1 Mr Murali Pillai asked the Minister for Health what are the merits of lifting the circuit breaker measures from 1 June 2020 when the rate of infection amongst migrant workers remains in its hundreds and what steps will be taken to ensure that the infection is contained within their residences.
2 Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Health what lessons can be learnt from other jurisdictions on how to prevent, minimise or manage a second wave of COVID-19 infections as our economy is opened gradually.
3 Mr Chong Kee Hiong asked the Minister for Health in view of the low COVID-19 infection rates within our community presently, whether the Ministry will consider (i) allowing all workers and employees whose workplaces meet safe distancing criteria to return to their workstations (ii) re-opening all outdoor sports facilities such as stadiums and swimming pools; and (iii) re-opening all retail malls and food and beverage outlets as long as they can meet safe distancing measures.
4 Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked the Minister for Health whether the Ministry can consider allowing food and beverage outlets to operate for business on 2 June 2020 on the condition that they implement safe distancing among the diners and limit the number of diners per table to a reasonable number.
5 Mr Chong Kee Hiong asked the Minister for Health (a) of the countries or cities that have recently started relaxing their lockdown or stay at home measures, which ones are Singapore monitoring closely and modelling ourselves after; and (b) what are the lessons that we are learning from them.
\tThe Minister for Health (Mr Gan Kim Yong): Mr Speaker, may I have your permission to take Question Nos 1 to 5, please.
\tMr Speaker: Yes, please.
\tMr Gan Kim Yong: Thank you. Members will recall that we implemented the circuit breaker from 7 April, just two months ago. I am sure to some, it feels like two years ago. At that time, the number of COVID-19 cases was rising rapidly, with community cases averaging more than 30 a day, compared to just a handful in early March. This is coupled with an outbreak in the migrant workers' dormitories in early April. The circuit breaker imposed strict safe distancing measures, keeping people at home and only allowing basic essential services to continue. The number of community cases then began to decline and we extended the circuit breaker to 1 June in order to slow the infection further.
We understand the impact that the measures have had on people’s lives and livelihoods. The economy practically came to a standstill. Community activities and social interactions ceased. No one went out except for essentials and work. Stress at home went up. Anxiety of seniors from physical isolation grew. We introduced measures to help Singaporeans cope with the circuit breaker but it was nonetheless a challenging two months.
Overall, the circuit breaker was painful but necessary to slow the transmission in the community. Eventually, the daily number of community cases came down to low single digits towards the end of the circuit breaker. While the number of cases in the dormitories remained high, as pointed out by Mr Murali Pillai, it was partly due to proactive screening as part of our plan to clear the dormitories and prepare the workers to return to work. The situation in the dormitories had come under control. The time had come to begin our journey to resume activities, gradually and cautiously. Let me thank all Singaporeans for your patience and cooperation during the circuit breaker.
However, we must be mindful that there are still infections in dormitories, and there are still undetected cases in the community as evidenced from the unlinked cases we discover from time to time. The global situation has also not fully stabilised. Some countries are seeing a second wave of infection, after reopening their economy and allowing social activities, as pointed out by Mr Christopher de Souza. Therefore, we must remain vigilant even as we exit the circuit breaker.
Mr Chong Kee Hiong and Mr Christopher de Souza asked what we can learn from other countries. The Multi-Ministry Task Force has been monitoring the global situation and learning from the experiences of other jurisdictions, including their strategies for opening the economy and the community.
For example, New Zealand had moved from Alert Level 4, which is their highest alert level, to Level 3 on 28 April, and subsequently transitioned to Level 2 about two weeks later. In making these moves, the authorities took into account factors such as the number of daily cases to ensure the situation is under control, healthcare capacity to ensure the system can cope with potential rise in new cases once the restrictions are relaxed and adequacy of safety measures to prevent transmission.
While the situation differs for different jurisdictions, most have taken a cautious and risk-based approach in lifting restrictions. While workplaces have reopened, many authorities have retained measures to limit social interactions and restrict mixing of households in the early stages of opening, as these are known sources of transmission. Hong Kong, for example, limited social gatherings to eight persons and this has just been extended by two more weeks because of a new cluster. The United Kingdom and Germany limited social gatherings to two persons. Singapore has decided to maintain tight restrictions on social gatherings and household visits in Phase One, except for visits to parents and grandparents. We will allow gatherings of up to five persons in Phase Two initially and possibly relaxing this further if the situation remains under control.
