Singapore looks at baby gap

Press, 25 July 1986, Page 6

Singapore looks at baby gap

NZPA-Reuter Singapore Singapore had started reviewing its two-children policy for fear that it may soon run out of soldiers and workers to support an ageing population, a senior Government Minister said yesterday. The Minister of Health, Mr Yeo Cheow Tong, said in a letter, published in the English-language “Straits Times” newspaper that there would be “disturtiing consequences” if the low rate of reproduction among the 2.5 million population continued.

The Lee Kuan Yew Government embarked on the family planning policy 20 years ago to prevent a population explosion on the 620 sq km island.

Mr Yeo said fewer 19-

year-old men had enlisted for compulsory military service last year because only 50,560 babies were born in 1967 and the fertility rate was set to plunge to 37,000 in the year 2000 and 29,300 in the year 2'030. "The Singapore Armed Forces (S.A.F.) can try to mechanise whatever and whenever possible but there will always be many other functions that can only be performed by human beings,” he said.

“Unless our birth rate increases to replacement level within the next decade, the S.A.F. will need to find other less convenient and possibly less efficient alternatives to make up for this projected manpower shortage.”