I refer to the most recent changes to the Work Pass Rules pertaining to the maximum Period of Employment (POE) for work permit holders (WPH) in the Construction, Marine and Process Sectors.
The Migrant Workers’ Centre (MWC) commends the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) for signalling its willingness to make the work pass framework more flexible and retaining more experienced, proven and better integrated workers. We hope MOM will subsequently extend these changes to other sectors in the economy. The announcement is aligned, in principal, to what we have been advocating for over the last year, which is to reduce churn of newly arriving workers so that we value every worker already here, already trained and integrated.
However, the current maximum POE for work permit holders of 18 years is already a long stretch of time to be on the same work pass. Workers who are proven over such long periods should have continually been moved up the productivity and skills ladders, and not just at the very end of their tenure. Meanwhile, employers must also be pushed to enhance their work processes to make them more productive and efficient, so as to reduce our reliance of migrant labour. We suggest that to qualify for a lengthening of the POE, MOM should make employers furnish an organisational roadmap for skills, productivity and process enhancement, in lieu of which this well-intentioned change may simply result in a mere lengthening of the period for which employers can use WPHs as a cheaper option to local workers.
We urge MOM to consider a locally obtained, more robust skills-standard as a condition for renewal of WPs to commence from the very first renewal, typically two years after a WPH’s arrival, and in tandem, the gradual liberalisation of the Change of Employer (COE) Scheme for WPHs. The current announcement by MOM is in our view, a perfect opportunity to test-bed the opening up of COE to this targeted class of WPHs. We urge MOM to consider allowing WPHs that qualify for extension of POE, to affect a COE at the same time, if their employers are not willing to employ them beyond previous maximum POE, or if the employer is unable to provide sufficient terms and benefits, including skills and job upgrading, to attract them to stay with the company.
The above proposed adjustments are in line of the national strategy of moving towards a manpower-lean and productive economy. We therefore urge the Ministry to consider them favourably.
Yeo Guat Kwang
Chairman, Migrant Workers’ Centre
