SINGAPORE: The digital directory service at Tiong Bahru Plaza was affected by the recent ransomware attack that hit systems of dozens of countries earlier this week. 

In a statement sent to Channel NewsAsia on Sunday (May 14), Tiong Bahru Plaza general manager Karen Siow said: “Tiong Bahru Plaza’s digital directory service was affected by the recent malware incidence, which we became aware of at approximately 5pm on Saturday.” 

She confirmed that there was no sensitive information in the mall directories and that neither money nor bitcoin were paid to the hackers. 

“There is no other anticipated impact from this malware as the digital directory systems, from the onset, run on a separate network from the rest of the corporate networks of AsiaMalls,” she said. 

She added that the digital directory service is provided to the mall by a third-party vendor and that vendor systems have been disconnected from the board while the a solution patch is being installed. 

“We will continue to monitor the situation with the third-party vendor and remain vigilant against any future incidences,” she added. 

MALWARE MESSAGE ALSO SEEN AT ORCHARD CENTRAL 

Photos of a similar malware message found on a display screen belonging to a Desigual outlet at Orchard Central are also circulating online. 

Channel NewsAsia has reached out to Desigual for comment. 

The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore has said that no Government agencies or critical information infrastructure were affected by the attack, whose suspected culprit is a ransomware known as WannaCry – said to lock users’ files unless they pay a designated sum in virtual currency. 

LALITPUR, Nepal: Nestled in the hills of Nepal’s Lalitpur district, a two-hour drive from the capital Kathmandu, the Gyanodaya Basic School lives up to its name.

One of the classrooms, housed in the school’s only original building standing after 2015’s devastating earthquake, is a dark, cavernous space. Two naked bulbs provide barely enough light.

Another classroom is a shelter constructed entirely of zinc sheets and bamboo. The gaps between the walls and ceiling allow more natural light to pierce the gloom. 

Still, the young schoolchildren light up the place with beaming smiles as they show visitors round, giggling in excitement as their lessons are temporarily interrupted. 

Their infectious joy is still in place, even though rebuilding work at the school – which has just under 200 students aged 3 to 14 – has yet to begin, more than two years after the 7.8-magnitude quake caused widespread devastation across the country. 

“The school buildings were completely destroyed here,” said Gyanodaya’s principal Yadav Mahat, gesturing to a large pile of rubble near the entrance to the school compound. “Students’ homes were also completely destroyed, and two of them died in their own homes.”

“There were many organisations that came to help provide temporary relief. They came to distribute zinc sheets and bamboo that we used to build temporary shelters and start teaching,” he added. “But no one actually came to build the buildings.”

“Due to financial reasons, we have not been able to do anything.”

STUDENTS SCARED TO COME BACK TO SCHOOL

The Gyanodaya Basic School is one of the 44 schools the Singapore Red Cross (SRC) has committed to help rebuild, together with the assistance of its more than 15 partners on the ground. These 44 schools make up about three-quarters of the 60 community rebuilding projects SRC is on track to deliver by the end of this year.

About 4,000 schools in Nepal were destroyed in the quake, according to SRC’s Secretary-General Benjamin William. “One thing we noticed when we visited Nepal was that there were so many children and they were all having to study in temporary facilities,” he said. “So we thought this could be a good area to focus on.

“For one, it met an immediate need, where we can send the children back to school, and second, that we would be sending the right message: that education is so important for the next generation of Nepalese.”

But with some classes still taking place in damaged buildings, temporary shelters or even under trees, getting students back to school in the interim could be a challenge.

“After the earthquake, the students were so scared to come back to school,” said Kalpana Chhetry, chairperson of Praramva, a local NGO which has partnered with SRC to rebuild Gyanodaya. “It was a good thing the quake happened on a Saturday, otherwise there would have been a lot of damage. But even now, people are still afraid that if they go to school, they may not come back.

“So there was a big drop out of students.”

