SINGAPORE - Former senior civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow is known for speaking his mind. Yesterday, he reaffirmed his reputation by calling for funds and talent to be channelled towards helping the most underprivileged children.

The Government should deploy its funds and the energies of the country's "social elites" - community and religious leaders - to shelter, feed and educate the bottom 5 per cent of these children, he said at the launch of his second book.

Without such early intervention, the 73-year old said, these children - most of whom are from broken families - will become a future source of problems for society. "Otherwise, we will lose 5 per cent of our 40,000 children every year," he said at a dialogue during the book launch. Sociologist Terence Chong had asked what role Mr Ngiam saw for the elites in religious and voluntary organisations. The book, Dynamics Of The Singapore Success Story: Insights By Ngiam Tong Dow, was launched by Foreign Minister George Yeo at the Fullerton Hotel, which once housed the Finance Ministry where Mr Ngiam spent much of his career.

The 212-page book is a compilation of speeches and interviews Mr Ngiam gave from 2004 until earlier this year. He is now an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Mr Ngiam was just 33 years old when he became the Communications Ministry's permanent secretary in 1970. He went on to serve in several other key ministries and chaired, among others, the Economic Development Board and the Housing Board. Since he retired from public service in 2003, Mr Ngiam has made headlines with his frank and often contrarian views on a range of issues.

But he told The Straits Times yesterday: "Even when I was in the service, I gave my opinions frankly. It's in my nature. When I think I have a better perspective, I tell my bosses."In his speech, Mr Yeo touched on the relationship between ministers and civil servants, which he said was neither simplistic nor static. "A new minister should take good counsel from his permanent secretary to avoid making unnecessary mistakes," he said.

Mr Yeo recalled that when he was a young minister for information and the arts, Mr Ngiam - who was permanent secretary for finance then - almost killed the Esplanade project but gave his fullest support to transforming the National Library system. "When he was in the civil service, his views were expressed within government walls. In retirement, outside those walls, he speaks and writes publicly which sometimes raises eyebrows," said Mr Yeo. "But, and I can personally vouch for this, it is the same self-confident, high-minded individual whose starting and end points are what is good for Singapore and Singaporeans," he added.

Yesterday, Mr Ngiam stressed that Singapore's success would not have been possible without political stability - which allowed technocrats like him to get on with creating jobs and building flats at a time when unemployment and slums were rife.

"It was a virtuous circle. As Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew once told me, if a man has a job and a roof over his head, he is not likely to riot," he said. Mr Ngiam's second book aims to explain how Singapore achieved its economic and social success in a short span of time, in the hope that it holds lessons for developing countries.

It is divided into three parts: The first explores what underpins Singapore's growth, the second looks at the pillars of its knowledge-based economy, and the third highlights lessons China might find useful. It comes four years after Mr Ngiam's first book, A Mandarin And The Making Of Public Policy: Reflections By Ngiam Tong Dow.

Asked if he plans to write another book, Mr Ngiam said: "I've said what I want to say... I'll take a short rest first."Among the policies that Mr Ngiam critiqued is one that concerns the social sector, which he highlighted in a 2009 interview reproduced in the book.Some charities have to raise funds to pay market rents to the Singapore Land Authority for their use of space in public buildings. This was due to the Government's "unflinching principle" of not subsidising land use, which means charities are distracted from their true mission of helping and caring for the poor and disadvantaged, he said.