VOICES A t Central Singapore

I S S U E 55

N O V E M B E R - " D E C E M B E R 2010

A Central Singapore Community Development Council publication

TRlCT MEET I

N G 201

.PORE

V O I C E S People 11

SPEAKING FOR THE POOR Today, Lily Neo fights for them in English, hut she recalls struggling to learn the language in her teens. TEXT WONG SHER MAINE PHOTO JUSTIN LOH

IN FLUENT ENGLISH, INDONESIAN-BORN LILY NEO, reveals she only started learning the language at 16, when she flew to Penang for further studies. Until then, she spoke just Bahasa Indonesia and Hokkien. Mandarin was picked up at the age of 41, because she had to give a speech in it at a grassroots event.

"You have touched a sore point!" says the 57-year-old, laughing at this writer's surprise.'Tve always felt that in terms of language I was less privileged, as I lost out on the advantage of learning both when I was a child."

She adds that at first, she struggled to pronounce the "th" and "sh" sounds. "I had to learn how to say 'She sells seashells on the seashore' as a teenager. My English tutor was always asking me, can you please speak properly?"

The M P for Jalan Besar GRC, who has a reputation for pressing for better answers to her questions in Parliament, did the drills, aced the exams, and finished well enough to get a medical degree from the University of Ireland.

It took her three weeks of intense study in 1994, when she scrambled to learn the four tones used in Mandarin, so she could give a speech in that language. She eventually delivered it, reading from a hanyu pinyin script.

Nowadays, she makes plenty of Chinese speeches at grassroots events and uses the language when she chit-chats with residents. However, she has given only one speech in it in Parliament so far. Generally, her subject is the poor in Singapore. Their situation shocked her when, as a doctor, she went on house-to-house visits in Chinatown and saw elderly people living alone in miserable conditions.

Ten per cent of all public assistance recipients are found in her ward, Kreta Ayer-Kim Seng.

In October, she launched Family Improvement Social Help (Fish), a project where lower-income residents earn $5 per hour making handicrafts, which are sold by a shop owned by the Kreta Ayer-Kim Seng Citizens' Consultative Committee at Majestic Theatre.

She says: "We want to give them occupation and dig­nity. Hopefully some of them can qualify for the open job market in future."

She feels particularly for them, having had a comfort­

able life, as the daughter of parents who ran an ice factory and a prawn export business, and the wife of a gynaecologist. She arrived for this interview early and armed with a sheaf of printouts about her constituents and how they are helped.

The meeting was conducted over lunch at one of her fa­vourite dining places. She recommended the cheesecake and smoked salmon but ordered vegetable wraps with salad on the side for herself, and debated between real sugar and a substitute for her tea. "My parents are both diabetic. I have to be careful," explains Dr Neo, who is enviously slim.

It is another brief revelation, as she moves ruthlessly on to her latest concern - the young poor. These are families living in rental blocks where the father may be an odd-job labourer, the mother a housewife who has to stay home to look after their young children, and who come to her at meet-the-people sessions because they cannot pay all their bills.

They do not get enough help, states Dr Neo. They don't qualify for public assistance. As they're able-bodied, any assistance is temporary. "They need continuous counselling and plenty of follow-through, to take care of the children's education and also upgrade the parents. The government has to do more in terms of putting in more resources for social workers."

While she fights for more on that score, she prefers much less when it comes to the number of foreigners being granted permanent residency.

There are many men who, at MPS, ask for help in get­ting their foreign brides long-term passes or PR. "They wi l l say, oh they want to get married so their wives can support them. Some wil l say they need wives to look after their par­ents who are sick. I ask them, 'Can you support your wife?' I'm glad the government is clamping down. They were a bit too lenient over the last two years."

What drives her is the desire to make life better for others. "My ambition was to become a doctor because I felt helping others was my purpose in life," says the mother of two, who has a clinic at Tanglin Halt. "I still ask myself, 'Did I do useful work today?' If I've been given that respon­sibility, I must do my best."