And if the children drop out from school, she added, they will likely just stay at home to do housework or care for livestock. The girls would get married at a young age, or, in some cases, could be at risk of human trafficking.

“After the quake, there was more trafficking,” she said. “Some parents were very poor and had to sell their girls to India to become prostitutes.”

THE ‘STRONGEST BUILDING IN THE DISTRICT’                                        

The narrative takes a slightly different turn over at the Shree Kalika Primary School in Sindhupalchowk, another district in Nepal which was one of the most badly affected by the quake. 

As is the case in Lalitpur, some of its pupils trek for hours across challenging terrain to get to school. But at the end of their journey, they are greeted by a brand new school building with bright yellow walls and freshly painted doors and windows.

Officially opened by Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Defence Maliki Osman on May 3, the Shree Kalika Primary School is one of SRC’s successful rebuilding projects – completed with the help of another of its local partners, Living Hope Nepal.

“The school was completely destroyed in the quake, and nothing remained,” said director of Living Hope Nepal, Wilson Shrestha. “There is no school building in this community apart from this, and because the communities here are very far apart, they have no other way to go to school.

“That’s why it was so important for us to rebuild this school.”

Today, Mr Shrestha takes pride in describing the Shree Kalika Primary School as one of the “strongest buildings in this district.”

“I hope more of such schools can be built in different places, so that even when there is an earthquake, they don’t have to be afraid.”

Given the mountainous terrain, the rebuilding project was no easy feat. Mr Shrestha explained that without a proper road into the school compound, bringing the construction materials up was a problem.

“We had to borrow land from the village to make a road so we could come down, and then we had to return it to the land owner again after we completed the school,” he said. “We also had the villagers carry the materials down from the main road up to the school.”

SRC also faced challenges, as Mr William explained. For one, a border blockade between India and Nepal caused the prices of building materials and fuel – most of which came from India – to go up astronomically.

“The projects were not only delayed, but we had to increase our budget for many of our projects in order to complete them,” he said. “Also, because of the constantly changing personalities in the government, there were also changes in regulations and approved models for rebuilding, and we would constantly have to change our plans in order to meet the authorities’ requirements.”

BEYOND REBUILDING, PROVIDING TRAINING AND SUPPLIES

But beyond rebuilding schools, the SRC wanted to better equip the schools and students to improve their learning experience.

Even though rebuilding work at Gyanodaya has yet to start, tucked away in a corner of one of their buildings is a small room. Simply furnished with a low table and two bookshelves, it is the school library, made possible by book donations from Singapore.

It is clear that this room is the pride of the school. Students are required to remove their shoes before entering the room. A desktop computer sits in a corner of the room, covered with a green cloth. A bookshelf is named the Nepali Reading Corner, with a handwritten slogan: World Change Starts With Educated Children.

In the interim, SRC also hopes to make Gyanodaya a safer place for students. Last year, a group of Singaporean teachers came down to train Nepali teachers in simple first aid, where they demonstrated skills like cleaning of superficial wounds and bandaging sprained or broken limbs.

Social studies teacher Santa Raj Thing is one of those who benefitted.

“Children get cuts and injuries all the time,” he said, as he deftly unzipped the school’s first aid kit – a black backpack emblazoned with the SRC logo – to reveal rolls of bandages and antiseptic. “We used to use bandages on burn injuries. But after the training, I learnt that we actually need to apply ointment on burn injuries, apply ice packs on their foreheads if they have a headache, and use bandages for a hand sprain.”

He added that previously, children would have to go to the nearest health post – a 45 minute journey away – if they were sick or injured. 

“After the completion of this training, I have helped and saved children from infections. It feels good to be able to help and serve children.” 

Breaktime at the school is much like any other. Energy was high as the children ran around the compound chasing each other. A boy climbed to the top of the pile of rubble that remains from the quake. 

In the midst of the youthful chaos, thirteen year-old Phulmaya Thing and her younger sister, Susma, smiled shyly. It turned out that they trek an hour each way to get to school.