Many countries have also continued with basic preventive measures to reduce the risk of transmission in public places and workplaces and we must do the same. These include safe distancing measures and wearing of masks. Taiwan has made mask-wearing mandatory on public transport and we have done so too. New Zealand allows businesses to operate subject to implementation of measures like maintaining safe separation between patrons, keeping contact tracing registers and regularly disinfecting shared surfaces. Likewise, we require workplace premises that are permitted to open to put in place safe management measures.
Digital solutions have been used in many countries as well, such as Australia, China, Israel and South Korea to support the gradual resumption of activities by enabling faster contact tracing and identification of clusters. Singapore has similarly introduced TraceTogether and SafeEntry.
The last and most important lesson we have learnt from other countries is that we cannot be complacent as there is always the risk of a second wave of the virus. We have seen a steady decline in community cases, to four cases per day in the past week.
But we should be mindful that this is probably the effect of the circuit breaker. We expect to see a rise in new community cases as the activity levels and person-to-person interactions increase after the circuit breaker. The Multi-Ministry Task Force has therefore taken a cautious and graduated approach to ensure safe opening in Phase One.
We have decided to first resume economic activities that do not pose high risk of transmission, such as manufacturing and production operations, and work in office settings which have no or minimal interactions with customers. To keep workers safe, employers are required to put in place safe management measures such as enabling employees to telecommute where possible, avoiding face-to-face contact meetings and ensuring regular disinfection of common touch points and equipment at work premises. At work premises, workers should also avoid social interactions with colleagues, including meal times and break times. One of the areas that has a high risk of transmission is at the pantry area where most workers, while taking a break, are likely to let their guard down. At the same time, they remove their masks in order to enjoy a cup of coffee. So, that area is an area of high risk of transmission and we would like to remind everyone to exercise extra caution when you are at the pantry area and enjoying your break times.
We have also worked with the dormitory operators to strengthen management practices, so that workers can live safely in the dormitories. These include tighter control of entry and exit, measures to limit inter-mixing of residents between blocks and levels, and staggered use of common facilities. Only those workers who have recovered or tested negative will be allowed to leave the dormitories. Even then, it would initially only be for the purpose of work, and with tight arrangements to transport them to and from work. We will also strengthen health surveillance by conducting regular testing of the residents and having them report their health conditions daily. Any residents that test positive and their close contacts will be isolated expeditiously.
While the number of cases we detect among the migrant worker population may remain high for some time, some of them may be past infections and are not active cases.
Schools, student care centres and pre-schools will also reopen progressively, with precautionary measures in place. However, social gatherings are still not allowed, and everyone should only leave home for essential activities and should continue wearing a mask when doing so.
The Multi-Ministry Task Force will closely monitor Phase One. If the community transmission rates remain low and stable, and the dormitory situation continues to be under control, we can move to Phase Two.
In Phase Two, a broader range of activities will resume and we expect most of the economy to be able to reopen. In response to Mr Chong Kee Hiong and Mr Lim Biow Chuan’s questions, retail, food and beverage dine-in services, as well as personal, health and wellness and home-based services will resume in Phase Two, subject to safe management measures being in place. Some may start earlier, others may need a bit more time to put in place the necessary safeguards.
We will also allow small groups to meet up in Phase Two, including dining together, so long as they do not exceed five persons. We will also gradually re-open our borders for Singaporeans to conduct essential activities overseas. We will share more details later, nearer the date.
However, to ensure that we do not undo the efforts of the circuit breaker period, we will continue to adopt a more cautious approach for higher risk activities, such as those involving large numbers of people interacting with one another in enclosed spaces for prolonged periods of time. These include religious services, cultural venues such as arts performances, cinemas, museums and libraries. Nightclubs and bars, karaoke outlets and other public entertainment establishments have similar risk factors. Overseas and local experience has indicated that these settings can seed large clusters of transmission. At least 255 cases were linked to a nightclub cluster in South Korea’s Itaewon entertainment district in early May. In Singapore, the Hero’s Bar cluster is another example. Organisers of these activities and business owners would need to convince relevant agencies that they have robust plans to ensure safety, before we let them open.
If community transmissions remain low and well contained, we will continue to ease measures and even increase the pace until we reach a new COVID-safe normal in Phase Three, which we expect to remain in, until an effective vaccine or treatment is developed.
We understand the anxiety that our people are facing and are acutely aware of the economic and social impact of prolonged closure of various sectors. All of us want to get back to normal as soon as possible, as quickly as possible, and to be able to see our friends and family members whom we have not seen for some time. However, if we resume too many activities too quickly, there is a real risk of a resurgence in the number of COVID-19 cases or clusters, which may require us to re-impose strict measures and slow down the pace of resumption.
