping their vaccination up-to-date. We will continue to put out public messages to encourage people to take their vaccine, keep it up-to-date, because the pandemic is not over. We will be stepping up our mobile vaccination teams into the heartlands so that, especially for the seniors, they will find that it is more accessible to getting their vaccination up-to-date with the mobile vaccination teams in place.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections Mr Gan Thiam Poh.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections Thank you, Speaker. I just want to ask the Minister is there data to show what is the reinfection rate and the seriousness of using mRNA and other vaccines.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections Can the Member repeat that? I was not too clear.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections My question is, is there data to show what is the effective rates of using mRNA and the seriousness of reinfection, and the difference between mRNA vaccine and others, these two categories.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections There was a similar Parliamentary Question before and I showed some of the data. The Member should be able to find it in the Hansard. Essentially, for the non-mRNA vaccine, we mostly use Sinovac. Sinovac is effective if you take three or more shots, preferably four shots. It does protect you against severe illness. I remember the protection rate is about 70-plus percent. But if you use mRNA, it is even more effective, at 80-plus, almost 90%.

Mortality Rate and Serious Complications amongst Singaporeans who Suffer COVID-19 Reinfections So, both are effective, with mRNA vaccines having an edge over Sinovac.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work 2 Dr Tan Wu Meng asked the Minister for Manpower in the past three years, how many reports have been received from platform firms or platform gig workers regarding injuries suffered in the course of platform or gig work including (i) near-misses (ii) accidents without injury (iii) accidents with injury of any severity and (iv) accidents with injury serious enough to require medical help.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Companies are required to report their employees’ injuries to MOM to facilitate expeditious processing of work injury compensation claims and ensure that the injured employees receive the necessary compensation. Platform workers are currently not covered by mandatory work injury compensation requirements, so platform work injury data is not reported to the Ministry.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work The Government has accepted recommendations by the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers, including strengthening financial protection in case of work injury. Upon implementation of the work injury compensation framework for platform workers, the reporting of work injuries for platform workers will be mandated.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Dr Tan.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Mr Speaker, I thank the Senior Minister of State for his answer. I have Clementi residents who are delivery riders with platform companies; some have been injured on the job. The General Insurance Association (GIA) recently proposed expanded use of prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance instead of Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA) framework. Can I ask the Senior Minister of State, why did the insurers and platform companies not suggest this earlier, especially when they already knew that there were riders who were dying on the job?

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Second, does it mean that the GIA proposal will need every company to buy 24-hour insurance coverage for their workers, even if the platform worker is only doing a few hours a day with that particular company? And if so, who is going to pay under the GIA recommendation?

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Thirdly, if the GIA proposal is taken up, is it going to weaken the role of WICA? Will it encourage employers in other sectors to convert their employees into contractors so as to avoid the responsibilities and compensation that come with WICA protection for workers?

