NTUC News 5 Aug 2005

THE marine industry in Singapore is performing well. In the past five years, revenue growth has led to a 20 per cent increase in the number of jobs in the industry. However, the total number of Singaporeans working in the marine industry has not gone up at all.

In other words, job growth in the marine industry has not translated into any growth in local employment over the past five years.

The same can be said of the landscaping and construction sectors. We have become so overly dependent on foreign workers that we are fast losing our core skills in these sectors.

To a lesser extent, we are seeing a similar trend developing in other job sectors. The public transport sector is one such example. Singaporeans today take up just one in every two job openings as bus captains. Some jobs in our hospitals are heading the same way too.

Bearing in mind that local unemployment is hovering around 5 per cent for a few years now, one would wonder why our job-seekers are not more interested in these job openings; and why the employers are not more interested in attracting our job-seekers.

On one hand, the job-seekers would say that this is because the jobs are too demanding and the pay is too low, or they are being discriminated against by employers who prefer to hire low-cost foreign workers.

On the other hand, employers would say that this is because local job-seekers are too choosy, have unrealistic expectations, not hard working and not adaptable enough.

Such finger pointing is not new and has been going on for years.

However, to reduce the threat of raising unemployment due to mismatch between jobs and job-seekers, we need to stop pointing fingers. We must hold hands instead.

Indeed, this is and will be the approach from now on.

For example, we are holding hands in the environment sector. Spearheaded by the National Environment Agency, more than 1,000 jobs paying more than $1,000 a month have been re-created in the hawker centres and HDB estates.

We are holding hands in the schools. Spearheaded by the Singapore Teachers’ Union, Ministry of Education and schools, more than 100 jobs have been created for Singaporeans to work as teacher assistants and library assistants.

We are holding hands in the hospitals. Spearheaded by the hospital management and unions, more than 200 jobs have been reclaimed for Singaporeans to work as healthcare assistants.

We are holding hands in the landscaping sector. Spearheaded by NParks, close to 200 jobs have been reclaimed for Singaporeans to work as landscaping technicians.

We are holding hands in the public transport sector. Spearheaded by the National Transport Workers’ Union and SBS Transit, wage restructuring and skill upgrading have attracted 220 local job applicants within five weeks. 80 of them have been trained to be bus captains.

We are holding hands in the security sector. Spearheaded by the Union of Security Employees and the security associations, wages have been restructured, skill requirements have been upgraded, and career path has been better defined. We expect to attract not only more applicants, but better applicants too when a new series of recruitment exercises is launched this month.

The list goes on – construction, retails, hotels, childcare …

Looking back, we are encouraged by the progress made so far.

Looking forward, we are mindful of the long journey ahead. We are determined to keep creating jobs, re-creating jobs, and turning these job opportunities into local employment.

We will keep extending our helping hands to more employers, more government agencies, and more workers. We hope that they will extend their helping hands to us too.

Together, hand in hand, we can help jobless workers to find jobs; and low wage earners to earn better wages.