“It’s difficult, but there’s no other school nearby,” said Phulmaya. “I want to study hard so I can become a teacher next time.”

And it is for the children like Phulmaya and Susma that the SRC continues to press on with their rebuilding efforts, despite the challenges.

“We are happy with what we have done,” said Mr William. “But we know that Nepal still has a long way to go.

“What we have done is only a small drop in the ocean, and there is so much more work to be done.”

SINGAPORE: Her one-room flat was a cluttered mess, and Madam Helen Fernandez herself never seemed to bathe, said her neighbours who always saw her in the same set of clothes.

When case workers first visited the unkempt and confused elderly widow, they had to rush her to hospital for very high blood pressure – which resulted because she hadn’t been taking her medication and had been missing doctors’ appointments.

Since her husband died 17 years ago, Mdm Fernandez had been living alone with no friends or family – and slowly falling prey to loneliness and dementia.

There were times when she’d even call up the police just to talk. It was how her case got referred to the Social Service Office, and then to case worker Ahmala Rajoo in 2015.

“She was receiving financial assistance, about S$500 a month,” said Ms Ahmala, a care executive with NTUC Health Cluster Support in Bukit Merah. “But she wasn’t managing it. She was always left with nothing, and she could never tell what happened to her money.”

But the neatly-groomed Mdm Fernandez you meet today almost doesn’t seem the same person. At 78, she is chatty, cheery and cheeky, and greets every visitor with a delighted “come in!”

“They want to put me in home, you know, old age home… I said, don’t want! Put me there for what? I won’t see anybody,” she said.

The walls of her newly-repainted, now-clean flat are plastered with photos and cards from friends. She has blossomed under the care of Ms Ahmala, meal delivery services, befrienders from volunteer group Helping Joy, housekeeping services, and the Senior Activity Centre in her block.

“Her memory has worsened. But thankfully with the community support, she’s more active than before,” said Ms Ahmala.

“I don’t think she grasps that I am a social worker. To her, I’m probably like a friend that is helping her out.”

WATCH:  The transformation of a lonely widow’s life (5:10)

THE DANGERS OF ISOLATION

Singapore’s elderly poor are not short of assistance schemes by the State to meet their material needs: From heavy medical subsidies and food vouchers, to long-term financial assistance, and even rental waivers for those on Public Assistance.

But the greater problem for many of them – especially those like Helen who are unable to work and homebound due to disability, failing health or mental illness – is social isolation.

Because of the stigma against mental illness especially, many of such elderly folks in Singapore are “forgotten by society” with people going out of the way to avoid them, said Mr Ng Koon Sing, head of COMNET Senior Services under Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centre Community Services.

This isolation from the outside world feeds depression and suicidal tendencies, aggravates mental conditions, and worsens their physical health.

In Singapore, elderly suicides have been creeping up, from 95 cases in 2010 to 126 cases in 2014. Said Ms Ahmala of her elderly clients:

Most of them will tell you that they’re just waiting to die. And they will tell you that there’s nothing else to look forward to.

And they can pass under the radar, until a neighbour, or a visit to hospital, or door-to-door outreach by social workers brings their plight to light.

Volunteers and community workers report finding some living in squalor, with cockroaches and bed-bugs, sleeping on the floor, and in poor physical or mental health because they have been neglecting their medication.

WATCH: The shocking condition of one elderly man’s flat, before volunteers gave it a makeover

But thankfully for these whom the rest of society has forgotten, there is a growing community network striving to ensure they find some measure of well-being and companionship in their final years.

It’s an extensive web made up of welfare groups, charities, hospitals, and operators (like NTUC Health) of Senior Cluster Networks initiated by the Ministry of Social and Family Development.

THE ONLY ONES AT HIS FUNERAL

Take Mr Jesmond Oh, a nurse who doesn’t spend his days in the hospital, but visiting the homes of his elderly wards.