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work The Senior Minister of State can respond to the three supplementary questions raised. But just a reminder to Members to limit it to two questions.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Thank you, Speaker. I believe the hon Member must be referring to the statement made by GIA to a Business Times article on 24 November 2022.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Let me just explain that today, some platform companies do provide platform workers with compensation for work injuries, but the coverage is uneven across different platforms and at much lower levels than what employees are entitled to under the WICA. For example, platform companies' coverage for death or permanent disability is largely in the $10,000 to $30,000 range, compared to employees' entitlement under WICA of up to $289,000. That is a significant difference in the magnitude of coverage.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work This is why the Platform Workers Advisory Committee recommended requiring platform companies to provide the same scope and level of work injury compensation as employees' entitlement under WICA. This recommendation is both fair to the employers and to the platform workers. Employers meaning the platform companies.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work It is fair to platform workers because they receive the same work injury compensation protection as other workers exposed to the same job risks, such as employees in related sectors like logistics. It is fair to platform companies because they only need to cover platform workers if they are injured in the course of work. If, for example, the platform worker was injured while running personal errands, the platform company is not responsible to provide compensation. This is no different from employers' responsibility towards their employees under WICA and ensures a level playing field across different companies.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work On the other hand, GIA has suggested requiring companies to purchase prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance, in place of WICA. Such insurance policies provide 24/7 coverage and compensation, regardless of whether an injury happen in the course of work. They also use fixed payouts, unlike the WICA mechanism where compensation amount varies based on the worker's total earnings.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work While we welcome platform companies to go above and beyond by providing 24/7 coverage for their workers, the Government should not require them to do so, to provide coverage for injuries that are not as a result of work. Similarly, it would not be right to provide a fixed payout to injured platform workers when platform workers are a diverse group, ranging from those who engage in casual work – perhaps only infrequently and a short number of hours a day – to those who do it on a more full-time basis, on a daily basis.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work The Platform Workers Advisory Committee recommended that compensation for platform workers should vary based on workers' earnings, the same way that WICA operates today for injured employees. This is fair to the platform worker and platform company as the amount of compensation would depend on the extent of income lost by the worker due to the injury at work.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Dr Tan Wu Meng asked if GIA's suggestions will weaken WICA. I just want to reassure the Member that MOM will ensure that companies do not misclassify workers in order to skirt the requirements under WICA. But indeed, one other important aspect of WICA is that under this legal framework, there is an established mechanism under which companies and workers who object to the insurers' assessment of the claim, can file a dispute. MOM will then oversee a dispute resolution process, to adjudicate and settle the claim. This ensures that claims are resolved fairly in accordance with the WICA framework, without prejudice to the company or the worker.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work GIA's suggestion of using only existing prolonged medical leave insurance or group personal accident insurance in place of WICA would relegate this to private insurance policy whose terms and conditions are dictated by the insurer without a clear mechanism to adjudicate disputes.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work I appreciate why insurers would want more flexibility in how they compensate claims. But to ensure fairness to workers and companies, I do not think we should be leaving it to insurers to be the final arbiter of any disputes in work injury claims. There could well be a conflict of interest in such a scenario.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work In the committee's engagement with different groups of platform workers and looking at some of the surveys and studies conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), there is feedback from workers that when they want to claim injury claims from some of these insurers as a result of group personal accident insurance policies they were protected under, they often have to jump through hoops. And some of them find it very difficult to actually get the claims settled. There were some who told us that they gave up filing claims because it was so onerous and they had no place to turn to.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work In our engagements with insurers, we were also told that offering prolonged medical leave insurance and group personal accident insurance at the same level of coverage as WICA would result in higher insurance premiums for platform companies, compared to an insurance policy based on the committee's recommended approach. This is not surprising since the scope of coverage for these policies is much wider, on a 24/7 basis.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Thus, GIA's suggestion would result in higher business costs to platform companies, especially since regardless of the type of insurance, platform companies will need to purchase insurance that covers all platform workers, and this includes precisely the group that Dr Tan said – those who only do one hour of work a day on the platform. GIA's statement is in contrary to what insurers have advised the committee.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work GIA also suggested that platform workers could rely on MediShield Life coverage for medical expenses due to work injury. Again, let me reiterate the principle that platform workers should receive the same level of coverage for work injury compensation as employees.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Given that employees are covered for up to $45,000 in medical expenses for work injuries by their employers, there is no reason why platform workers should have to rely on MediShield Life which they pay for using their own MediSave, and consequently, pay part of the medical bills using their MediSave or out-of-pocket cash if they suffer a work injury.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work GIA's suggestion is essentially asking platform workers to pay for their own medical expenses. For these reasons, GIA's proposal is not a viable alternative to the advisory committee's recommendation of requiring platform companies to provide the same scope and level of compensation as employees under WICA. It will lead to either unsustainable premiums for platform companies while work injury compensation for platform workers, they are far below the level of entitlements by employees under WICA.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work I note that The Business Times article which the Member probably referred to – that was published on 24 November – stated that GIA Chief Executive Officer Mr Ho Kai Weng said, " GIA members firmly believe financial protection for platform workers can be efficiently achieved through the existing solutions compared to the WICA-based solution." That is the crux of the supplementary question asked by the hon Dr Tan Wu Meng. That is, if it was so viable, why did the insurers and platform companies not suggest this earlier when there were workers who were injured or suffered death while on the job.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Our discussions with insurers showed it was not possible to do so in a cost-effective way. But given the confidence that GIA has on the efficiency of existing products and policies that they have and the public statements by various platform companies that platform workers deserved protection for injuries incurred in the course of their work, I would suggest that GIA members work closely with platform companies to offer financial protection and compensation for these workers at the level of WICA as soon as possible by the first quarter of next year, hopefully, using their existing products while maintaining the cost of premiums at parity with WICA insurance products.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work This will provide better coverage for the workers in the interim and keep costs manageable for platform companies and consumers while we work on implementation details of WICA for this group of workers by the end of 2024. In conclusion, Mr Speaker, I would like to reiterate that the committee's recommendations are fair to both platform companies and workers and take a balanced approach to strengthening platform workers' financial protection in case of work injury in a sustainable manner. We look forward to continuing our engagements with platform workers, platform companies and insurers as we work towards implementing these recommendations.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Mr Liang Eng Hwa.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Sir, I want to thank the Senior Minister of State for leading this future major effort to take care of the welfare of our platform workers and also for him to personally come down to Bukit Panjang to engage our platform workers support group just a few months ago. The Senior Minister of State mentioned about the recommendation from the advisory group, I would like to ask him for the reception from the platform workers and the company so far on all these recommendations. And in particular, I want to hear from the Senior Minister of State, his views on the concern raised by Grab with regards to the issue of level playing field as the taxi's street hail platforms are excluded from the recommendations, whether there would potentially be issues of price and market distortions?

