A netizen has tried to seek help from MOH and wrote a post regarding his mother and urgently needs the attention of the authorities to help him in his dire situation.
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Here is the man’s Facebook post:
“Tried posting this on MOH’s fb page but it doesn’t show up. Thus tagging the team here – Ministry of Health, Singapore
To whom it may concern,I have a legitimate urgent case that I require urgent assistance with.
I’m currently serving my quarantine Order until 05 July. I have a critically ill mom in the hospice whose condition is deteriorating very quickly and is not left with much time.
I am certain that she will not be able to make it through this quarantine order given the updates I received from the hospice. You may check with the hospice on this as they can let you know more about my mother’s condition.I was also told by your team that I will have to borne the cost of any swab tests done that are “ad-hoc”.
To pay a visit on the same day, I will have to first do an ART swab, with the results out in 30 minutes. The cost is $128 per swab each time and the result lasts for 24 hours.If I were to choose to do the PCR swab test it will cost me $299.60, result lasts for 72 hours. But I will only know the result on the next day. The 72 hours includes the time I have to wait for the results to be out.
All these have to be done in order to visit my mom for 2 hours daily including the time the team ferries us from the hotel to the hospice.Honestly, this is not cheap. And this is definitely not the way if we want to visit her daily. It is illogical that I have to pay so much to see my mom who is critically ill and it is definitely not something we wanted.
I called in to your hotline this morning to appeal to waive these costs and also to extend the visiting hours. I called your hotline again this evening as there wasn’t any response from your team as it was something very urgent and I needed an answer quickly.Your customer service team picked up my call and mentioned that there was already a response but “the staff forgot” to give me a call back.
Should I receive a response earlier, I would have requested for a visit today (30 June 2021) making full use of the 24 hours test result for the ART swab test I have done yesterday evening.First of all, this is not something I wish that happened to my mum.Secondly, I don’t come from a well to do family and my dad has passed on last year. I still have a flat that is under loan and other liabilities to pay for. I don’t even earn $5k per month.
I still have to worry about the costs of the hospice bills for my mum’s stay in the hospice.Thirdly, at this point of time, I was hoping that your good team could sympathise with us and our current situation to waive off these “ad-hoc” costs but I was rejected “due to SOP”. Which brings me to my next point – In the event that my mom were to pass on and I do not have money to pay for the swab, is MOH just going to ignore my request to visit her?
Because that seems like the case. I have repeated myself several times through the phone call that my mom’s condition is critical and she may pass on anytime. I only have a mother and I am also only left with her as a parent. Can MOH sympathise with families like us and grant us an exception for such cases to waive off the charges and let us visit her for a longer time? We are all human beings and we have our own family.
Shouldn’t we help each other out on such cases and give exception instead of “going by the book” everytime and rejecting me with “I have checked with my higher management and they have rejected your request” every single time? When I mentioned I would like to speak to the higher management, I was told they DO NOT handle phone calls. In the first place, if they have the authority to make decisions, I would like to feedback that they should also be the ones to handle the phone calls for such cases.
The customer service lady then informed me that they have a supervisor but she has ended her shift. And I have to wait for 3-5 working days later to receive a call back from her. In this situation, I still have to wait. 1. I have been submitting my health declaration through the homer app on time. I am NOT in contact with anyone else and I am feeling fine. I have done my swab tests and my results all showed negative. 2. I am just trying to spend the final moments with my mum, together with my sister.
We are left with our mum, she is also only left with us. Can the team try to understand the situation we are in? We are not coming up with excuses to avoid this quarantine order. 3. For the past few visits, we had to liaise with the Certis integrated quarantine services team and MOH just to visit my mom. On 29 June 2021, we have submitted a request to visit her. In total, it took 9 hours for all the procedures to be done.
We only managed to visit her at 10pm itself. Now, again, if my mom were to pass on suddenly and I have to travel down to the hospice urgently to see her and settle the paperwork etc, do I still have to wait till 9 hours later? It is ridiculous that despite the case was under expedition, we only managed to get everything done and could only visit my mum 9 hours later. So much time was wasted, and it really worries me that if my mom passes away during this time, nobody could help us on this because all the designated visitors from the hospice list including myself are all quarantined.4.
We have been cooperative since the start of this quarantine order. Like I mentioned, my mom do not have much time left and it is very likely that she might not be able to make it through this period while we are under quarantine. I’m sorry I have to resort to posting on this page otherwise my case will be swept under the carpet so that the team can quickly close my case.
Please look into this urgently and not brush me off with a standard reply.5. To add on, your offices have been calling me everyday asking me on my current location. With that tracking device tagged onto us, I’m surprised that I’m still receiving calls daily to check if I am at home or the hotel. May I know then what is the purpose of the tracker? What’s worse is that they even informed us that they will be coming to install a tracker when I mentioned I already have one on. In total the team had visited me thrice to install the tracking device.6.
I have been accommodating and understanding towards the internal miscommunications the team had yet did not complain. I would like to emphasize that I am not escaping from this order. However right now we are at our wit’s end and are seeking the team to look into this ASAP. Please get back to me ASAP as I mentioned my mom is already critically ill and does not have much time left.Thank you.”
Source: Poly Lim
