The consequence of the ageing population here will mean that working Singaporeans will, at some point, need to care for their elderly family members.
In an exclusive session with the media on 15 February 2019, NTUC Deputy Secretary-General (DSG) Heng Chee How shared that many women had made the decision to leave the workforce in order to fulfill their caregiving responsibilities.
According to the Ministry of Manpower’s Labour Force Survey, much of this responsibility is undertaken by women in Singapore.
Particularly for 168,300 female residents aged between 40 to 59 in Singapore who were not working, 33,200 or 20 per cent of them cited caregiving to family members or relatives (excluding childcare) as the main reason.
Citing a 2017 study by NTUC’s U Family on 529 Stay-at-Home-Women aged between 25 and 54, DSG Heng said that some two-thirds of these women were keen on returning to the work force, albeit with part-time work arrangements.
[Read this to learn more about Flexible Work Arrangements in Singapore.]
One such individual is 61-year-old Koh Leh Choo, who had to give up working fulltime as a nurse in 2017 to care for her 87-year-old father when he suffered a stroke.
“Once his condition settled down, I went back to work part-time as I felt that I didn’t want to lose touch with what’s going on. I also needed to continue working to help take care of my living expenses,” said Mdm Koh.
Her job search was not easy, given her age and need for a flexible work arrangement that would allow her to balance work with her caregiving responsibilities. Mdm Koh eventually found part-time work as a homecare nurse with NTUC Health after nearly a year of searching.
Support for Caregivers
To enable these caregivers looking to return to the workforce and allow employers to tap this latent workforce, DSG Heng is making two calls ahead of the national budget announcement on 18 February.
“One call will see how we can do more on the provision of eldercare services in the community for the purpose of activating this pool of 33,000 middle-aged women, a number equivalent to a year’s worth of babies born in Singapore,” said DSG Heng.
He hoped that a tripartite study with stakeholders can explore the three aspects of availability, quality and affordability of eldercare for Singaporeans to tap on.
“Concurrently, as they make the choice to seek out part-time work, how do we make the accommodating capacity available for them in the labour market, through companies? We need another study on a tripartite basis, through NTUC, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF), to see how we can improve upon the current slate of flexible work arrangement measures to make this happen for these workers,” said DSG Heng.
Should this be successful, he said that this group of workers will be able to help augment our local workforce.
