LHL: Tourism can create jobs for sgporeans & foreigners
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16 Feb 2010 - Temasek Review
PM Lee: Tourism can create jobs for both Singaporeans and foreigners
Written by Our Correspondent
During a visit to Swissotel The Stamford last Sunday, where he was briefed on the “exciting developments” taking place in the hospitality sector, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said:
“We have to think of all these ways of adjusting to a new situation, because we want the tourism industry to grow. It has a lot of potential, and it can create a lot of jobs… jobs for Singaporeans, and there will also be some proportion of jobs for non-Singaporeans because they need a whole range of skills and abilities.”
Foreigners make up more than one third of Singapore’s workforce, especially in the F&B, retail and tourism industry. Local employers often complain that they have “no choice” but to turn to foreigners as Singaporeans are not keen to take up the jobs on offer.
The recently opened Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) IR is rumored to have a significant number of foreigners on its payroll out of the 10,000 workers it is expected to employ when it is fully operational.
Even before it was officially opened, Philipines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in April last year that RWS will open about 5,000 new jobs for Filipinos.
She had sent a delegation to Singapore to explore possible job opportunities for migrant Filipino and they went to discuss available slots for Filipino workers such as workers for hotels, casinos and performers with Tan Hee Teck, CEO of RWS. (read report here)
PM Lee also brought up the issue of Singapore’s low productivity level which was only 60 to 70 per cent that of other developed economies such as the United States, Japan and Hong Kong and expressed optimism that Singapore can catch up with them.
“So if we invest, if we train, if we organise ourselves properly, I am sure we can do that over time…..’If the productivity doesn’t go up, and we don’t get the growth, you may feel that while you are relaxing a bit more, the mood, the buoyancy, the optimism, will be quite different,” he added.
A key reason for Singapore’s low productivity is its over-reliance on cheap foreign workers as demonstrated by the graph below:
[Source: Kojakbt, 3in1kopitiam moderator]
Due to the easy availability of foreign workers, companies often take the easy way out by hiring more to reduce costs rather than think of innovative ways to do so by increasing productivity.
Though there is a quota for local workers to fill before an employer can hire foreigners, this can be easily circumvented by applying PRs for earlier arrivals thereby converting them into “locals” and freeing a slot for another foreigner.
In Singapore, both citizens and PRs are lumped together in one single category “local”.
PM Lee should be reminded that it is not the business of Singapore to create jobs for foreigners. Our priority must lie with Singaporeans first.
While other countries like Australia and Britain are actively taking measures to curbed the inflow of even skilled foreign migrants to protect the livelihoods of their own citizens, the ruling party continues to import large number of foreigners to compete directly with Singaporeans.
Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong said lately that there will not be a “turnaround” in the ruling party’s pro-foreigner policy and the number of foreign workers may actually increase in the next few years.