1 The marine industry in Singapore is performing well. In the past five years, revenue growth has led to a 20% increase in the number of jobs in the industry.
2 However, the total number of Singaporeans working in the marine industry has not gone up by much, if at all. In other words, even though there is a shift of job profile among Singaporeans working in the marine industry - towards higher-end jobs, overall job growth in the marine industry has not been translated into overall employment growth for Singaporeans over the past five years in the marine industry.
3 The same can be said of the landscaping and construction sectors. We have become so overly dependent on foreign workers that we are fast losing our basic core skills in these sectors.
4 To a lesser extent, we are seeing a similar trend developing in other sectors – in the public transport sector, Singaporeans take up just one in every two, or at best two in every three new job openings as bus captains.
5 Some jobs in hospitals, retails, hotels and so on, could head in the same way too.
6 Bearing in mind that we no longer enjoy full employment for a few years now and the increasing threat of structural unemployment in the future, one would wonder why our Singaporean job seekers are not more interested in these job openings; and why the employers are not more interested in attracting our Singaporean job seekers.
7 On one hand, job seekers would say that this is because some jobs are too demanding and the pay is too low, or they are being discriminated by employers who prefer to employ low cost foreign workers.
8 On the other hand, employers would say that this is because the local job seekers are too choosy, have unrealistic expectation, not hard working and not adaptable enough.
9 Meanwhile, some would say that it is because the government has been too liberal in allowing foreign workers to work here.
10 Such finger pointing is not new and has been going on for years. But if we really want to succeed in reducing unemployment, improve pay for low wage workers and raise the effective retirement age of workers, pointing fingers won’t help.
11 We need to “hold hands” instead.
12 Indeed, this is the approach for the tripartite partners under the Job Re-creation Programme.
13 For example, we are “holding hands” in the environment sector – spearheaded by the National Environment Agency (NEA), more than 1000 jobs paying more than $1000 a month have been re-created in the hawker centres and HDB estates, over a period of 18 months. This year, NEA has helped another 250 job seekers take up jobs.
14 We are “holding hands” in the schools – spearheaded by the Singapore Teachers’ Union, Ministry of Education and our schools, about 100 jobs have been created for Singaporeans to work as teaching assistants and library assistants.
15 We are “holding hands” in the hospitals – spearheaded by the hospital management and unions, more than 200 jobs have been reclaimed for Singaporeans to work as healthcare assistants.
16 We are “holding hands” in the landscaping sector – spearheaded by NParks, about 100 job seekers have taken on jobs as landscaping technicians.
17 We are “holding hands” in the public transport sector – spearheaded by the National Transport Workers’ Union and SBS Transit, wage restructuring and skills upgrading have attracted 220 local job applicants within five weeks. 80 of them are now being trained to be bus captains.
18 We are “holding hands” in the security sector – spearheaded by the Security Industry Regulation Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Union of Security Employees and the security associations and companies, skill requirements have been updated, career path enhanced, and wages improved. We expect to attract not only more applicants, but better applicants too when a new series of recruitment exercises are launched this month.
19 And the list goes on – construction, retails, hotels, childcare …
20 Looking back, we are encouraged by the progress made so far. In the first seven months of this year, JRP has helped about 2000 job seekers (both young and old) to be re-employed. Last week at SBS Transit, the youngest bus captain trainee is 23, while the oldest is 52. Today, the youngest graduating guard is 17, while the oldest is 54.
21 Looking forward, we are mindful of the long journey ahead. We are determined to keep creating jobs, re-creating jobs, and turning these job opportunities into local employment. We will keep extending our helping hands to more employers, more government agencies, and more workers. We hope they will extend their hands to us too to help themselves.
22 Together, hand in hand, we can help jobless workers to find jobs; low wage earners to earn better wages; and older workers to remain productive longer.
