Health Minister Ong Ye Kung and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng rejected claims that the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) between Singapore and India has detrimentally affected the jobs and livelihoods of Singaporeans.
Both ministers delivered their statements on the matter in Parliament on 6 July 2021.
As former Director of Trade and Deputy Chief Negotiator at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Mr Ong stated that FTAs and CECA have been made political scapegoats by the opposition party to discredit the policies of the ruling Government.
He said: “This is a seductively simplistic argument that workers facing challenges at their workplaces can identify with and has stirred up a lot of emotions.
“Our Free Trade Agreements [FTA] in general, and CECA in particular, are not the cause of the challenges our PMEs face; if anything, they are part of the solution.”
On Singaporeans who have been displaced, Dr Tan said that the Government understands what these workers are going through, but it is important that the root cause of the problems is properly diagnosed.
He said: “None of our FTAs, including CECA, gives intra company transfers [ICT] unfettered access to our labour market … They all have to meet the Ministry of Manpower’s [MOM] prevailing work pass criteria under the ICT route.”
He also added that MOM maintains a zero-tolerance towards discriminatory hiring practices and that all employers are expected to comply with the requirements of their respective FTAs.
According to Mr Ong, Singapore is too small to survive on its own, and that it needs to tap on the global markets to earn a living and to be self-reliant.
He said: “We have no natural resources, but we have one precious natural endowment, and that is our geographical location.”
He shared that around 50,000 international companies operate out of Singapore, out of which 750 have made Singapore their regional headquarters.
Mr Ong also said that it is in Singapore’s interest to pursue FTAs such as CECA.
He shared that between 2005 and 2019, bilateral trade in goods and services between Singapore and India increased by over 80 per cent – from $20 billion in 2005 to $38 billion in 2019.
During that same period, overseas investment in India also increased by nearly 50 times, from $1.3 billion to $61 billion.
In 2019, 660 companies from Singapore with investments in India hired some 97,000 local employees back home in Singapore.
NTUC Assistant Secretary-General Patrick Tay said that while he believes a small minority of companies engage in discriminatory hiring practices, the concerns of the local workforce are legitimate, and should not be ignored.
“PMEs I spoke to acknowledge the need for FTAs and foreign manpower in this age of globalisation, global competition, and economic survival and success.
“But we must recognise the need to support our local workforces, aspirations, and to address their concerns and anxieties,” he said.
Mr Tay said that he and his fellow Labour MPs have spoken inside and outside of Parliament on the matter over the past decade.
He also made three proposals for MOM, aimed at addressing fairness and localisation of PME jobs.
His first suggestion was that fair hiring practices could be enhanced by strengthening enforcement and imposing stiffer penalties for companies with discriminatory hiring practices.
Second, he proposed enhancing the Employment Pass application process by moving beyond looking at individual applicant’s educational qualifications and salaries, paying closer watch to sectors with imbalances of foreign-to-local manpower numbers.
And third, Singapore needs to ensure that locals have fair access to PME roles and progression opportunities to improve localisation of jobs in high growth sectors, said Mr Tay.
He added: “It is imperative that we ensure concerted, structured, institutionalised and mandatory skills and knowledge transfer from these foreign PMEs to our local PMEs within a stipulated and agreed timeframe as employers bring in foreign PMEs to fill skills or knowledge gaps in their current workforce.
“This will help to develop a pipeline of local talent. At the same time, we will need to build our leadership bench strength to ensure that Singaporeans can benefit and take up leadership roles in multinational companies that we bring into Singapore.”
