At my Meet-the-People-Sessions, I observed a growing trend of more and more lower income, lower skilled workers and older workers with problems that reveal a certain pattern: once out of job, they remain unemployed for a long time or the jobs they found are not paying enough to make ends meet.

The livelihood problems these groups face deserve our serious attention.  Clearly, these workers, trapped in structural unemployment and low-paying jobs, need help.

This is indeed the new challenge confronting many governments and labour movements worldwide in the foreseeable future.

To our labour movement, the welfare and workfare of our workers - especially the lower-income and older Singaporeans - remain our main concerns.

The Ministerial Committee on Low Wage Workers, under its workfare plan, has proposed six main thrusts comprising CPF top-ups when the economy is doing well, social support for dysfunctional families, skill upgrading, job redesign, educating the next generation and examining fair and helpful ways to share the fruit of Singapore's economic progress with low-income households.

NTUC supports the Workfare concept. The labour movement, with our tripartite partners, focuses on re-creating and redesigning jobs, as well as upgrading workers' skills. Of the 12 sectors targeted for the job re-creation and redesign, we have helped create more job opportunities for those who are more vulnerable to structural unemployment.

One may ask: "Why workfare and not welfare?"

Workfare aims to help these workers increase their productivity, to add value to their labour input, so that they can enjoy better wages and a higher standard of living. Welfare is achieved through better quality work. In short, nothing must be allowed to erode our work ethic.

Over the last two years, many Singaporeans have been retrained and they are now working as teacher-assistants, security guards, bus captains, landscape technicians and so on. Besides, we are also looking into redesigning jobs in toilet cleaning, childcare and multi-skill tradesmen.

Thus, if workers can be properly trained, properly equipped and properly paid, it is better than them doing nothing and helplessly relying on the State for support.

Let us work together to translate workfare into welfare for our needy workers. The workfare approach assures the bottom 20 per cent of our lower income earners of the assistance they need. Workfare has, indeed, the workers' welfare at its heart.

'NTUC supports the Workfare concept. The labour movement, with our tripartite partners, focuses on re-creating and redesigning jobs, as well as upgrading workers' skills.'