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Sir, I thank Mr Liang for working with the committee in the lead-up to the announcement by helping us to also provide avenues to engage to workers. Indeed, these are early days since the recommendations were announced. The early sensing from different stakeholders, workers, companies and consumers showed that it is a positive set of recommendations that is much welcomed. The workers basically welcome the fact that they will now – when it is implemented – have better work injury compensation, much better than they had today under WICA.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work But, of course, the details of implementation are not fully out. So, there are some concerns about whether it will be effectively implemented. For the platform companies, they have put out statements to say that recommendations are fair and balanced and they welcome the changes that will enhance the protection given to these group of workers. So, on the whole, this is very much welcomed.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Our surveys before the release also showed that consumers in various surveys, between 70% and 90% are prepared to pay up to 10% more in prices to make sure that these workers have the adequate protection, so long as the price increase that they pay for goes directly to helping these workers address their income retirement, their retirement adequacy as well as their ability to have housing adequacy.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Generally, the public, the companies and the workers themselves all welcome this set of recommendations.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work Specific to the comment that the Member raised about Grab's statement expressing that – excluding street hails from these recommendations would create an unlevel playing field. I would say that, in fact, including street hail into this recommendation would cause an uneven playing field instead. The simple reason is that street hail taxis actually work on a different business model as opposed to a platform model because in the street hail model, the taxi driver is essentially renting the taxi from the taxi companies. The taxi driver decides how he wants to pick up passengers, where he wants to pick up, he can deny working for the day, if he chose to, with no penalties levied by the taxi company. It is more of a rental and rentee kind of relationship.

Reports of Platform Workers Suffering Injuries in Course of Work In fact, in a street hail engagement, the passenger pays to the taxi driver directly. The money does not pass through any app platform, it does not go through the taxi company and there is no commission being levied on the amount of fare that the passenger pays to the taxi driver through a street hail. In that sense, the degree of management control is less and perhaps non-existent in this case. And that is why in the deliberation, the committee recommended that platform companies that exert a certain degree of management control on these supposed group of self-employed workers will then need to provide these workers with some degree of basic protection which includes work injury compensation as well as retirement and housing adequacy.

Spouses of HDB Flat or Executive Condominium Owners who Have Bought Private Properties 3 Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for National Development how many spouses of the owners of HDB flats and executive condominium, who are registered as occupants and not joint owners of the flat, have bought and invested in another private property in their own name in each of the past five years.