One of them was an underweight, 60-year-old former security guard who was frequently falling down because his toes had been amputated due to his poorly-managed diabetes.

When Mr Oh’s care team at Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s (TTSH) Department of Continuing and Community Care took up his case and began visiting him at home to monitor his condition, Mr Oh said: “Initially, he didn’t listen to us. He kept taking his medicine his own way.”

His house was a mess. When we cleared his mattress, we found three cockroaches, scissors, medication all over the place, insulin injections on the bed as well. He’d just lie down on these.

The man was also depressed. At one stage, he told them: “If I jump down, all of you don’t need to come already.” Alarmed, the doctors had him brought in for psychiatric evaluation. Mr Oh recalled: “He was traumatised and decided, ‘I will not play this type of joke anymore.’ After that, he was very good and compliant with us.”

That rocky start evolved into a close friendship over six months.

One of the first things the team did was to arrange for meal deliveries, so that he would get the proper nutrition. His neighbours had been packing meals for him –  but it was “all this unhealthy food that made his (diabetic) condition even worse,” said Mr Oh. “And he’d had to pay them ‘tips’. It was quite upsetting that they were making use of him.”

The team also called in a housekeeping service, arranged for escorts to his medical appointments, got someone to help him daily with his wound dressings, and a community social worker who visited him daily.

One evening after work, Mr Oh’s phone rang. It was the police. They told him that the man had been found dead at home; he’d fallen and hit his head. “They called me because my number was one of the last few that he’d dialed on his mobile phone,” said the nurse.

The man had never spoken of any next of kin, so his body stayed in the mortuary for 21 days while notices were posted in the newspapers.

Apparently, no one responded. So the few of us – the medical team, social worker and myself – were the only ones at his funeral wake.

BRINGING THEM A REASON TO CARE ABOUT LIFE

Sadness and loss is a part of the job, but what keeps Mr Oh going is the hope that “towards the end, I’ve actually touched them and helped them to achieve a better quality of life at home”.

Like Madam Ong Ah Hiong, 89, a widow who has survived the deaths of her husband, all three children and her siblings.

She had gone to TTSH’s A&E department with very high blood pressure in January this year. The doctors there assessed that she was at high risk of falling, and since she was living alone and had a history of depression, referred her to Mr Oh’s community care team.

Every visit, he banters with her while going through the basic health checks, where necessary calling up the doctor for a consultation.

Said Mdm Ong: “My heart tells me he cares for me. You can’t imagine how happy I am with all of you visiting me.”

If not for such services and home visits, many of the elderly poor would tend to neglect their health, to the point where they keep being hospitalised.

Ms Jess Ho, principal social worker for NTUC Health Cluster Support at Bukit Merah, said: “Some seniors refuse to take their medication, especially when there are more than five types. They find it so disheartening, sometimes they give up altogether. They feel that life is short, ‘I don’t want to go through this in my final years, taking all this medicine’.”

And then there’s the cost of transport just to keep a doctors’ appointment, or of getting the proper nutrition. Said Mr Oh:

The elderly poor are prioritising their basic needs over their health. They will say that they can’t even afford three meals a day.

“The worst case I met, he’s surviving on S$2 chicken rice a day and S$1 mineral water. The rest of the day he will just eat biscuits.”

This is why the TTSH team works with the Social Service Offices to get their patients any assistance they might need, including something as basic as a running water and electricity supply.

NTUC Health’s cluster networks too work closely with hospitals, the various agencies and community groups, to “co-manage” their senior patients’ well-being holistically. From 2013 to 2016, they have reached out to more than 4,800 seniors in the Taman Jurong and Bukit Merah regions alone.

Ms Ho said: “Some need to be motivated, they need meaning because they’re all alone. We need to get them to know it’s worthwhile taking care of themselves.”

POVERTY ISN’T JUST THE LACK OF MONEY

Indeed, it is common to think of poverty as referring to material or financial resources. But researchers say that the lack of social contact can be just as impoverishing.