As restrictions are eased and more activities resume, it becomes even more critical that each of us exercise strong social responsibility to ensure that community transmission remains low. We need everyone to play their part: wear a mask when outside your home, maintain good personal hygiene and observe safe opening measures. Our combined efforts will help smoothen our journey of safe transition, and together, we can keep Singapore COVID-safe.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Pillai.
\tMr Murali Pillai (Bukit Batok): Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the hon Minister for Health for his detailed explanation. I have some supplementary questions. In relation to the proactive checking of the migrant workers that he mentioned, how long will it take to complete the checking of the migrant workers in the dormitories? And if the time it takes is long or goes over to the expected time of start of Phase Two or Phase Three, how would it impact the timelines for Phase Two or Phase Three of the reopening of the economy?
\tMr Gan Kim Yong: The proactive screening of migrant workers in the dormitories will take some time because we have to do it systematically and carefully. They may take up to August or even September. So, we want to do it systematically. But as we do so, when the workers have been cleared through this process, they will then be able to start work. Therefore, we want to make sure that those who are able start work are safe in the community. And therefore, that will allow us to continue the process of opening our economy and if we are safe and remain safe in Phase One, we will then be able to proceed to Phase Two, hopefully – if all goes well – before the end of the month.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Lim Biow Chuan.
\t
\tMr Lim Biow Chuan (Mountbatten): Sir, let me just say that I truly appreciate the efforts of MOH in maintaining the safety of our citizens. But I have spoken to various F&B outlets and basically, they are a bit worried and concern whether they are able to sustain the prolong closure of their businesses. So, some of them say, \"If you continue like this, we won't be able to open even when you say go ahead and open\", because by then they would be insolvent.
I would like to ask the Minister whether MOH can consider bringing forward some of the relaxation of the measures, just like what we did previously when we segregated seats; you label seats that should be left empty to make sure that people would not congregate. I am not asking for nightclubs and bars to be opened because there is where the crowd is, but for some of the F&B outlets to be able to sit a few of the diners. Perhaps, we can look at the examples of Hong Kong, UK and New Zealand and see whether we are able to relax some of our measures, just like they have done.
\tMr Gan Kim Yong: I thank the Member. We discussed this at length within the Multi-Ministerial Task Force on how we can open safely. There are a lot of requests from different economic sectors and social sectors. We are fully mindful that any prolonged closure of the businesses will have a severe impact. And today, many of the F&B outlets are allowed to do takeaways so they have some ability to sustain a basic level of business activities. But I know that is not enough because they do want to bring back their customers. And there are also F&B outlets that cannot do delivery and so on; it is not economical for them to do so, and therefore they really do want to bring back customers.
But we need to remember that opening F&B is not just allowing the workers to work. It also means that you must allow the customers to go there and eat and dine in. When you allow that, that means you must allow gatherings. And if you allow gathering in the F&B, you must also allow gatherings outside because then it does not make sense to only allow the gatherings in the F&B. Therefore, it will lead to a general opening of the society, of the community and allow social gatherings of certain number of people. This will be a consideration for Phase Two.
Even in Phase Two, we need to look at what are the settings that we will allow earlier opening. As I have mentioned, some of the dining in will probably be earlier, with some safeguards in place. Some of the venues, for example, even religious organisations, we are in discussions with them, we want to engage them to discuss with them what are the safeguards that can be put in place so that they can also open early. But we also understand that because these involve a large number of people in a congregation, and therefore, additional safeguards have to be put in place.
Similarly, for the F&B, we want to reach out and discuss with them what are the measures that we can put in place to ensure safe distancing and minimise mixing. But because it involves the public, consumers in the community, it has to be aligned with the opening of the community, which is generally in Phase Two.
I know everybody wants to be in Phase One, but I need to explain that Phase One is a safe opening phase, which means that it is likely to be very restrictive and we are not prepared to open it up too early, too quickly because that, in fact, may result in more cases emerging and in turn, will require us to re-impose some of the measures and as a result, may differ and slowdown Phase Two.
So, we prefer to keep Phase One safe so that we can open Phase Two safely, and hopefully faster, rather than to delay further because there are cases that will emerge.
We have seen from other countries' experiences. If we open too quickly, the community is not ready, the businesses are not ready, then you will allow infections to seep in and you have to re-introduce some of the measures and as a result, in fact, you will in turn slow down the opening process.
