In
his round-up speech after the Budget debate in Parliament, Deputy Prime
Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said the Ministry of
Manpower will look into allowing greater flexibility for businesses in
deploying current foreign labour.
Referring to suggestions by MPs Ang Wei Neng
and Tin Pei Ling to allow companies to keep experienced foreign workers who
have been trained for longer periods, Mr Tharman said this had merit, as long
as the company was still within its dependency ratio ceiling (DRC). He noted
that such workers who are well-trained and experienced are a plus for
productivity and saves the company from having to re-hire and re-train another
foreign worker.
Deployment of foreign workers across job
duties within the same firm, which was previously not allowed, will also be
relaxed, starting with the hotel sector. Mr Tharman said that dialogues with
industry, business chambers and associations have seen them putting in requests
for such flexibility, pointing to how this will be a boost to efficiency.
However, Mr Tharman said that giving greater
flexibility to specific industries that seem to have greater need for foreign
workers will not work as such a practice is not practical nor equitable, as it
does not curb the excessive growth in foreign worker numbers nor achieve dual
goals of boosting productivity and incomes. Moreover, he noted that it will
give an unfair advantage to some firms over others.
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