Spouses of HDB Flat or Executive Condominium Owners who Have Bought Private Properties Minister for National Development): Mr Speaker, as resale Executive Condominium (EC) units are private residential property, HDB does not track data on the owners and occupiers of EC units beyond five years from when the EC receives its Temporary Occupation Permit (TOP). As such, HDB does not have data of all who are currently occupants of the EC unit that their spouse is an owner of.

Spouses of HDB Flat or Executive Condominium Owners who Have Bought Private Properties As for those registered as occupiers of their spouse's HDB flat, HDB's data only captures whether they proceeded to purchase a private property after fulfilling the requisite Minimum Occupation Period. However, HDB does not capture whether they purchased the private property in their own name or jointly with others. They may have purchased the private property with their spouse, who may then have subsequently disposed of the HDB flat. As such, HDB is unable to provide the specific information that the Member had asked for.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors 4 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Education in each year for the past five years, what is the respective breakdown on the median and average ratio of full-time trained and untrained school counsellors to students in primary schools and secondary schools.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors Minister for Education): Mr Speaker, all schools are resourced with one or two trained school counsellors depending on the school's counselling needs. Prior to their formal training at the National Institute of Education, untrained school counsellors are attached to schools to learn from experienced school counsellors but will not be involved in actual counselling work. Beside school counsellors, students are also supported by a network of teacher-counsellors, flexi-adjunct school counsellors, peer supporters and community resources such as Response, Early Assessment and Intervention for Community Mental Health teams and Family Service Centres.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors Mr Louis Ng.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors Thank you, Sir. And I thank the Minister of State for the reply. I have seen the good and important work our school counsellors do, but I think they need some help, they are severely understaffed. Could I ask the Minister of State whether we are planning to increase the number of trained school counsellors in school? What is the ideal number and perhaps what is the timeframe for this increase?

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors As I mentioned earlier on, all our Primary school, Secondary school, Junior College (JC) and Centralised Institutes (CI) schools are resource with one or two school counsellors. And in total, we have about 410 school counsellors deployed in our schools currently.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors Hon Member Louis Ng has mentioned that this might not be a sufficient number. Actually, our schools can also engage flexi-adjunct school counsellors to supplement their short-term manpower needs and this is at the discretion of the school leaders and management. Overall, about 120 flexi-adjunct school counsellors are engaged in our schools. MOE has also provided further training to over 700 teachers, who are then deployed as teacher-counsellors in our schools to work alongside the school counsellors.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors Currently, there are about two to three teacher-counsellors in each school and we aim to increase the number of teacher-counsellors to over 1,000 over the next few years. I hope the hon Member and Members in this Chamber take a more holistic approach towards supporting students with counselling needs. The load cannot fall fully on the school counsellors. Instead, we need to look wider at the community support within the school – fellow students, teachers, adjunct school counsellors and outside of the schools, the community partners. Our interest must be to provide adequate and effective support to our students.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors Mr Louis Ng.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors Thank you, Sir. Just a further clarification. We talked about the teacher-counsellors, but I think we agreed that teachers are really quite overworked. I just spent the weekend with the Singapore Teachers' Union talking about the workload and their concerns. Now you are asking to do counselling work as well. And that is why the clarification really is on whether we can increase the support to school counsellors, separate from teacher-counsellors, so teachers can focus on teaching and school counsellors can help the students who really do need that help quite desperately.