There is a Chinese saying, \"欲速则不达\". That means we want to make haste but less speed. It is better for us to take a more cautious approach. We fully understand the challenges faced by businesses. We have measures to put in place and we do all we can to make sure that we do not delay the opening so long as we are able to ensure safety.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Help for Employers, Employees and Those Looking for Jobs during COVID-19 Crisis","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"6 Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for Manpower whether the Government will consider a temporary reduction of CPF contributions by both employee and employer till after the economy has recovered from the COVID-19 crisis.
7 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what measures are undertaken to ensure fair dismissal practices by employers of work permit holders who have been tested positive for COVID-19 and after the circuit breaker period; (b) what is the course of action for work permit holders who (i) have lost their jobs (ii) have salaries unpaid or (iii) wish to return to their countries of origin; (c) how have measures to safeguard employment and payment of salaries been communicated to (i) work permit holders and (ii) their employers; and (d) whether the Ministry will issue an advisory on (i) employment (ii) salaries (iii) fair dismissal practices and (iv) contract termination for all work permit holders and their employers.
8 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Manpower what is being done to better protect, assist and support workers, especially professionals, managers and executives, who face contract termination, disguised retrenchments and other job severance and managing excess manpower arrangements which affect their livelihood during this COVID-19 period.
9 Mr Saktiandi Supaat asked the Minister for Manpower (a) how common is the practice for employers and recruiters to ask job seekers to declare their last drawn salary or to share previous payslips; (b) whether any study has been made to ascertain how such practices affected employability and salary packages of job applicants; and (c) whether such a practice should be stopped so that applicants can move up the wage scale.
10 Mr Ang Hin Kee asked the Minister for Manpower (a) arising from the COVID-19 situation, what is the employment status of Singaporeans who are currently based overseas; and (b) what are the assistance support available for them if they have lost their jobs and\twould like to return to Singapore to seek employment
11 Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what is the latest labour market situation and the extent of contraction in local and foreign employment in the last three months; (b) what is the number of job losses expected in the next one year when the Jobs Support Scheme expires; and (c) what are the initiatives to support new job creations.
12 Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Manpower (a) whether the introduction and implementation timeline of the new SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package will be impacted by the COVID-19 crisis and can be expedited; and (b) whether the at-risk mid-career workers can be given more transitional support during this steep economic slowdown.
13 Ms Joan Pereira asked the Minister for Manpower whether there are any plans to support employees who have been given notice by their employers to terminate their contracts but who have not received retrenchment benefits for terminations due to redundancies rather than poor performance.
The Minister for Manpower (Mrs Josephine Teo): Mr Speaker, may I have your permission to take Question Nos 6 to 13?
\tMr Speaker: Yes, please.
\tMrs Josephine Teo: Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked about our labour market situation in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. For the first quarter of 2020, preliminary estimates showed a slight uptick of our unemployment rate and retrenchments compared to the previous quarter, even though they remained lower than peaks experienced during the SARS outbreak and Global Financial Crisis. Total employment, excluding foreign domestic workers, registered its sharpest quarterly contraction since SARS, due primarily to a significant decline in foreign employment.
To Mr Ang Hin Kee's question, there are about 200,000 Singaporeans living, working or studying abroad at any one time. Our employment surveys do not generally cover these overseas Singaporeans. However, given the global impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, we can imagine that some of them may face job losses. As our citizens, they will always be welcome home. We will also do our best to help all Singaporeans, including those who return, and whether they are fresh graduates or mid-career individuals, all the support systems and services will be extended to them.
The Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) and other schemes under the Unity, Resilience and Solidarity Budgets are helping to cushion the impact on the labour market. As Singapore's GDP is expected to contract by between 4% and 7%, we should be prepared for further job displacements. Uncertainty about the future will also moderate hiring. We are therefore making a big push to open up pathways to jobs, including traineeships and skills upgrading programmes. I will speak more on these measures during the debate on the Fortitude Budget.
Given this backdrop, it is understandable that Mr Seah Kian Peng asks if the Government would consider a temporary reduction of CPF contributions. If the objective is to reduce the cost burden to employers, JSS has done so with fewer drawbacks. For example, those who depend on CPF contributions to meet housing and healthcare needs can continue to do so. Singaporeans' ability to save for retirement is also not eroded. As an added advantage, JSS is able to target stronger support at sectors that are more affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Another avenue of support was offered by the National Wages Council (NWC). Guidelines issued in March suggested that employers can consider reducing non-wage costs and making use of Government support measures such as the SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit to train and upskill workers. The guidelines also advise employers to consider using the Monthly Variable Component (MVC) to adjust wages to save jobs. Such a tripartite approach to managing cost pressures is not easily available in many countries.
