Polytechnic Students Should NOT Pay Adult Travel Fares - SINGAPORE

Currently, students from polytechnics and universities pay twice as much in bus fares compared to their peers in junior colleges (JCs) and Institutes of Technical Education (ITE), who are classified as post-secondary-level.

Polytechnic students, who in all technicalities are doing their post secondary studies, are considered tertiary education students. We end up paying adult fare! Our counterparts in junior colleges get to enjoy the subsidies while we are denied the subsidies.

"With the comparison of MRT concession pass between JCs and Polytechnics, JC student pay about $25 while Polytechnic student pay about $45 per month for the same service." Quoted from Edison Lim's Speech, titled : Student Rate For All Polytechnic Students.

Even as a soon to be polytechnic student, he/she would too have started paying adult fares even before entering a polytechnic. He/she is no longer given student subsidies, even though their age is clearly below that of an adult.

What is most absurd is that, when queried by MP for Nee Soon GRC about student concessions on trains and public buses, the Transport Minister Mr. Lui Tuck Yew, response was that it would cost transport operators $28 million more per year.

Can’t the government fork out the $28 million dollar per year, to provide subsidies for polytechnic students who are doing post-secondary studies? Isn’t the job of the government to provide for the welfare of its people? And would a $28 million pay cut from SMRT’s $895.1 million, or SBS’s $720 Million, affect them? I think not.