Reducing Cost of Certificates of Entitlement for Vehicles used by Care-givers in Driving People with Disabilities or Autism

16 Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Transport whether the cost of Certificates of Entitlement for vehicles used by care-givers in driving people with disabilities or autism for daily or weekly activities can be reduced.

Mr Ong Ye Kung: The Government wants to help this group of drivers. But there are inherent problems to do so through the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) system. This is because COE is a market-based mechanism to allocate quotas for private vehicles. If we were to have a system that provides concessions for the vehicles based on who is using them, we will need to cater to many groups, and have to introduce more restrictive rules to verify and prevent abuse.

Instead, the Government has introduced targeted support measures to better channel our assistance, such as the Home Caregiving Grant and the Foreign Domestic Worker Levy Concession schemes, to defray the costs of caregiving for persons with disabilities (PwDs). There are also schemes to facilitate PwDs’ mobility and access to transport services, such as the Disabled Persons Scheme, and the Taxi Subsidy Scheme.