Impact of Healthcare Infrastructure Expansion Plans on Staff's Remuneration

61 Ms K Thanaletchimi asked the Minister for Health with the infrastructure expansion plans of current and future healthcare institutions, how will the expansion be funded so that the remuneration of healthcare staff will not be affected when the healthcare clusters have to dig into their reserves to fund current excess capacities.

Mr Gan Kim Yong: The Ministry of Health (MOH) fully funds the development costs of healthcare infrastructure at our public healthcare institutions. This includes the cost of building in spare capacity to cater for future expansion to meet increases in demand.

Spaces catering to future expansion are designed so that the institutions are able to put them to productive uses in the interim. This minimises the holding cost associated with such spare capacity. When institutions encounter difficulties doing so, MOH will work with them on possible solutions and assist them with separate funding to defray these additional costs if necessary.

Therefore, the cost of expansion of our healthcare institutions is separately funded and should not affect the funding for the remuneration of our healthcare staff.