SINGAPORE: The latest tranche of Community Development Council (CDC) vouchers meant to defray certain costs for Singaporeans has been largely welcomed online, although not without some criticism.
Some Singaporeans online have decried the way the vouchers are released, while others call for straight cash payouts instead of such voucher schemes.
In a detailed comment that has been deemed “sensible criticism” by fellow netizens, one Reddit user acknowledged that the “vouchers are a very welcome help for all Singaporean families to cope with inflation,” but the execution of the scheme “leaves a lot of room for improvement.”
Calling the release system “just too complicated and messy to use,” he said:
“I am a tech-savvy, educated person, and I find it a massive hassle to manage the vouchers, so I can only imagine how the elderly will feel.
With this new set of vouchers, I now have 3 landing sites of vouchers – the Jan batch, the climate vouchers and now, the June batch.”
Asking whether the system is deliberately designed to be complicated, he added: “I don’t understand the reasons to make this so complicated, when a stored value system with topups is much easier to use and implement.”
Responding to his concerns, some suggested that straight cash payouts would eliminate such issues and give beneficiaries greater freedom.
One netizen pointed out: “If it’s private entity. This will be a understandable. “Let me give you limited time discount, you utilize it, our profit margin will be slightly impacted, if you don’t is our gain.”
If the government has the intention of issuing this voucher with mindset that it’s part of the government spending. They should just issue it out as cash, so you can just use it on whatever you want, rather than have this mentality that, if you use it, your gain. You don’t, then we just spent less.”
The CDC vouchers are part of a slew of initiatives announced as part of Budget 2024 to help Singaporeans save some funds amid the escalating cost of living and the squeeze of inflation.
The government is also set to issue cash payouts to most Singaporeans in September and December of this year. /TISG
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