Nonetheless, we will continue to monitor and assess the situation, and consider whether other measures, including adjusting CPF contribution rates, may be necessary in future.
In these challenging times, there are also heightened sensitivities about fair treatment. For example, when it comes to recruitment, Mr Saktiandi Supaat is concerned if job seekers have been forced to declare their last drawn salaries during job application. In fact, there is no rule that job seekers must comply, and employers cannot insist on it. We should, however, take a practical approach on whether employers are allowed to ask for such information.
The last drawn salary is a relevant input to employers seeking to gauge a candidate's seniority or to make an appropriate job offer. However, if employers use last drawn salary to screen applicants, they risk losing out on good candidates who are prepared to adjust their salary expectations, especially in today's context. It is similarly unwise for employers to overlook the longer track record of the applicant, and make an offer based solely on the last drawn salary especially if the last-held position was an interim one. If a job seeker chooses to provide salary information, employers should use it carefully.
Mr Patrick Tay and Ms Joan Pereira asked about fair treatment of workers when they are retrenched, terminated, or have their wages reduced.
In this challenging period, we recognise that both workers and employers have to make sacrifices to save jobs wherever possible. Besides the NWC's guidelines on the fair approach to adjusting wages, the tripartite partners have issued advisories on managing excess manpower. We have been clear that retrenchment should be a last resort.
On the question of \"disguised retrenchments\", there are clear guidelines. Even during the COVID-19 period, whatever the termination of employment is called, an employee is presumed to have been retrenched if the employer cannot show a plan to fill the vacancy any time soon. Let me say that again, even during the COVID-19 outbreak, whatever the termination of employment is called, an employee is presumed to have been retrenched if the employer cannot show a plan to fill the vacancy any time soon.
If the retrenchment benefit is spelt out in the employment contract or collective agreement, the employer has a clear obligation to pay. He cannot side-step it by calling the retrenchment something else. If a company is found to have disguised their retrenchments, MOM can and will consider withdrawing Government support like JSS and suspending their work pass privileges.
However, in today's context, the bigger challenge is not that the employer pretends it is not a retrenchment, but that he does not have the means to fulfil his obligations. The tripartite partners have therefore agreed that in instances of genuine financial difficulty for the employer, retrenchment benefit may be re-negotiated or moderated. The norms may have to be set aside in these abnormal times. Nevertheless, businesses should still give some support to retrenched employees, to the extent that they can afford.
To ensure fair and responsible implementation of tripartite advisories, MOM has required employers to submit notifications of cost-saving measures they intend to undertake. Through these notifications, MOM and TAFEP identify companies for further engagement, for example, if their planned wage cuts appear excessive. Following our intervention, many companies reviewed their cost-saving measures to give more wage support to employees.
Our interventions also reveal that quite often, the worker suspects he has not been fairly treated because of poor communication with his employer. For example, an employee of a private pre-school operator was aggrieved to be asked to clear 13.5 days of her annual leave during the two-month long circuit breaker period. We found that she continued to get full pay even though her work hours were significantly reduced. The employer had also seen a sharp drop in revenue due to school fee refunds and the JSS payout was insufficient to cover employees' full wages during the period. The employer's request was therefore not unreasonable.
\tNevertheless, after MOM's engagement, the employer arranged for this employee to work more days and only clear six days of annual leave. The company also took our advice to improve their communications by explaining their cost-saving measures clearly to all staff.
The cases we reviewed show that in the course of saving the business and preserving jobs, workers and employers need to build trust and maintain open communications. The tripartite partners firmly believe in the principle of shared responsibility, and urge both employers and employees to work together during this difficult time.
The general principles of fair treatment apply equally to all our workers, whether local or foreign. Likewise, when companies have to reduce wages in order to save jobs, both local and foreign employees should be considered. In the unfortunate event of retrenchment, it would certainly not be right to expect employers to favour their foreign employees compared to local workers.
The Government cannot also be expected to provide the same degree of fiscal support to employers to retain their foreign employees compared to their local employees, as Ms Anthea Ong seems to advocate. That is not a question of fairness, but reasonableness.
With respect to disputes involving dismissals, salary payment or repatriation home, there are established processes for handling them. It should not matter whether the worker contracted COVID-19 or not. Employers do not dismiss people because they got the flu or dengue, and they should not do so with COVID-19 either.
