Debated in Parliament on 5 Oct 2022.
Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Social and Family Development with the impending digitalisation of the Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) process (a) whether the related website and apps will be available in the four national languages for users who are less familiar with the English language; (b) whether smart technology will be leveraged on to provide relevant recommendations, fill up forms and skip irrelevant features based on the users’ profile; and (c)whether residents will get access to training and assistance with registering their LPA through the system.
Mr Speaker, the online form for a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) application and step-by-step instructional videos will be available in the four official languages.
If fields in the form are already known to the Government, the system will pre-fill them with the user's consent. Users will only be prompted to fill fields relevant to the scope of powers and appointment under their LPA applications. For example, if a user indicates his intent to appoint only one donee, the online form will not have a field on how multiple donees should act. Key legal terms will be explained in simple language. These features will make the LPA-making process quicker and more convenient.
Apart from designing the system to be user friendly, we have prepared instructional videos and quick reference guides for donors, donees and certificate issuers. Members of the public may also approach Citizen Connect Centres and ServiceSG Centres located island-wide for assistance.
Mr Yip Hon Weng.
I thank the Minister for his reply. I have two supplementary questions. Will the digitalised LPA be made available in NEHR to facilitate ease of use by clinicians? Second, how does the Ministry intend to improve LPA awareness and better outreach to seniors with the digitalisation of the LPA processes?
Currently, the certificate issuer must be a registered lawyer, accredited doctor or psychiatrist. I think we want to confine this to these three groups of people, because to determine whether the donor and donee should be qualified for the LPA is a very important legal process. We will keep it to that for now, and then in the future when there are needs to do so, we will expand.
For the second question, certainly, we will do as much as we can to reach out to our seniors. We have a good system of outreaching with them, either through the Silver Generation Ambassadors (SGA), AIC if they are visiting them, or even PA when they come to our contact points.
Mr Seah Kian Peng.
Just a quick supplementary question to the Minister. I think the importance of LPA is obvious and certainly more so for the seniors, the elderly. My supplementary question to Minister is whether, currently, is he able to let us know how many of us have already done our LPAs? Whatever the number is, I think it is not enough. So, my question is, how can we accelerate this and bring this to a much higher level? And it should really start at a much younger age, where possible. And maybe at certain appropriate milestones, we can incorporate this to increase the adoption.
I usually will ask the Member to file a Parliamentary Question for that, but I happen to have the number here. The total number as of end June 2022 is around 152,000.
I think the number is still small and I agree with the Member that we should encourage our friends, even ourselves, to take up the LPA. Do not take it for granted until the last minute, when there are things that you need to get someone to handle your legal affairs, your personal affairs and that someone is not authorised to do so. It is important for us to help ourselves, especially, and those that we love to make sure the LPA is signed. And we have many certificate issuers who are willing to come forward and there is already a waiver for those who are coming to get an LPA, for Singapore Citizens, up to, I think, March 2023.
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