by Muneerah Bee Mohamed Iqbal
Labour Members of Parliament (MP) brought up some questions on labour issues in the first Parliament session for 2013.
Addressing Labour MP Zainal Sapari’s question on the average gross salary of hawker centre cleaners under National Environment Agency (NEA)-managed cleaning contracts, Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishnan shared that NEA will only engage cleaning contractors accredited under the Enhanced Accreditation Scheme (EAS) for new cleaning contracts from 1 April 2013.
He said: “The EAS, among other conditions, requires accredited cleaning companies to adopt progressive wages for their resident cleaners as recommended by the Tripartite Cluster for Cleaners. This means that full-time resident cleaners under the NEA’s new contracts will be paid starting basic wages of at least $1,000 per month.”
Prompted by a question by Labour MP Alex Yam, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) revealed that in 2012 more than $3.7 million in training grants were disbursed for the cleaning industry.
In a survey conducted by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to monitor the outcomes of Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) training, 69 per cent of the respondents in 2011 indicated that they were more motivated at work after undergoing training while 17 per cent enjoyed a pay rise.
Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said: “The Government will continue to work on strengthening our Continuing Education and Training (CET) system specifically for the cleaning sector to complement the NEA’s enhanced Clean Mark Accreditation Scheme and to raise the productivity and performance of cleaners.
“WDA has also committed $6.1 million in course fee funding over the next two years (from June 2012 to May 2014) to train and upgrade 7,800 cleaners through the Environmental Cleaning WSQ.”
Mr Yam also wanted to know if MOM will consider a requirement of a minimum monthly basic wage for low-wage workers before exemption from section 38(5) of the Employment Act is granted for extended overtime work.
Under the Employment Act, employers who require their employees to work more than 12 hours a day or more than 72 hours of overtime a month have to seek an exemption from the Commissioner for Labour before they can do so.
Acting Minister for Manpower Tan Chuan-Jin replied that every application for exemption is considered very carefully and employers must be able to justify the exemption. They must also get the consent of workers in extending their overtime hours as well as the agreement of the unions of the company if they are unionised, in addition to having a good track record in maintaining safety, health and employment standards.
“We are studying ways to raise basic wages and reduce overtime hours in targeted low-wage sectors with the various stakeholders, including the unions and industry associations. A wage requirement for applications for overtime exemption is one possible means of lifting wages of low-wage workers who work extended overtime hours and we will certainly consider the MP’s suggestion alongside other measures in our ongoing review,” he said.
