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Ms Pushpavalli helping her nine-year-old daughter, Anita, get ready for school. Anita is a beneficiary of The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund. -- ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG
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NINE-YEAR-OLD Anita Kanaka Veeran is too shy about her overbite to smile. It took several minutes before the girl was persuaded to crack a smile for the camera.
Braces, though, are out of the question. She and her mother, Ms Pushpavalli Thamby, 46, cannot afford them on their $1,000 a month income.
Ms Pushpavalli, a single mother who does not work, receives the sum as maintenance from Anita's father, whom she divorced last year.
The Primary 4 pupil is one of about 8,000 beneficiaries of The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund this year. She gets $45 each month, which works out to between 50 cents and $1 of pocket money a day. The rest goes to helping her cover her bus and train fares, taekwondo classes and $60 monthly Tamil tuition.
Each morning, Anita makes the five-minute walk with her mother to Meridian Primary School opposite their Pasir Ris flat.
She wants to be an artist some day. Swirling dragons and sketches of the Powerpuff Girls cartoon characters fill her class journal. Her mother, however, has her heart set on Anita completing her education and doing well academically - something she herself never had the chance to do.
Ms Pushpavalli, who has six siblings, left school at Primary 3 when her family could no longer afford to send her to school.
'We got 10 cents of pocket money a day. If the money ran out, we drank tap water and went hungry,' she recalled. She went to work at age 12, first at a plastic bag plant and then as a factory operator.
When she was matchmade at 26 to an oil company supervisor, she stopped working, believing 'he would take care of me forever', she said, wiping away tears. Four years ago, she and her husband separated.
Her problems did not end there. Her son, who is now 17 and sitting for his N levels in Boys' Home - a reform centre for juvenile delinquents -
began arguing with her and demanding money while in his mid-teens.
Ms Pushpavalli's limited education means she is unable to help her children with their studies. 'My greatest wish is for my children to study well and be good,' she said, gazing at a photo of Anita's brother wearing a kid-size mortar board and gown in his kindergarten graduation picture.
When she appealed to the Singapore Indian Development Association's (Sinda) family service centre last year for help with her son, the people there told her about the school pocket money fund and gave her an application for Anita.
caiwj@sph.com.sg
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