Annual report / Municipality of Singapore, Health Department.

  • Singapore. Municipality Health Department.
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report / Municipality of Singapore, Health Department. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/112 (page 38)
    Towards the end of the year action was taken against one of these insanitary “ Kampongs ” in the Geylang district. A census taken of the huts showed that there were 244 adults and 115 children under 12 housed there. As the Census Schedules of 18 months before are still available, I had the figures taken out from these. They show that on Census night there were 120 adults and 39 children housed in these huts. There are many such Kampongs in the Municipal area and where they are close to the centre of the town, they are dangerously overcrowed. I may say I have never seen localised overcrowding so bad as it is at present in my twenty years in Singapore. Again the number of births in the municipal area for the year under review was in excess of the 1931 figure by 104, and though this is no proof with regard to the general population, it should be remembered that the sex ratio in Singapore is now 1 woman to 1.76 men. This rather negatives the frequently heard statement that the Chinese are returning •wholesale to China with their families. Further, the evidence from the Abattoirs and Markets, if the returns are carefully analysed, is corroborative of the fact that no great exodus did take place. Rather are the figures suggestive that the reverse took place, as there can be no doubt, I think, that during the year the main bulk of the population had not the means to buy more than bare necessities and simply had to tighten up their belts. In the Abattoir the number of pigs slaughtered was down by only 5,500 on the 1931 figures of 226,000, but the slaughter of sheep and goats was 13,000 in excess of the total of 30,600 for 1931, while oxen were up by 2,400 on the 10,600 slaughtered in 1931. The Market returns are perhaps not quite so convincing. Though there was quite a marked drop in the amounts of many foodstuffs, there was an increase in one or two of the more staple articles of diet, especially of fish. Of this latter, 12,250 tons passed through the markets in 1931, but the 1932 figures exceeded this by approximately 100 tons. f rom this and other evidence, then, all cumulative in value, I am of opinion that there was no large drop in the population. The full effect oi the slump was visible by the end of 1931 and most of the population who had to go, had already gone. Lu„ while I am convinced that there was no marked decrease in the population, I do not seek to maintain that this low record death rate is entirely due to improved health conditions in the City. For the first time in its history, since it became a big towm, I think Singapore is able to show a death rate which approximates more to a true one than has ever bttn lecoided before. For some years now, I have been endeavouring to I Kwe that Singapore on account of its geographical position, its hospital and other facilities, is a clearing house for the poor, the sick, and the r.eciopit.- the surrounding country and islands, and that this has been rti„ecte.d in its death rate. During the year industry up-country and in the inlands was moie or less at a standstill, estates and mines wTere on a Care a]K^ maintenance basis with only skeleton labour forces, decrepits ci.n unfits were mostly weeded out, and the drifting into Singapore of t.iese, though still evident, was nothing to what it was in former years.