Clarification by Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Manpower

The Chairman: Mr Hawazi Daipi, I understand you have a clarification to make.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Manpower (Mr Hawazi Daipi): T hank you, Madam, for giving me the opportunity to make a clarification to Mr Gerald Giam's statement on household income. Yesterday, Mr Giam stated in his speech that almost 85,000 resident households are earning a monthly income of less than $1,000. [Please refer to "Sectoral Minimum Wages", Official Report, 9 March 2015, Vol 93, Issue No 12.]

These figures come from the Household Expenditure Survey published by the Department of Statistics. What Mr Giam did not mention is that 57% of these 85,000 households are not working. There are many of these retiree households. This information can be found in the same table that Mr Giam had used.