This year, the Workers Party (WP) chose to devote most of their time for cuts to three ministries - the Ministry of Manpower, Ministry of Transport, and Ministry of Health.

Expenditure for transport overtook education for the first time this year, and healthcare is expected to follow suit next year - unsurprising for a country that is rapidly aging and spending furiously on new transport infrastructure.

Now, since opposition members of parliament (MPs) have 20 minutes each to say whatever they want during the Committee of Supply debate, and there's only a handful of them, they had better spend that precious time on the things they deem worthy. Or what may be chief concerns of Singaporeans.

Here are the cuts that the WP made for the respective ministries:

Cuts for the Ministry of Manpower Committee of Supply

1. Making the Tripartite Standard on Employment of Term Contract Employees more robust to protect freelance workers.
2. Implementing incentive mechanisms to encourage self-employed workers to contribute to CPF.
3. Implementing definitive guidelines on what constitutes sexual harassment in the workplace.
4. Questioning the inclusion of HDB flat type as a factor in determining Silver Support payout for the elderly needy.
5. Allowing some flexibility in employee CPF contribution for those who have already met the minimum sum.
6. Implementing differentiated CPF Life payouts since women live longer than men but also earn lesser.
7. Making Job Redesign for Older Workers an industry wide practice to cope with aging workforce. 
8. To work towards integrating workers with mental illness just as how we have integrated workers with disabilities.

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Cuts for the Ministry of Transport Committee of Supply

1. Rebates for family with children who need cars even as we move towards a car-lite society.
2. Make travelling in the Straits of Singapore safer.
3. Consider docking stations as a better instrument for curbing indiscriminate parking of shared bikes compared to QR codes.
4. Ensure foot paths in estates are barrier-free and PMD-friendly
5. Shared Green Timing programmed at signalised traffic junctions posed a danger to pedestrians and vehicles.
6. Start teaching safer PMD use and etiquette in schools.

Cuts for the Ministry of Health Committee of Supply

1. Learn from Korea’s Silver Towns in developing housing developments for an aging population.
2. Make metal health support accessible in the heartlands.
3. Consider a National Dementia Plan which addresses the needs of dementia patients, promote public awareness and improve the quality of health care, social care and long-term care support
4. Make sure that food manufacturers also play their part in the war against diabetes by incentivising the development of low-sugar food.
5. Make hospital investigations transparent to next of kin.
6. Subsidise vaccines to encourage higher take up.

There you have it. WP's focus for this year's Budget.

Top image via YouTube.