NEW POPULATION POLICY (Response to incentive schemes)

The following question stood in the name of Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon -

Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon: To ask the Acting Minister for Health since the implementation of the various incentive schemes to encourage couples to have more children, how many per cent of working parents have made use of the tax relief scheme, child care leave and other schemes that are provided.

Mr Goh Chee Wee (Boon Lay): On behalf of Mrs Yu-Foo, Question No. 13, Sir.

Mr Yeo Cheow Tong: Sir, on the basis of the latest statistics available, the response to the various incentive schemes announced in March 1987 under the new population policy are as follows:

(i) As at 30th June, a total of 2,632 Government and statutory board officers had applied for the special child care leave scheme.

(ii) A total of 1,918 claims were made against the Medisave account for third-child delivery expenses as at 30th June.

(iii) A total of 449 children from 3-child families had benefitted from the primary school registration priority scheme for the 1988 admission.

(iv) There was a net increase of 1,276 children enrolled in approved childcare centres as at 30th September.

(v) A total of 141 families applied for the upgrading of their HDB flats as at 31st October.

Sir, I am not able to provide any information on the tax incentive schemes since they will only take effect in the Year of Assessment 1988.

Dr Koh Lam Son: Sir, may I ask the Minister whether the response to the various incentive schemes so far gives him any confidence that in the longer term it will produce a significant change in the birth rate that we are hoping for?

Mr Yeo Cheow Tong: Sir, we will only be able to gauge the response from the beginning of next year since the new incentives and the new policy were only announced in March this year.