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Mr Speaker, I would like to begin my speech in Malay.
Belanjawan 2022 menyediakan pelbagai sokongan untuk membantu rakyat Singapura meringankan kos kehidupan yang kian meningkat. Seperti biasa, golongan berpendapatan rendah wajib mendapat bantuan sedemikian dalam mengharungi kehidupan mereka. Dalam kesempatan ini, saya merayu pada pemerintah untuk mengkaji semula syarat kelayakan dari segi pendapatan individu mahupun keluarga dengan mengambil kira golongan yang berpendapatan pertengahan supaya mereka juga diberi sokongan yang seadil-nya.
Seperkara lagi yang penting ialah pihak majikan mengambil dan menjadikan pekerja Singapura sebagai pilihan utama mereka. Sebagai wakil pekerja, saya sangat gembira tentang pengumuman penurunan nisbah antara pekerja Singapura dengan pekerja asing. Pendekatan ini melambangkan sifat terbuka kita kepada pekerja asing kerana kita semua akur tentang kekurangan tenaga pekerja untuk ekonomi Singapura terus membangun.
Selebihnya, pengumuman geran $100 juta yang diberikan kepada NTUC melambangkan kepercayaan dan keyakinan pemerintah terhadap usaha NTUC untuk meningkatkan keupaayan pekerja bersama majikan melalui Jawatankuasa Latihan Syarikat atau lebih dikenali sebagai CTC. Tujuan utama jawatankuasa dibentuk ialah supaya kesatuan pekerja dan pihak pengurusan bekerjasama meningkatan mutu dan keupayaan pekerja mereka melalui kemahiran yang padat dan baru. Hasil dari usaha berikut, saya berharap para pekerja dapat meraih peningkatan dari segi pendapatan, kerjaya dan juga kebajikan.
Kita kerap mendengar berita bahawa pemerintah menggambarkan banyaknya peluang pekerjaan yang akan disediakan melalui syarikat-syarikat baru yang akan membuka perniagaan mereka di Singapura dimasa terdekat dan juga jangka panjang. Pengumuman ini amat dihargai dan justeru itu, saya menggalakkan semua pekerja untuk sentiasa meningkatkan kemahiran dan keupayaan anda supaya kita dapat mengambil peluang meraih pekerjaan yang ditawarkan.
Terakhir, saya ingin mengambil kesempatan ini mengucapkan setinggi penghargaan saya kepada setiap jururawat, doktor, paramedik dan mereka semua yang terlibat dalam mengharungi krisis ini. Di samping itu juga, tidak lupa juga penghargaan kepada Majlis Fatwa dan para pemimpin agama kita dalam memberi panduan mengenai kewajipan dan kebiasaan memakmurkan masjid dari segi solat harian mahupun Jumaat. Ini termasuk ahli jawatankuasa dan sukarelawan masjid yang bertungkus-lumus menyediakan and memastikan panduan jarak selamat dan sebagainya supaya jemaah yang hadir ke masjid berada dalam keadaan selamat dan teratur.
I will now begin my speech in English.
I am heartened that this Budget reflects government’s continuous support for workers and businesses that are still impacted as we move to an endemic situation. The Budget also acknowledges and empathises my fellow workers’ plight given the rising costs of living and their stagnating income.
I would like to begin by highlighting some of the efforts undertaken by fellow Union leaders and NTUC to protect workers and their livelihoods since COVID struck us. We partnered with government agencies to help redeploy workers from hard-hit sectors to sectors that had an urgent need for manpower.
For workers who unfortunately lost their jobs, we negotiated for reasonable retrenchment benefits and at the same time provided immediate employment assistance through our Job Security Council. For the companies that were still doing well, we pursued the skills upgrading and career development of workers through the Company Training Committees. These are all are only possible due to our unique model of Tripartism. Yes, tripartism.
As our economy shows signs of recovery and our resident unemployment rate rebounded to pre-covid levels, this is an opportune time to grow jobs and improve the wages, welfare and work prospects of our workers. This brings me to the first topic of my speech, very close to my heart and indeed all in this chamber I believe, Strengthening Our Singaporean Core.
