Enforcement against Bogus Fund-raising Activities

The following question stood in the name of Ms Mary Liew –

To ask the Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth what are the existing enforcement measures against bogus fund-raising activities and bogus fund-raisers.

Mdm Speaker, all fund-raising appeals conducted in publicly accessible areas or from house to house require a licence from the Police.

If in doubt, members of the public can check if a fund-raising appeal has a valid licence from the Police. They can do so using the SMS verification service. With this service, anyone who sends an SMS can receive details such as whether a valid licence has been issued and if so, the name of the fund-raising organisation and the approved fund-raising period.

Furthermore, through the Charity Portal's fund-raising permit search facility, members of the public can obtain additional information such as the approved locations for the conduct of the fund-raising activity as well as the purposes for which the funds will be raised.

If members of the public suspect that any fund-raising activity is fraudulent, they should report the matter to the Police immediately. The conduct of bogus fund-raising activities is tantamount to cheating and is a crime that will be dealt with by the Police.

Firstly, what are the penalties for these bogus fund-raisers and how are these penalties communicated so that it is a preventive measure? And secondly, how are we educating the public so that they are able to discriminate between the bogus fund-raisers and the genuine ones?

I thank the Member for the questions. I do have not the details on the penalties now but I think we can provide the information and I agree with her that we should certainly raise awareness that there are penalties. There is a system in place that people can check on the licences. It is very convenient – send an SMS, the number is 74688 and you can check whether the licence is valid. We will put up more information on how people can do that. There is a charity portal. Check the charity portal. You can get information on the permits and where the fund-raising activities are being held.

This is the information we can put out more to raise public awareness to do their own checks and then as a deterrent measure, as the Member had said, we can highlight what the punishments are. There are penalties in place. I do not have the details but I would be happy to share them separately.