Tag Archives: Foreign Manpower

The Straits Times recently ran an article "About 5,400 jobs on offer in food sector despite pandemic". However KF Seetoh, Singapore top chef and founder of Makansutra, felt that the appropriate title should have been "5.4k jobs on offer in Food sector that nobody is hard up for, since April". While KF Seetoh supports the creation of jobs, he shed light on how these job offers for blue collared work in the F&B industry involve basic cooking preparations and maintaining kitchen cleanliness. These offers would be a mismatch for Singaporeans who have been brought up to aspire for higher goals, or educated and trained in skills for another industry.

Minister of Trade and Industry (MTI) Chan Chun Sing recently responded to media questions about the over-reliance on foreign construction workers. To replace this 300,000 foreign workforce, he argued that Singapore will need 2,500 local babies per year over the next 40 years to become construction workers. His challenge was based on the assumption that 100,000 Singaporean workers will be three times as productive as these foreign labour. Just today, the Workers' Party Yee Jenn Jong wrote a blog post to counter Chan Chun Sing's opinion.

As written in this article, welders, forklift operators and panel fitters earn between $1100-2500/mth. Are you telling me that given such "high" salaries, especially with the current job market for S'poreans, that S'poreans are unwilling to be trained to take up jobs for these positions? $2500 is the starting salary of an Engineering university graduate (ten years ago and still now)! Poly graduates earn less. PMETs may also have to work overtime and long hours (ok, in the air-con and not under the hot sun). Student-care teachers earn $1500/mth. Child-care teachers earn $2500 or less per month. These are teachers who work with students. (Of course the wages are suppressed due to foreign labour).

Opposition parties look set to raise the hot button issue of immigration and the visibly large numbers of foreigners working in Singapore in this General Election campaign, analysts say. This follows a heated forum shown on prime time television yesterday, where opposition and incumbent People's Action Party (PAP) representatives traded views on problems such as the rising cost of living, foreign labor, and the future of politics in Singapore.