Tag Archives: Ministry of Trade and Industry

Our reader Justin shares his views about who could be our next PM following the news of the cabinet reshuffle.

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.

Due to this "urgency" to call for an elections, the Workers' Party (WP) called for the government to "publish election campaign rules forthwidth" so that all political parties have a clear idea of how they can campaign safely despite the ongoing Covid19 pandemic. However, the same MTI minister Chan Chun Sing excused the Elections Department (ELD) saying that they have to explore various scenarios and rules due to the "evolving" Covid19 situation. When the ELD is ready, election candidates and parties will be given "sufficient time" to know the rules and regulations. If the GE is to be held on July 2020, does it seem ironic that the fate of the Grand Prix (which will be held later in September 2020) can be decided earlier than the announcement of GE campaign rules?

During a Bloomberg TV interview, Minister for Trade and Industry (MTI) Chan Chun Sing told the interviewer there is "not much time" left for Singapore to hold its next General Elections. He tried to explain away that the parliament has to be dissolved in Jan 2021, as this would be five years after the first sitting of the current government. If based on his explanation, Singaporeans will have a maximum of 8 months before the General Elections is called.

Minister for Trade and Industry (MTI) Chan Chun Sing recently updated on his Facebook about Singapore's face mask strategies. This Facebook post included photographs of Chan Chun Sing visiting ST Engineering's mask production facility in Feburary 2020. However some sharp-eyed netizens noticed the photographs captured a few assembly line operators without gloves.

"I didn't even know that there was a government agency looking at consumer rights in Singapore! This goes to show just how successful they were in their jobs," wrote one netizen, Joey.

In 2009, Chee Hong Tat (then PPS to MM Lee) asserted that its "foolish to advocate the learning of dialects". In Chee's response to Ms Abu Baker's ST article (One generation - that's all it takes 'for a language to die'), he emphasized that "it would be stupid for any Singapore agency or NTU to advocate the learning of dialects, which must be at the expense of English and Mandarin", hence "that was the reason the Government stopped all dialect programmes on radio and television after 1979."

As the world all over spews out horror stories of misbehaving PRC tourists, Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry is doing the exact opposite - it has asked Singaporeans and companies to do more to attract more PRC tourists. Speaking at a fund raising event organized by the Singapore Cruise Center, Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry and National Development, said that Singaporeans need to customize their offerings to cater to tourists from China.