by Sue-Ann Chia

SINGAPORE'S low-wage workers received more than $1.1 billion in government aid in the last three years, a boost that helped narrow the income gap last year for the first time in a decade.

As a result, at least 60,000 of them were no longer in the bottom 20 per cent of wage earners making $1,200 or less a month. This picture of the economic improvement of low-wage workers between 2006 and 2008 was given on Sunday in a government report that credited their 'significant progress' to aid initiatives tailored for them.

The centrepiece in the array of aid is Workfare, the income supplement scheme which gives low-wage workers an average of $1,000 a year.

Read the full story in Monday's edition of The Straits Times.

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