SINGAPORE — A woman was jailed 12 months on Friday (Jan 14) after she deceived the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) into disbursing a total of S$2,900 worth of Covid-19-related financial aid.
Zarifah Idris, 37, pleaded guilty to four charges of cheating and a single charge of forgery.
Eight other similar charges were taken into consideration for sentencing.
District Judge Lim Wen Juin, who presided over the hearing, said that he was not ordering Zarifah to repay MSF because he had factored in during sentencing that she had not made any restitution.
Court documents showed that before Zarifah committed the offences, she was employed as a preschool teacher at the Iyad Perdaus Child Development Centre in Chua Chu Kang on Jan 2 last year.
While serving a six-month probationary period at the centre, her performance was assessed to have been unsatisfactory.
Giving an example of her employer's assessment, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Gabriel Choong said that in April that year, Zarifah did not show up for work for 14 days and did not give prior notice of this.
The centre’s principal eventually terminated Zarifah’s employment on April 30.
That same day, Zarifah applied to MSF for a S$500 payout under the Covid-19 Temporary Relief Fund on the basis that she had lost her job due to the pandemic.
The fund was part of a financial support scheme announced by the Government on March 26 in 2020 as part of the Resilience Budget to deal with the economic and social impact of Covid-19. The application period was from April 1 to 30 that year.
Among the criteria for application was that individuals needed to have been retrenched or suffered at least a 30 per cent loss of personal income due to the Covid-19 crisis after Jan 23.
DPP Choong said that at no point did the childcare centre “face financial difficulty due to Covid-19 that led to the retrenchment of any employee”.
To support her application, Zarifah had also forged a letter purportedly from her former workplace.
Days later, on May 5, she again applied to MSF for a S$2,400 payout under the Covid-19 Support Grant, which served a similar function as the Temporary Relief Fund.
She forged documents from her former workplace to support her application as well.
In both instances, she was able to receive the payouts and she knew that her reasons for applying for the payouts were invalid.
More at https://www.todayonline.com/singapo...g-s2900-worth-covid-19-relief-payouts-1791181
