In response to a parliamentary question by NTUC Operations and Mobilisation Division Secretariat Fahmi Aliman, National Development Minister Desmond Lee assured that the National Parks Board (NParks) uses best sourcing practices in its procurement process.
“NParks evaluates tender proposals for its landscape maintenance contracts based on the quality and price of the proposals,” he explained.
“The quality criterion takes into account the tenderers' ability to deliver service outcomes through adopting landscape maintenance best practices, and ensuring safety, and rapid incident response and handling.”
He elaborated that the statutory board has been steadily increasing the weightage of the quality criterion in its tender evaluations of landscape maintenance contracts over the last 10 years, from 20 per cent to the current 40 per cent.
“This reflects an increasing emphasis on service outcomes, while striking a balance with the budget available to do the work,” he added.
Responding to a parliamentary question by NTUC Assistant Secretary-General Melvin Yong, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said awareness and understanding of mental health issues at workplaces has been growing – even though there are no recent studies on the provisioning of the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).
The EAP is a professional and confidential programme designed to help employees to deal with their personal and relational difficulties that may affect their mental and psychological well-being.
She said: “The tripartite partners unanimously agree that it is important to include the provision of EAP in the Tripartite Advisory on Mental Well-being at Workplaces.
“The aim is for more employers to adopt this progressive practice to provide employees an avenue to speak to a professional on their work and non-work-related challenges.”
Mrs Teo further elaborated that EAP adoption requires collective efforts by key stakeholders, and that the ministry welcomed the efforts of NTUC and its affiliated unions to engage employers to promote its adoption.
Meanwhile, Mrs Teo also revealed that construction firms with 50 or fewer employees, many of whom are sub-contractors, have a higher fatal injury rate than larger firms.
She was responding to Mr Yong regarding a trend of workplace fatalities happening among sub-contractors.
She elaborated that the overall construction fatality rate has steadily declined from 5.4 per 100,000 workers in 2015, to 2.9 in 2019.
Other than conducting voluntary safety time-out exercises to improve workplace safety practices, Mrs Teo said the Ministry of Manpower will be publishing more details of construction firms and sub-contractors from early next year.
“This will allow developers to make more informed contracting decisions, and motivate main contractors and sub-contractors to step up their workplace safety practices,” she said.