We have made clear to employers that even if business is disrupted, they must use the levy rebates that the Government has provided to give salary support to their migrant workers. It has also been a long-standing policy that employers have a duty to upkeep their workers until they have been repatriated home. These obligations remain unchanged in this downturn. It is not new to employers and MOM has not seen an increase in the number of such disputes. In any case, migrant workers with issues can raise them to MOM and the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management through the Migrant Worker Ambassadors and the Forward Assurance and Support Team officers that are currently deployed at the dormitories.
We are very mindful that this period can be stressful to all workers and, of course, to our migrant workers as well, particularly those who are living in dormitories. As detailed in my Ministerial Statement at the 4 May 2020 sitting of Parliament, we have made extensive efforts to disseminate information to them, in their native languages. Many Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) have helped with volunteers manning hotlines and providing additional materials. We are very grateful for their partnership.
The National Jobs Council had our first meeting yesterday. Chaired by Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the Council includes veteran business leaders from industries and union leaders. It will focus on identifying and developing jobs, traineeships and skills training opportunities for Singaporeans amidst the COVID-19 situation.
Mr Speaker, we will open up many more pathways to jobs. As pointed out by Senior Minister Tharman, the scale of our attempt goes beyond any past experience. Complementing these efforts must be a renewed emphasis on fair opportunities for Singaporeans. This is no less important, in my view.
At the start of the year, MOM had identified Fairness at Work as our priority. We strengthened the Fair Consideration Framework (FCF) and stiffened penalties for employers with discriminatory practices, whether for age or gender bias or for not giving qualified Singaporeans serious consideration for jobs.
The COVID-19 outbreak has only strengthened our resolve. In these challenging times, it is all the more critical to give our people the assurance of fair recruitment. Even as we work on opening up more pathways to jobs, we will continue to uphold the Fair Consideration Framework as a commitment to our people.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Seah Kian Peng.
\tMr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): I thank the Minister for her very comprehensive reply. Just one supplementary question. I think all businesses appreciate the Job Support Scheme and other reliefs that have been granted to them to help them reduce their cost and, to the extent possible, to save jobs. But the prospect of more job losses and, in fact, the prospect of wage cuts, is becoming more likely and prevalent. So, that is the genesis behind the question which I asked, whether there could be a temporary reduction of employee's and employer's CPF contributions.
While I appreciate and recognise that CPF indeed is a very important part of our overall financial planning, I would like to ask the Minister whether it is possible — I think on the employer side, fair enough, there is already enough support, but for most employees, the fact is that many of them are bringing back less. Every little bit that we could put on the table for them is something which will certainly help them, particularly in the current climate. It is an important part, I know the Minister had said that she will consider this, this is still on the table, but I think we need to do it a bit more proactively, given the looming and the likelihood of more wage cuts coming onstream. I hope the Minister will put this as a high priority item, something to be activated earlier rather than later.
\tMrs Josephine Teo: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Seah for his supplementary question. Let me say that I completely understand where he is coming from. I appreciate also the fact that he himself, in his capacity as a CEO, is responsible for many employees and he would naturally also want to see if there are ways that he can enable them to continue in employment. So, we are very mindful and at this juncture, we cannot preclude any further moves including the possibility of CPF contribution rate cuts in the future.
But I would say also that for CPF rate cuts, while the intention may be temporary in nature, the loss to a person's ability to accumulate savings for retirement is permanent. Once that savings opportunity is foregone, it cannot easily be reclaimed, and it usually takes a very long time to eventually restore whatever rates that have been cut. And, certainly, for the individual, there is very little likelihood that they can make up for what they were not able to grow in their CPF savings.
So, it is a decision that we have to take very carefully and certainly not lightly at all especially in consideration of the fact that our people will continue to live long lives. If we continue to manage our healthcare well, that must still be the upside to having progress in our society.
Therefore, we have to look at the longer term implications of any moves on the CPF front. It may well come to a stage where we have to do something about it. I take Mr Seah's point very well that if we can be proactive than to be reactive to the situation, that is indeed what we are trying to do.
If you think about not just the Unity, Resilient, Solidarity and Fortitude Budget provisions, which is to try and preserve jobs, we are at the same time not taking for granted that people who will become displaced will be able to move back into jobs easily, given the current situation. That is why there is going to be a big push for many more pathways to jobs, which I will say more about later.