Strengthening Singaporean Core
This pandemic has accelerated technology adoption across all industries. We have seen many positive examples of unionised companies automating lower-level manual jobs and upskilling workers to work with technological solutions to increase their job value and productivity. As the Covid situation improves and borders are slowly opening, companies should avoid taking the easy way out by bringing back foreign labour as a quick fix solution. Companies should invest in technology and automation for processes to be easier, safer and smarter. I understand that there are some jobs that need to be supplemented by foreign labour but, we should build on the momentum to train and transform our workforce to strengthen our Singaporean core.
The recent announcement on the reduction of Foreign Dependency Ratio from 1:7 to 1:5 is a positive move to reduce reliance on foreign workers, but raising the minimum qualifying salary by $500 for new E-pass and S-pass applicants created some misconception and unhappiness because some see this as a move to increase wages of foreign workers, but our Singaporeans don’t actually get adjustments over the same period of time. While the rationale is to ensure employability of our local workforce MOM Minister clearly show how the increase in the qualifying salary of S-pass and E-pass has benefitted the local workforce and resulted in the overall increase in wages for Singaporeans. Even with the reduction of the dependency ratio, I also like to see that MOM continues to be stringent in assessing the needs of companies for foreign labour and ensure that such talents that comes complement our Singaporean workforce and augment their skills and capabilities.
Strengthening our Singaporean core applies to workers of all levels, including our Professionals, Managers, Executives, in short PMEs. The demands for good and highly skilled jobs which attract PMEs are also growing and this provides opportunities for localisation of jobs and career development. The NTUC-SNEF PME Taskforce reported that younger PMEs, aged below 40, opined that employers are not investing enough to equip them with relevant skills to prepare them for the future. Companies should not take advantage of the recovering economy to bring in foreign talents but instead put in place a career development for the Singaporean workers to take on this job and grow their careers.
While we could continue to embark on the transformation journey, together with enhancing foreign manpower and companies’ policies, we acknowledge that it is important for us to keep up with the demands of the evolving job market. Hence, it is imperative that companies continue to invest in training and build deep capabilities in our local workforce for us to strengthen our Singaporean core.
NTUC is very heartened by Government’s strong support in setting aside about S$100 million to scale up the Company Training Committees (CTCs) to support companies’ transformation plans.
NTUC is very committed and ready to partner with companies to form Company Training Committees (CTCs) to identify relevant training to upskill and transform workers in tandem with industry transformation. Such efforts must lead to Better Wages, Work Prospects and Better Welfare for workers. These 3 outcomes will be the catalyst to encourage workers to attend training.
I would like to assure our companies that NTUC is able to support such efforts through our NTUC Training and Placement ecosystem - comprising Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), NTUC LearningHub (NTUC LHUB), NTUC Industry Training and Transformation (IT&T) and Ong Teng Cheong Labour Leadership Institute (OTCi). NTUC is well-positioned to support companies in their business strategy planning, job matching, job redesign and more importantly, workforce training.
For instance, amid the COVID-19 outbreak, NTUC LHUB swiftly augmented training capabilities to respond to training needs and the national agenda to upskill. This allowed companies from hard-hit sectors such as Aviation, Hospitality and among others, to reskill and upskill their employees. I am pleased to share that NTUC LHUB has achieved a record of over 500,000 training places and upskill more than 300,000 workers since the start of the pandemic.
NTUC LHUB’s also launched their Learning eXperience Platform (LXP) late last year to encourage online learning at one’s own pace, anytime and anywhere. This is to also encourage our workforce to embrace lifelong learning and upskilling – complementing CTCs’ efforts in partnering companies to transform their business and workforce towards Industry 4.0 and Worker 4.0.
As a strategic partner for industrial transformation, companies can tap on NTUC’s Training and Placement network for a smoother business transformation journey, mobilise workers for upskilling and into new jobs, not forgetting to address the aspirations of workers.
Support for the Aviation & Tourism sector
Mr Speaker, Union leaders are glad that the government continues to support the aviation industry as it slowly recovers from the severe impact caused by this pandemic. For Singapore to maintain its Airhub status, there needs to be a continuous and healthy pipeline of talents to perform these good skilled jobs. With this support, companies need to ramp up their technological solutions and also train their workforce. Companies should also find ways to retain experienced workers through better salaries and benefits while at the same time, improve internship opportunities for Poly and ITE students.
