South West District Mayor & Senior Parliamentary Secretary of Ministry of Enivironment and Water Resources - Dr Amy Khor (Picture)SINGAPORE: In the event of an accident or crime, the instinct for many people is to pick up the phone and dial "999" for the police. Authorities are now planning to extend a similar service for those in need of social assistance with a one-stop helpline.
The new line, called ComCare, is set to replace six existing hotlines. Currently, the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) and the five Community Development Councils (CDCs) each run one hotline.
This move to consolidate social services comes at a time when the Government is extending more help to the poor and needy, in light of the widening income gap and the recent hike to the Goods and Services Tax.
A tender was called by MCYS recently to set up, operate and run this proposed ComCare helpline. It will be a toll-free line with two numbers: 1800-222 0000 and 1800-COMCARE.
This outsourced helpline can either operate 24 hours daily or for 12 hours on weekdays and five hours on Saturdays, according to tender documents on the Government's online procurement portal, GeBIZ.
A baseline of about 6,300 calls per month is expected. All messages left on the voice recording system should be responded to within one working day.
Agents who man the service must cater to callers who speak in English, Malay, Tamil and Mandarin.
The helpline must field requests for social assistance and reply to general queries, as well as to make preliminary assessments and track cases to ensure that calls are properly received by the "appropriate" agency that was referred to, among other things.
Help agencies to be hooked up in this initiative include the CDCs, the National Council of Social Service, family service centres, town councils, Government ministries, statutory boards and religious organisations.
Setting aside doubts that outsourcing such a service will add another layer of bureaucracy and undermine the quality of aid rendered, South West District Mayor Amy Khor said that the training of the agents will be "crucial".
"You have to give them proper training, send them down to (help agencies such as) the CDCs to observe and learn. But it is the CDC staff — the ones who are currently taking such calls — who will still be the ones to evaluate and provide the necessary help at the back end."
Dr Khor, who is also the Senior Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, felt that aid could be reached more efficiently with this new helpline.
"If done properly, it can make us more efficient because when the calls come in, we know that they are cases that we can work on immediately, instead of having to sift through them and do the referrals," she said.
Mr Lee Kim Siang, who is chairman for the charity Thye Hua Kwan Moral Society, applauded the move to have a single helpline. He said that it would "reduce confusion" on who and where to get help. He also felt that the one-stop hotline will also prevent people from turning "to the wrong people and get bad advice". - TODAY/fa
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