Hansard (14-03-1977)
DEBATE ON ANNUAL BUDGET STATEMENT
(Mr Hon Sui Sen, was the Finance Minister then)
Mr Sia Khoon Seong (Moulmein): Mr Speaker, Sir, the effectiveness and soundness of the Finance Minister’s overall economic policies and planning as set out in the Budget Estimates for the coming fiscal year is clear. The economic programme for the next fiscal year, after all, is an extension of the Economic Strategy Programme for the 1970′s, announced by him in this House some five years ago.
The past five years is now part of history, but it is a history that bears eloquent testimony to the correctness and soundness of our approaches in economic planning and development. We have withstood the ravages of severe world economic crises, and our GNP indicators show a modest economic growth, despite those crises.
I have noticed, however, that although more and more emphasis is correctly being given to our manpower development programmes for the training of our younger workers to gain more specialised skills, no mention is made of any attempt to tap and develop the fairly large reservoir of the unskilled and semi-skilled labour force in Singapore.
Attempts were made in the past to tap the substantial women labour force in the housing estates, etc., but I wonder how successful these attempts have been. There are thousands of unemployed Singaporeans still on the Employment Register, and in addition, there are thousands of others not on the Labour Ministry’s Employment Register.
All of them, whether officially registered as unemployed or not, are actively and desperately seeking jobs so that they can maintain their families. Putting the blame on the job-seekers and accusing them of being choosy may be a convenient and neat way of dismissing any discussion on a troublesome issue; but we have still to live with the problem of the unemployed in our midst. True, some unemployed deservedly bear the blame for rejecting jobs offered to them. But there are also those who do not get any offer of jobs. These are the persons that factories and companies will reject outright in their labour recruitment. These are persons who are above the age of 40 years and who may be illiterate.
Mr Speaker, Sir, there are a large number of workers who constituted part of the workforce 20 or more years ago. These persons came into the employment market in an era where there was little industrialisation in Singapore and when the requirements were the artisan or the semi-skilled worker. They were the products of our educational system at that time and for various social and economic reasons they had to leave school at an early age and take up employment either as apprentices or as unskilled labour.
The demand for skilled workers at that point of time was very limited and so they had no alternative but to go to work at a very young age. In addition, there was practically no opportunity for them to pursue higher education because they came from poor families and at that time there was little free education or scholarships to enable them to pursue higher skills. Their technical or academic qualifications, therefore, were very low but they fulfilled the need at that time.
In the last 17 years, as Singapore industrialised, new skills were required and the tendency is that higher standards of academic performance are required from applicants aspiring to train in the skills required for our industry, especially higher technology industries. Therefore, this large pool of workers are unable to find employment, although many of them are quite efficient. If they are given some form of formal training to equip them with the skills required for modern industry, they will do very well because they have gone through the hard times of the fifties and will therefore be willing to work assiduously for a living. It is very easy to dismiss them and say that they are underqualified, but they were qualified at a time when Singapore needed them. And they are now with us. Something, therefore, has to be done to equip them with skills to find employment especially as industry is crying for more skilled and dedicated workers.
Mr Speaker, Sir, it is not that these unfortunate persons are being choosy, but that the emphasis has been placed on the new worker with a higher academic standard. It is not to say that we do not need workers of higher educational standards, but there is also a need and a place for these older workers.
Employers of certain establishments have imposed unduly high or exacting requirements of applicants in respect of qualifications or personal appearance, or both. Let me illustrate this with examples. Take the case of the hotel establishments in their recruitment of staff. The girls they recruit must not only possess certain minimum academic qualifications but they must also be tall and have a winsome smile, long pretty hair, and be able to charm the customers. In fact, they must have all the attributes to induce the male customers to return to the warm and friendly atmosphere of the respective hotel establishments. Even for the job of house-keeping similar attributes, but only at a slightly lower level, are also expected of the applicants.
According to my union source, a few years ago even one local hotel went as far as retrenching the older female employees under some pretext and later recruited younger girls to fill the jobs left vacant as the result of the retrenchment. So at once, all those hardworking mothers, who are able to be house-keepers in a hotel and who wish to supplement their family income by working, will find themselves out of luck if they wish to seek the simple job of house-keeper in a hotel, although they may be much more efficient in view of their long experience in their own homes.
Even Government establishments are guilty of adopting such a choosy attitude. At one time, to be a car-park attendant, whose job is only a simple thing like issuing a receipt, an applicant had to possess, at least a Secondary 2 qualification and be between 18 and 25 years old. Luckily, through the efforts of the Ministry of Labour, this excessive stipulation has been removed. Now one needs only to have a Primary 6 qualification and may even be over 30 years of age to be a car-park attendant. I can go on listing examples to show that employers have become choosy. In view of the ease in employing certain categories of foreign workers because of our present policy on the issue of work permits, employers can continue to be choosy. But what happens to many of the Singaporeans, who are less endowed, either physically or academically? Are they to remain forever at a disadvantage?
I seriously doubt that we are doing enough or as much as we can to help the unemployed who are unskilled and semiskilled to get jobs. Obviously, something more is needed than just registering their names in the Employment Register of the Labour Ministry in the hope that employers will offer them jobs. Services such as those offered by private employment agencies in filtering or screening out unsuitable or inappropriate applicants should be provided by the Ministry. Or are we just concentrating on the training of more persons with better academic qualifications or with highly specialised skills and catering for the interest of such persons only? Is there an overall national manpower planning and development programme? Even if there is, is it effectively and efficiently co-ordinated and centrally directed? Or do we just leave the various ministries and institutions to go on in their separate and merry ways?
At the present moment, one gets the impression that each institution of higher learning has its own idea of what courses it should provide, without any due consideration to our overall national manpower requirements. The Economic Development Board runs its own technical training programmes together with certain multi-national companies. Then there is the Industrial Training Board with a separate set of objectives and priorities. Soon the Education Ministry will introduce its own Junior Apprenticeship Training Scheme. Even the MINDEF joins in this multiplicity of training schemes. I would, therefore like to enquire how many of these training schemes are being duplicated and, therefore, causing an unnecessary wastage of training resources, and whether we are producing too many of one kind and too little of another kind.
It seems to be a matter of irrefutable, logical and grave importance that, in a small island like Singapore where human power is the only resource, we should have a comprehensive and properly co-ordinated manpower planning and development programme.
It is imperative that we do not produce a surfeit of highly skilled or specialised personnel and at the same time completely neglect the unskilled or semi-skilled unemployed. For in the end, we may not be able to satisfy the heightened expectations of the highly skilled personnel or the basic desire of the unskilled for any jobs, with the result all of them will be frustrated and demoralised.
It is imperative that in our overall manpower planning and development, the unskilled and semi-skilled must be taken into account. In our situation today, this is all the more important, since we must, at one time or the other, resolve the problem of the unusually large number of work permit holders who may pose serious problems in political and social terms in time to come.