Besides aviation, Tourism is another severely impacted sector and have been facing severe manpower shortage. Workloads have increased and sadly, salaries have not increased much since pre-COVID. Now in post pandemic, companies are and will continue to change to be leaner and more efficient in their operations, where skilled manpower is sought after. There are efforts to upskill the workforce so that it enables companies to cope with international demand when it returns.
These are good jobs where a worker who has picked up the relevant industry knowledge and has the passion to contribute can rise very quickly to take up management level positions. We hope companies could review local Poly and ITE graduate entry level salaries to attract Singaporeans and also retain them in the longer run.
However, while Singapore gradually expands vaccinated travel lanes, there remains economic challenges and Covid fear. These put additional pressure on effective recovery of international tourism. I hope and I call that the Government can review and extend similar support to the hotel sector too.
Greater Support for Middle-Income Earners to Cope with the Increasing Cost of Living
Next point that I would like to raise is on the rising Cost of Living, with my focus towards extending more support to the middle-income earners. We are all aware that inflation has been on the rise. Singapore’s overall inflation in December 2021 has jumped to 4% on a year-on-year basis and has remained at 4% in January 2022. For the whole of 2021, overall inflation rose to 2.3%, and in fact, this is the highest since year 2013.
Based on the feedback and sentiments from my peers and fellow workers, inflation is quickly emerging as a key challenge this year, as households face rising prices on multiple fronts, ranging from food, education to housing. This is especially for our middle-income earners.
We are really heartened by Government’s initiatives such as the GST support package to help lower- and middle-income households as well as retirees to cope with the GST hike. Aside from GST Voucher and doubling the U-Save rebates applicable to eligible HDB households for the remaining three-quarter in 2022, we also appreciate the increase of annual assessable income to $34,000 as a qualifying criteria for the GST Cash Payment. On this note, we hope it could be further increase so that it can be extended to middle-income Singaporeans to help them cope with the rising cost of living.
Let us also not forget the group of lower-middle-income workers, who are earning slightly more than lower-income individuals, but their families are also struggling with increasing daily expenses, yet they are losing access to government support schemes as they have just fallen short slightly of the income criteria of these support schemes.
I hope Government can review the income criteria of various support schemes such as Kindergarten, Student Care, and Childcare Subsidies, CPF Housing Grants, to prevent the “cliff effect” and better support the lower-middle-income family.
To my fellow workers, rest assured the Unions and NTUC hear your concerns and anxieties on the cost of living and are also paying close attention and finding avenues to better support you. Our NTUC’s Social Enterprises are committed to continue helping members and workers to moderate the cost of living and stretching their hard-earned dollars.
Today, there are 10 NTUC social enterprises under the NTUC Enterprise group, ranging from FairPrice, FoodFare, Kopitiam, First Campus, Learning Hub and more. Each of them is created to primarily address specific concerns that weigh on the minds of fellow Singaporeans, from rising food costs, catering to the broader needs of Singaporean working parents and their families to staying relevant throughout their working lives. They will continue to roll out initiatives to help Singaporeans cope with the rising cost of living.
I would like to close my speech by making two key points.
One, as our economy recovers, we should build on the momentum to train and transform the Singaporean workforce. NTUC is here to support companies to form CTCs, and through the Training and Placement ecosystem, it provides support for business strategy planning, job redesign and workforce training. Together with the strong support of the government, we will continue to walk this journey with you, raise local workforce capabilities through upskilling and reskilling, most importantly building the pipeline of local talents for the future.
Second is for our middle-income earners. I really hope government hears our call for greater support for middle-income earners to cope with the increasing cost of living as well as constantly reviewing the criteria of various support schemes to ensure this group of workers does not fall through the cracks.
Unions and NTUC will continue to protect our workers and the Social Enterprises will continue to cushion the impact of the cost of living through our various initiatives. Together, Unions, NTUC, and our Social Enterprises are committed to serve our members and workers better. We are and will always be by your side, because every worker matters! Sir, I support the Budget.
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