Debated in Parliament on 11 Jul 2018.
Assoc Prof Daniel Goh Pei Siong asked the Minister for Health whether there is a crunch in the specialised transportation of seniors to care centres and, if so, how is this affecting the placement of seniors in these centres.
Mr Speaker, all eldercare centres funded by the Ministry of Health are required to provide transport services for their clients, where necessary, as part of the funding condition. This ensures that clients can access the care services they need. The Government provides transport subsidies for subsidised clients who require mobility assistance.
Centres can tap on a range of transport options to serve their clients. New centres can apply for a one-time grant to defray the costs of purchasing a wheelchair-friendly van. Alternatively, centres may engage the appointed transport operators under the AIC centralised transport service to send seniors to and from the centres. AIC also works with taxi operators and private hire car operators to expand the range of transport services available to centres. For example, AIC has engaged ComfortDelgro to provide scheduled transport services for centre clients.
From time-to-time, some centres may encounter short-term challenges in accessing transport services. For example, some centres may take more time to purchase and modify a van or to enter into arrangements with their preferred transport operators. When any centre faces transport difficulties, we encourage them to inform us and AIC will work with them to find alternative transport arrangements so that there is minimal impact on client placement.
Speaker, I thank the Senior Minister of State. Two questions. The first one is regarding the AIC's centralised transport service. In your view, is there any supply crunch right now in providing the specialised vans and going into the future where there is an extension of the eldercare centres?
The second question is with regard to the collaboration between AIC and the taxi operators and the private hire companies. Is the scope of the collaboration beyond just in terms of teaching the drivers how to handle wheelchair-bound commuters? Is it more than just that in terms of expanding the fleet, for example, into specialised vans and a more direct kind of collaboration between homes and the companies?
I would like to thank Assoc Prof Daniel Goh for the supplementary questions. Based on our landscape scan, there are multiple transport options for centres which I have already elaborated on during my Parliament Question reply and that are assessed to be able to provide adequate transport capacity to meet our current demand. We have continually grown the capacity of specialised vans to meet the demand over the years. Even if the demand increases, centres can activate committed capacity under the AIC centralised transport service or other specialised transport operators or use private hire cars, such as GrabAssist and taxis, as an interim approach.
My short answer is, we are able to meet the demand based on the current supply. In fact, we have some spare capacity, taking into account that our centralised transport service can ramp up the number of specialised vans to be made available.
As to the Member's supplementary question on the collaboration between GrabAssist or with taxis, other than training the taxi drivers on how to handle such clients, if need be, should there be capacity for specialised vans that can be provided by these operators, I think we can also extend that collaboration to them as well.
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