Assistant Professor Ng Kok Hoe of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy referred to a study done across four continents, where focus groups of the elderly were asked what they needed in life. Social participation was cited every time.

“It means not feeling like you are left out as a member of society,” said Dr Ng. “A decent standard of living means that I want to be a part of society, having access to friends. It doesn’t mean I stay home all day and eat to meet my bare nutritional needs.”

Just ask hawker’s assistant Mr Ong Hock Soon, who has lost touch with his children for years. His fault, he says, as he had a bad temper and he gambled.

The 69-year-old admits that in the emptiness of his flat sometimes, it all becomes too much.

When I go home at night, yes, I will feel lonely. I will cry.

“Then in the morning I wake up, go to work, and I’ll be happier. I’m most happy going downstairs (to the Senior Activity Centre) because I’ve got many friends,” he said.

“My greatest regret is my children. I want to say sorry to them. Dad was wrong last time. I hope you will forgive me.”

WATCH: Mr Ong’s biggest regret (6:08)

Elderly isolation happens for various reasons – apart from family estrangement, it happens when spouses die and the children are no longer around.

But there’s also the stress of caring for a sick spouse. “I’m cooped up with my spouse for over 20 years, I don’t have any life to myself, no resources and nowhere to turn,” is one common scenario that Tsao Foundation senior social worker Wong Yock Leng describes. Such spouses often end up prone to depression.

EVERYONE CAN LEND A HAND

Alleviating the loneliness and stress is what volunteer group Happy People Helping People Foundation is all about. Apart from organising food vouchers and ration packs for their clients, who are elderly cardboard collectors, the group also holds get-togethers and outings to places like the zoo.

It might sound tacky, said volunteer Ms Nurasyikin Amir, but the outings are “what they look forward to the most. When we are distributing rations, they will ask us when is the next outing?”.

When we first met them, they were very quiet and reserved. Now, they make friends more, and they look out for each other, which I think is very important.

Perhaps more importantly, what the vulnerable elderly need are for others – and not just the community groups – to keep an eye out for them.

NTUC Health’s Ms Ahmala, for instance, is kept busy handling 28 active cases concurrently, which can run the gamut from hoarders to the suicidal to the terminally ill. So it helps when neighbours step up to report someone they think might need help – and some actually help to shoulder the burden of caring for their fellow residents.

Said Ms Jess Ho: “They do visits and they are like our eyes and ears. Today (this neighbour) is not doing well, he is not eating, then they would call my case worker to drop by.”

As Ms Nurasykin put it, the hope is that more will replicate the Happy People model in their own neighbourhoods. “If everyone just helps their neighbour … like what our tagline says, not everyone can do everything, but everyone can do something.”

Read part 1:  The faces and insecurities of Singapore’s elderly working poor

This is part of a CNA Insider series exploring the issues of elderly poverty in Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore and Myanmar. Watch and read the entire series here.

SINGAPORE: Nearly 1kg of cannabis, along with other drugs like heroin and Ice, were seized by the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) in an operation on Friday (May 12).

Three people were arrested. 

In a news release on Saturday, CNB said the first two suspects – Singaporean men aged 41 and 25 – were caught at Tampines Street 86. They were spotted together before making their way to their respective cars where they were arrested separately. 

A search of the vehicle belonging to the first suspect uncovered a block of cannabis weighing about 980g, and worth nearly S$10,000. In the other car, about 20g of Ice, 16g of heroin, an Erimin-5 tablet and other unknown tablets were found. 

Later that day, CNB officers arrested a 30-year-old suspected drug abuser at Redhill Close. He’s believed to be a drug client of the older man who was arrested earlier.

About 5g of Ice, various drug-smoking utensils, as well as six improvised air rifles were seized from the suspect’s residence.

Investigations on all the suspects are ongoing. Those who traffic more than 500g of cannabis into Singapore could face the death penalty if convicted.

The police are looking into the improvised air rifles that were seized, CNB said.