Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Which MPs care

To me these are some of the good MPs e.g, Denise Phua, Lily Neo, Indranee Rajah, Inderjit Singh and some more I don't notice. After all they don't blow their trumpets about these things. They might be under pressure to show off more in this present environment. I only want to record it here for my kids reading this blog regularly because I often suggest that our leaders do not truly care and often just pretend to care. If they don't even pretend, they cannot keep their position. I feel my MP is one such character.

Overall it is incredibly hard to judge a person's character. Look at Yaw Shin Leong. He had duped all of us.

We have to keep an open mind. All judgments are tentative. Selecting people to fill positions of responsibility is risky business which our specie have a terrible track record.

Here is Indranee Rajah's fb post I picked off  Tan Chuan Jin's page. Looks like Indranee needs more volunteers for her new initiative.


Project :D

During my MPS a few weeks ago, I met a woman who had come for assistance on various matters. In the course of speaking with her, she asked, very shyly, if I could help her do something about her teeth. Her original appeal related to something else, but she was too embarrassed to mention her teeth problem to the petitioner writer outside. However, since she was seeing me in the room, she plucked up courage to ask about her teeth.

Her teeth were in quite bad condition and apparently some were quite literally decaying and rotting in her mouth. She had not seen a dentist because she couldn't afford to pay for the dental fees.

Again, this was one of this situations where the help is available, but she wasn't aware of it.
I referred her case to AIC for CHAS assistance ( mentioned in an earlier post and in the capacity building session- see below).

However the incident got me thinking - obviously there must be other people in the same position.

Having bad teeth makes people very self- conscious, and affects their self confidence. For the elderly, it affects their ability to eat, and hence their nutrition as well.

I decided that very evening that we should do an outreach project to identify the residents with dental problems who fall within the CHAS eligibility criteria, and help them apply for CHAS for dental treatment. Since the programme exists, we may as well leverage on it, and bring the benefit to those in need.

This project is known as Project :D (when verbalising it, it's known as "Project Smile!")

Project :D is being undertaken by the Tanjong Pagar-Tiong Bahru division. Have arrowed, (um, appointed!) two co-chairmen Kevin and Simon, who have enthusiastically taken on the task. Thanks, guys!

We'll be working with AIC and the dental clinics in the area for this project.

The project entails the following:
- identifying residents with dental problems who are eligible for CHAS;

- link them up with the participating dentists to have their dental problems diagnosed;

- help them apply for CHAS for the appropriate dental treatment. ( The amount of subsidy various depending on the type of treatment required eg filling, extraction, bridging, dentures etc)

- the govt subsidises the bulk of dental fee, but the resident will have to pay a small portion themselves. For those who are really too poor to cover their portion of the cost, we'll help them apply for other assistance under other schemes e.g. Comcare to cover the shortfall;

- follow up to see that they go for their appointments and receive the treatment dental treatment;

- See them smile when it's all done!

We started the outreach during my walkabout at blk 110. Just from blk 110 we identified a good number of eligible residents in need of dental treatment. One elderly man had, quite literally, only about 3 teeth left in his mouth. He was excited about the prospect of actually having teeth again! He said, in dialect, " Does this mean I can eat properly again?" I was both happy that we were able to offer him hope, and at the same time sad that he had missed out for so long on being able to eat properly. It reinforced my determination to make sure that residents are aware of the CHAS assistance.

This project will go a long way towards bringing smiles back to the faces of these residents.

We are on the lookout for volunteers who can help us with the outreach. We need to cover several HDB rental blocks, and go door to door to identify eligible residents. It's hard work, and we welcome all hands on deck.

If you'd like to take part in this project, do let Kevin or Simon know. I will ask them to post up details on how you can sign up to help.

:D

Indranee

1 comment:

  1. Teeth Are the most important part of our human body and they have a full impact on human haealth and personality. I am glad that i have found your blog as it has provided main great knowledge about implantat berlin. I have bookmarked your page for further updates. Thumbs up for the good posts.

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