Data for Full-time Trained and Untrained School Counsellors We recognise that counselling work is demanding and teacher-counsellors have to balance their teaching and counselling workload. Schools does have the flexibility to reduce teaching or CCA duties for teacher-counsellors to provide them more time to spend with their students if they need to. And training for teacher-counsellors also has been enhanced to equip them not only to support their students' well-being, but also better manage their own well-being. We do that for the school counsellors too. Self-care is also important for the counsellors.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases The following question stood in the name of Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim –

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases 5 To ask the Minister for Home Affairs (a) what is the (i) average (ii) longest and (iii) shortest time it takes for the Anti-Scam Centre (ASC) to investigate scam cases thus far; and (b) does the ASC provide guidance to individuals who experience frozen accounts to appeal to the courts under section 35(8) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases Question No 5.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases Minister for Home Affairs): Mr Speaker, Sir, we had answered a Parliamentary Question on the time it takes Police to investigate scam cases just recently in July 2022.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases The time taken to complete scam investigations depends on a couple of factors such as the type of scam, how well the scammer covers his tracks and whether or not the monies have been transferred overseas, because if it involves overseas jurisdictions, which often is the case when it comes to scams that happened in Singapore, then the time taken is necessarily longer. In that sense, every case in terms of investigation time differs significantly.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases Bank accounts suspected to be involved in scam operations will be frozen by the Police, with monies seized as proceeds of crime. The freeze on the bank accounts will be lifted upon completion of investigations.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases Persons whose bank accounts are frozen can make an application to the Courts to withdraw money for reasonable living or legitimate expenses. Section 35(8) of the Criminal Procedure Code allows the account holder to submit an application to the courts to access their funds for the payment of basic expenses, including any payment for foodstuff, rent, discharge of a mortgage, medicine, medical treatment, taxes, insurance premiums and public utility charges, amongst others. Where asked, the Police will inform account holders of this possibility and advise them to seek legal advice.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases Mr Gerald Giam.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases I thank the Minister of State for her replies. I have got to two supplementary questions. Nowadays, bank accounts are absolutely essential for daily living because if the bank account is frozen, it could severely impact the person's ability to conduct daily transactions like receiving their salary. My first supplementary question is, the Minister of State mentioned that they can apply to conduct some limited transactions, does this include being able to receive their salary into their bank accounts?

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases Secondly, can the Singapore Police Force (SPF) and even the Prison Service provide banks with a letter stating that the investigation or conviction against the person has been completed and what the outcome is so the bank will not flag these persons as being high-risk and prevent them from being from using the bank account or opening a bank account.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases I thank the Member for his supplementary questions. Indeed, we recognise that victims of scams require their bank accounts to be able to make daily transactions. We all recognise the importance of having a bank account to facilitate these transactions. I think the difficulty that the Police faces is that during investigations, some of these bank accounts, unfortunately, from the victim's perspective, they are absolutely a victim in the absolute sense.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases But what has happened to some of these accounts is that they may be also tainted with the sense that scam monies may also have been remitted into these accounts, because when a scam syndicate operates, we often see that monies are transferred from one bank account to another and there is often co-mingling of monies in bank accounts. So, the Police actually has to freeze the relevant bank accounts for the purposes of investigations.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases The Police freezes these bank accounts when there are two instances. Let me just share with you, for instance, where another victim has made a police report and designates a specific bank account as having received their scam monies. So, the victim from your perspective, victim A for instance, may see himself or herself as the victim who has transferred monies out. But actually, if you look at the entire scam syndicates and its operations, this particular victim A's bank account, could have been compromised whereby another victim's monies has been transferred in as well. That is number one.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases Number two, as part of fund tracing investigations, because for instance, in a job scam, it can impact hundreds of persons at the same time. So, as part of tracing the flows of monies, they will have to freeze many bank accounts and you will often see that there are multiple claimants on the specific sums of monies.

Time Taken for Anti-Scam Centre to Investigate Cases I just wanted to share that this is the background as to why the Police has to freeze bank accounts. For instance, you mentioned where a victim actually requires a bank account to be able to facilitate their transactions, if the bank account is actually frozen, what we would suggest to the victim, is actually for them to open another bank account for the purposes of receiving their salaries, because unfortunately, like I mentioned in my original reply, the time taken for investigations for scams can differ significantly, depending on the complexity of the case. And we do not want to unnecessarily impede the victims' ability to transact on a bank account, so we would typically recommend that they set up a separate bank account, to be able to receive their salaries.