\tMr Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah): Sir, one reason often cited by the employers why they need to hire foreign EPs or S Passes is the lack of specific skills, workers that they need. Now that we are in an excess labour market situation, can I ask the Minister if we should now focus our skills upgrading, our traineeships in sectors and in companies that traditionally hire more EPs and S Passes?
\tMrs Josephine Teo: Mr Speaker, the short answer to Mr Liang's question is yes, indeed, we should. In one particular aspect of the SGUnited Jobs and Skills package, we have identified Professional Conversion Programmes as an area of opportunity that could potentially benefit the employer as well as the job seeker. As Mr Liang correctly points out, there have been areas where, for many years, companies have become quite used to filling actually quite good job positions with Employment Pass holders as well as S Pass holders. In the built environment sector, for example, and I am looking at Minister Desmond Lee who is seated right in front of me, he and I have a joint interest, for example, in ensuring that good quality jobs that the built environment sector is creating, such as for building information modelling, these positions can actually be filled by Singaporeans – whether they are graduating from ITE, Polytechnics or even Universities. With appropriate training, they can actually take up these good jobs. What we need to do now is to work with the employers, work with the trade associations, to create the conversion programmes and then to reach out to suitable job applicants and put the match together. I think that is a very positive and the right way to go about trying to help job seekers and, at the same time, benefiting the employers.
\tMr Patrick Tay Teck Guan (West Coast): I would like to thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to an entire list of questions. I am particularly heartened that she has answered my question on how we are going to better handle disguised retrenchments including situations where companies who are able to pay retrenchment benefits and execute disguised retrenchments will be taken to task if they do not do so. So, I am glad to hear the various executive measures by MOM as well as even withholding JSS will be enforced where needed against errant employers.
But I thought to further emphasise the point on contractual terminations, although the Employment Act does not prescribe the need for employers to give reasons for contractual terminations, whether with or without notice, whether MOM will want to push this agenda to advise and encourage employers to provide reasons for their termination. I think if the reasons are valid and if there is trust and proper communication with the employees, I am sure the employees themselves will understand the rationale and why they execute the contractual termination.
\tMrs Josephine Teo: I understand where Mr Patrick Tay is coming from. MOM is mindful that during these times, we have already been issuing many advisories to employers on a whole range of matters. I would be quite careful and circumspect about issuing more. Frankly, employers themselves are under quite considerable pressure and we certainly do not want to enact more rules than is absolutely necessary.
The point really is this: between employers and employees, there should be good communication. In certain instances where both sides are under pressure, this may break down.
Our approach in handling these disputes is, firstly, to try and establish the facts and, secondly, to try and bring both parties to talk to each other. Quite often, that gets the job done; and quite often, it is due to a misunderstanding of each other's intentions, even more so during such times.
\t
Where there is clear evidence of breach of guidelines or laws on the part of the employer, please be assured that we will take action. But, I am quite mindful not to too easily jump to the conclusion that employers are trying to avoid their obligations. In normal times, perhaps there will be a number of such employers. But in these very, very abnormal times, I think the evidence suggests that it is more due to the fact that the employers are also trying but they themselves face a lot of difficulties.
Mr Saktiandi Supaat (Bishan-Toa Payoh): I thank the Minister for the answer. I am glad to hear her mention about the proactive measures that MOM has taken to address fair consideration given the current situation. What I am suggesting in my Parliamentary Question and also in this supplementary question, is about proactive measures beyond, for the post COVID environment. I will give the example of the US congress. It passed the Bill on Paycheck Fairness Act in 2019 to address the issue about indicating salary in job applications. The reason why I am raising this is because I am worried that, for example, fresh graduates in the post COVID environment are wary of taking up first jobs that pay below the median salary for fear that their salaries will always be pegged to it, particularly, those offered by SMEs.
So, it is the post COVID environment that I am concerned about, whether we could be proactive in taking these steps ahead of this situation arising.
The fresh graduates would rather wait it out if they can rely on their parents, leading to months of post-graduation unemployment. My concern is whether some of the salary or payslip practices by employers will actually lead to further negative externalities in the future, thus exacerbating unemployment numbers.
\tMrs Josephine Teo: Sir, Speaker, I thank Mr Saktiandi for his questions. As it turned out, my previous job was as a HR director and in that role, I reviewed hundreds, perhaps thousands of job applications, which of course include information of all kinds: name, gender, last drawn pay, where you used to work, what you did in school, Co-curricular Activities (CCAs), what awards you had won, what membership you have.
