In its most recent effort to persuade singles to date, get married young and have children, Singapore has turned to a computer-based electronic mail system. Singapore has been promoting fertility campaigns following official concern over low birth rates, especially among the educated elite – eugenics is alive and well and living in Singapore. The new dating system, dubbed Tele-Pal, is a marriage between the technology developed by Singapore’s National Computer Board and the experience of its main official matchmaker, the Social Development Unit, reports Reuters. Tele-Pal was implemented in June and enables singles to communicate via an interactive computer-based information service. It is open to all single people in Singapore but to prevent abuse, those who are interested in using it must be approved by the Social Development Unit or its sister organisations, the Social Development Section and the Social Promotion Section. Names and identification numbers are verified and marital status is checked. Subscribers are initially known to each other only by personal code numbers to ensure confidentiality and avoid embarrassment. Members talk to one another and can exchange names or telephone numbers if they chose. In the first weeks 500 people signed up although it is too soon to know if there have been marriages. Once approved, an applicant can access the Tele-Pal through a home computer or through one of 100 public terminals located in libraries, community centres and schools. To select a suitable partner, users make a choice from seven criteria of race, age, height, weight, religion, citizenship and interests. The system will show a maximum of 10 matches at any one time, from which the user can then select a prospective partner. The Social Development Unit has 14,740 single graduate members mostly aged between 25 and 29 and is a catalyst for singles to meet. Besides matchmaking, it also organises social events such as dances, outings, cruises and offers marriage counselling. Some 1,543 Social Development Unit members were married in 1993 compared with figures of 1,416 people in 1992 and 614 in 1985.
