By Ramesh Subbaraman
Create better jobs and strive for better pay for workers – that is the objective of a $4.5 billion package called the Industry Transformation Programme announced by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat during Budget 2016 in Parliament.
Institutes like NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) and the Workforce Development Agency have an important role to play in supporting the programme.
As part of the programme, Industry Transformation Maps will be developed for more than 20 sectors covering 80 per cent of Singapore’s economic activity
Each sector will have an economic team made up of officers from different agencies. Their role will be to lead the growth of the sector by integrating productivity, training, technology and internationalisation.
The Feinmetall Story
Finance Minister Heng said he had been visiting several small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as part of the preparations for his Budget speech.
In one such visit, both he and Minister of State for Trade and Industry Dr Koh Poh Koon went on a learning journey to Feinmetall Singapore Pte Ltd.
The company manufactures probe cards which are used to test whether semiconductor chips are functioning well.
It has 40 workers, with a large number of them professionals, managers and executives.
One of them is 24-year-old ST Saravanan, an assistant engineer with the company for about one and a half years.
“The learning is never ending and every day I am learning something new. Each one of us is given a project to handle and there is a structured path for us. In house, we also have training. When I went to Germany for my training, I did a sharing session with my colleagues on my return.
“On and off our managers will also ask us if we want to learn anything more and they too will facilitate the training,” he said.
On its part, Feinmetall Singapore said it is also working with e2i to train in the industry.
“We are rolling out a training programme with e2i. The objective is to teach more people about the basic maintenance process in our company. We will impart our knowledge as well as share out equipment and facility to allow more PMETs and engineers to learn about the process maintenance of our probe cards,” said the company’s Managing Director Sam Chee Wah.
Boosting Synergy
It is this synergy between industry, government agencies and learning institutes that the Industry Transformation Programme hopes to build on to benefit the workforce, said Finance Minister Heng.
“We must have a virtuous cycle where higher skills lead to higher productivity and higher wages… my message to workers is that we all need to upgrade our skills, we need to make use of the opportunity. And not just workers, I hope that employers play a very important to develop their people,” he said.
Source: NTUC This Week
“We must have a virtuous cycle where higher skills lead to higher productivity and higher wages… my message to workers is that we all need to upgrade our skills, we need to make use of the opportunity. And not just workers, I hope that employers play a very important to develop their people,” he said.
