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Few Singapore Firms Cutting Skilled Foreign Hires
Rachel Chang - Straits Times Indonesia | February 01, 2012

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khaerul.adzany
4:20pm Feb 6, 2012

This is a normal thing to do by those companies, I think this is normal, because everything decided by a company surely based on their past experience and their current needs.

The thing is that Singaporean companies still heavily dependant from foreign hires to fulfil their human resource needs.

This is based on the fact that there are still a majority of percentage where the companies have no plan in their foreign-hires employment plan.

So maybe this is not such a big issue, for Singaporean or their neigboring countries. As an Indonesian, I want to give an opinion: this can be either an issue for Indonesian or not. This can be an issue if Indonesia

cannot provide an enough number of job fields with desirable salary for their experts, this will not be an issue if Indonesian cannot provide those job fields.

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Few companies in Singapore intend to cut down on the number of skilled foreigners they hire on employment passes (EP), despite stricter criteria designed to encourage them to do so.

This is according to a new survey by recruitment firm Achieve Group, which found that just 15 percent of 417 companies polled plan to hire fewer EP-holders in the first half of this year.

Another 7 percent said they would in fact be hiring more EP-holders, while the majority, 78 percent, said there would be no change to their plans.

Of the group that plans to hire fewer EP-holders, 68 percent said this was due to the higher costs of doing so. The survey was carried out in December last year, just before tightened criteria kicked in. From Jan. 1, the salaries that foreigners needed to have in order to qualify for an EP have gone up.

The idea is to ensure that Singapore workers competing for the same white-collar jobs remain attractive to employers — and thus moderate the inflow of foreigners.

Among other changes, the minimum salary for Q1 pass holders, the lowest rung of EP holders, was increased by $200 to $3,000. Those on the second rung, P2 pass, will have to earn $4,500, up from $4,000.

“It is quite obvious that raising the salary criteria does not really help,” said Joshua Yim, chief executive of the Achieve Group, which conducted the twice-yearly survey on hiring trends.

The questions on EP-holders were included for the first time due to the influx of foreign workers being a “hot-button” issue in Singapore.

Other factors, such as the attitudes of the workers, still tip the balance towards EP-holders for employers, he said.

Some of the jobs foreigners fill are “unglamorous” ones with inconvenient hours such as in the shipping and logistics industry, and some Singaporeans shun such work, he added.

Of the companies that planned to hire more EP-holders this year, 56 percent said this was because they could not find Singaporeans to fill the spots, while 13 percent said EP-holders have better work attitudes than Singaporeans.

Another 9 percent said it is still cheaper overall to hire EP-holders than Singaporeans. The remaining 22 percent said they had other reasons.

But besides fulfilling the salary criterion, EP applicants must also have educational and professional qualifications that the Manpower Ministry deems “acceptable.” Evaluated on a case-by-case basis, these take into account factors such as the quality of their educational institutions, as measured by enrollment standards and graduates’ employment outcomes.

MPs interviewed said it was too early to conclude that the stricter salary criteria were ineffective, or that the qualifying salaries needed to be raised even further.

“Fifteen percent is a good start,” said Holland-Bukit Timah GRC MP Liang Eng Hwa. “But of course we hope that more companies look to Singaporeans first. The stricter criteria have only just been activated, we need to wait a few more quarters to judge if they work.”

Added Nee Soon GRC MP Patrick Tay: “I’m not inclined to pass judgment too quickly because the measures need time to sink in.”

Reprinted courtesy of Straits Times Indonesia. To subscribe to Straits Times Indonesia and/or the Jakarta Globe call 021 2553 5055.