A recent poll on MSNews revealed that 96% of respondents disagree with PM Wong saying that people in Singapore want to work longer.
Citing a Channel News Asia Article : Most people in Singapore want to work longer, provided that they are healthy: Lawrence Wong
The main gist of the article described that Singaporean’s health deteriorate quickly after they stop working.
With the aging demographic of Singapore Society, life spans have increase due to access to quality, food, healthcare services and education making everyone in general more affluent. With 1 in 5 Singaporeans projected to be above the age of 65 next year.
Issue of Work Life Balance
The issue of Work Life Balance has been on the mind of the Singaporean worker for decades. Most workers are not working cause of passion, in most cases it is pure survival. To mention the notion of career = passion is too simple. The ability to choose your career and be passionate is rather privileged, it assumes that others chose badly or just don’t care.
In life most people care about their family, their hobbies, jobs are just a means to an end. If you want more productive workers, they need to be well rested and work efficiently.
Why some retirees choose to work?
Financial
In some cases, elderly continue to work due to financial struggles, although PM it keeps them “active” , retirement should not be a privilege afforded to affluent members of society, everyone deserves time to rest and enjoy the finer things in life.
Lack of Purpose
For some individuals, they dedicated their entire lives around work, sacrificing almost everything to feed their families, when left with nothing, they realize that work was the only thing they had left in terms of “purpose”.
Are we just a society of mindless drones? There should be something more to life. Family, spend time with your families, I say this and yet some people are not physically able to do so.
Loneliness
Some elderly, either left alone, or forgotten by family have no one to turn to resort to employment as a form of socialization. It is unfortunate, this epidemic of loneliness stretches across generations and the creation of third spaces and community activities do help with it, however there will always be some left out.
Note to the PM
Sir, sincerely and respectfully, please get a sense of the ground sentiment before making such ridiculous comments, do better else suffer the consequence of the voter base.
Life is tough man
