The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) will raise penalties across the board for companies who practice discriminatory hiring, announced Manpower Minister Josephine Teo on 14 January 2020.
According to the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices, employers should recruit and select employees based on merit such as skills, experience or the ability to perform a role, regardless of age race, gender and nationality.
MOM said that it is “timely to increase the penalties on discriminatory employers for added deterrence and to stamp out discriminatory practices.”
The enhancements to the Blacklist Framework include longer debarment duration for work passes; expanding the debarment to include work pass renewals, in addition to work pass applications; and prosecution of employers and key personnel who make false declarations.
The minimum period of work pass debarment under the new rules will be doubled from six months to 12 months. Depending on the severity of the case, the debarment period can be up to a maximum of 24 months.
MOM will also extend the debarment to include the renewal of existing foreign workers. In the past, debarment used to apply to new work pass applications.
Meanwhile, employers who are convicted of false declaration under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act can now face imprisonment of up to two years or fines of up to $20,000, or both.
“We also need our employers’ help to keep Singapore open by committing to provide fair opportunities for our people. This means not keeping jobs to “closed circle of friends”, practising fair consideration including for local applicants, and hiring on merit.
“Perceptions of unfairness or discrimination of any kind is damaging. In places where the workforce is multi-national, like Singapore, perceptions of discrimination against locals is particularly toxic. That is why we take workplace discrimination seriously whether by age, gender, ethnicity or nationality,” said Mrs Teo.
From 2014 to 2018, MOM and the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) have followed up on more than 2,000 complaints.
Among these, action was taken against 680 employers, of which 280 resulted in debarment from hiring new foreign workers. Some half of these cases were for nationality discrimination, while the other half were for other forms of discrimination such as those based on age, race and gender.
