Paying a high interest rate for borrowings

Dear Mr Tan,
Please help to share this sad story in  your blog.

Bob (not his real name) is now 51 years old, a local Singaporean Chinese. Less than 6 six years ago, he  married a young Vietnamese lady through a marriage agency. She was in her early 20s and he was then 45 years old.

Today, he is in debt partly due to his gambling habits and partly due to his generous care of his young wife by providing for her immediate family in rural Vietnam, inclusive of building a family house for them. He also gave a significant portion of his net monthly income as allowance to his wife and paid for multiple trips for her and her mother to visit Singapore. Bob is not rich, just a typical heartland Singaporean with gross income slightly above $3,000 but he has a fully paid HDB flat fund through CPF through his years of hard work.

Bob owes at least six banks through easy credit scheme and cash advance from his stack of credit cards to the tune of $80,000. This debt amount was accrued during the past nine months due to his casino gambling trips. Recently, he even turned to another four "licensed" money lenders to loan for a smaller sum. This easy cash loan is directly deposited into bank account and accordingly to Bob, most of them don't have a shop or office front and there is no formal loan agreement, just through handphone conversations and SMS texts and weekly debt servicing payment also through ATM to a designated account given to him.

Looking into Bob's debt issues, is there anything an individual could learn?  Also, is there anything that our MAS could have done better to control easy credit card applications and approval?

In this case, if an individual earns only a gross monthly income of $3200, can he owns so many credit cards that allows him to have such easy cash advance to the tune of two months of annual salary for each credit card in his hand?  Also, Bob has to pay a weekly 5% interest rate (i.e. annualized rate of 260%). Is there no guidelines in which MAS can impose upon such of debt which many licensed money lender operation to control the max? Bank typically impose a 2% interest rate per month (annualized rate of 24%) for credit cards loan. I have not even mentioned about one last category of dangerous debt which many are exposed to i.e. loan sharks. 

One just need to walk into the numerous counselling sessions that are held all over the island to understand the full extent of the debt and loan issues which both Singaporean and non-Singaporean of all races are been traumatized. Bob now has to sell his HDB flat so that he can pay off his debts and he is also in the midst of a divorce proceeding initiated by his wife. He couldn't avoid to hire his own lawyer, but yet agreed to pay for his wife's lawyer for this uncontested divorce.