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Single mum with 16 year-old son stayed in police lock-up for 10-hours for not paying accumulated S&CC bills of $2150

Felt shocked to realise that a single mum with a school-going 16-year-old son was arrested at her office for not paying accumulated S & CC bills of $2150. She stayed in the police lock-up for close to ten hours before being release.

The S & CC fees were unpaid for 18 months since April 2018.

I told her that she is fortunate they didn’t put her in jail outright. Prolonged non-payment of S & CC bills can land a person in jail here and she still has to pay up the default after the prison discharge. It’s probable that the single mum may have ignored numerous court orders triggering a warrant of arrest as a result.

Out of the total default owed, a massive 40% or $937 went to other miscellaneous costs such as penalty charge $310 and legal fee $627. The town council is willing to waive the penalty fee of $310 but not the legal charge.

The single mum, who is working as a promoter with a monthly salary of $1000 plus, told me that each time she couldn’t pay the monthly installment of $159, the town council will send in a legal reminder which costs about $200 – further aggravating the S & CC default. It’s akin to paying a loan shark but this time it’s a legalised one.

With such atrociously high legal charges levied on errant defaulters, the law firm representing the town council must have racked in tens of thousands of dollars each month on legal fees alone.
Moreover, besides paying the monthly installment of $159 for the default owed, she has to cough up another $78.50 for fresh monthly payment for S & CC charges. This is on top of the many other bills Singaporeans are currently paying.

Our town council sinking fund has reached close to $2 billion and some estate has pooled resources to derive benefit from economy of scale but none of the savings have being passed to the residents so far. Residents also are rather clueless as to how the town council uses the S & CC fees collected which could run into millions for each estate per month.

We also realized that in the past, some town councils used the excess sinking funds to dabble in risky financial investments but they have now stopped.

As for the single mum’s financial trouble, I asked her why she didn’t rent out one of her room to alleviate the situation – she told me that she is uncomfortable living with strangers under the same household.

The small single-parent family does not receive any maintenance from the ex- husband and the mum is working 12-hour shift for seven days a week trying to keep up with all her bills especially the S & CC one which may invite a jail sentence if not properly paid.

Gilbert Goh
Editor’s note: If you wish to help the single mother by transferring funds directly into her AXS account, you may contact Gilbert at goh_gilbert@yahoo.com

PS. Just have to repost this in full to show how caring Singapore is as a country. And this practice, long standing practice of sending legal letters that cost more than the sum owed must be good practice and would not be changed. So if someone owes $20, he would still be issued with a legal letter that would cost $200 and this would add to his debt. Nice! 

In my business, when a client owes me a sum that is lesser than the cost of sending legal letters, I will treat it as bad debt and write it off instead of incurring more cost to myself and to the client.