I think if I can share from a HR practitioner's perspective, the last drawn pay is really one of many things that is considered when we make a job offer. If a HR practitioner or a firm is so short-sighted as to look rigidly at the last drawn pay as an indication of the candidate's worth to the organisation, then my advice to the applicant is look for another employer, this is not a company that you should spend too much time on. And that would also be my suggestion.
WSG, and actually our partners as well, will be more than happy to work with the job seeker to explore other options. Do not spend too much time and waste your energy with these kinds of employers who cannot see beyond one number.
\tMr Speaker: Ms Anthea Ong.
\tMs Anthea Ong (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Before I ask the supplementary questions, can I put on record, given what the Minister had said, there was actually no intention and no implication on my part to say that employers treat local workers better than foreign workers. Especially for myself, I am an employer of local employees. So, I do not think it was fair to infer that was my implication from the question that I asked.
I have two supplementary questions for the Minister. She mentioned TADM and we are aware of it; and given that in-person services for TADM and also that the Employment Claims Tribunal are currently suspended due to safe distancing measures, could I ask the Minister how has the Ministry communicated the online process of filing salary and wrongful dismissal claims to work permit holders. And again, if this communication for the online process is also translated into their native languages.
The second question is, there was a advisory dated 25 April 2020 regarding salary and leave arrangements during circuit breaker, where employers of work permit holders are responsible for their maintenance and upkeep. As we exit the circuit breaker, for work permit holders who cannot work due to COVID-19 or the fact that their dormitories are being gazetted as isolation areas, could the Minister please clarify if employers of work permit holders must continue to pay for: one, their salaries; two, their living arrangements; three, their food expenses and also last but not least, miscellaneous expenses.
\tMrs Josephine Teo: Mr Speaker, on Ms Ong's second question, the position has been very clear, from the beginning. Wherever it is that the workers are living and including in the dormitories, the employers have primary responsibility. But as Ms Ong will also be aware, in the gazetted dormitories and subsequently in all the purpose-built dormitories, the Government put together staff teams to support the operations at the dormitories. And that had included a provision of food as well. So, that part of it I think, has been clear. Even during this period of the circuit breaker, the employers have responsibility for salary and for upkeep.
Ms Ong mentioned miscellaneous expenses, I am not entirely sure what other miscellaneous expenses they include, but if it has to do with the upkeep of the workers, then the answer is yes. Outside of that, there is no blanket to say that the employers must cover all of the workers' cost. It depends on what those cost items are.
Back to her first question, on whether the online processes are available in native languages, the online application itself may not be, but then it is also not available in Chinese, in Malay or in Tamil. But what is important is that access to those channels is not impeded by language barriers. For that, we work together with our partners – the Migrant Workers' Centre, for example, has got not just staff but also a very large pool of volunteers and these volunteers can include the migrant workers themselves. In fact, most often, they are the migrant workers themselves. When a worker comes to work in Singapore for the first time, they go through a settling-in programme and the migrant workers' ambassadors are also familiar, or at least we continuously reach out through them, to remind workers of which are the avenues that they have to raise their concerns.
Many Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) also establish links with these workers. Minister of State Zaqy Mohamad, engages these NGOs on a very regular basis. We have worked out a system where regardless of where these workers are housed, they are able to provide feedback and raise their concerns with us so that we can address them properly.
If language turns out to be a barrier, we have no shortage of people who are able to come in to intermediate. The process may take a little bit longer, but it can be done.
And finally, I appreciate Ms Ong's clarification on her intent.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Louis Ng.
\tMr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): Thank you, Sir. I have a question for with regard to the declaration of last drawn salary. I understand that California has banned this, I think in January 2018. In a study that was published in April 2020, it showed that this ban led to a reduction in the gender wage gap in in that state. So, could I ask whether MOM has studied the extent to which this declaration of last drawn salary contributes to the gender wage gap here in Singapore?
\tMrs Josephine Teo: Not specifically, Mr Speaker. That is my answer to Mr Ng. Although, I think there are many other contributing factors that are more prominent. We have many priorities. We have a lot of things on our plate. Useful studies, we will take a look at them. But it will not be realistic to chase down every study. We have to just be circumspect about which are the avenues that are worth pursuing.\t
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Measures at Foreign Worker Dormitories after Circuit Breaker Period","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"14 Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Manpower in relation to the strategy to situate workers from dormitories to less densely populated buildings, whether there will be isolation, quarantine and care arrangements in place at the sites which the workers are resituated to.
15 Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Minister for Manpower (a) from February 2020 onwards, whether all foreign workers returning from overseas and all other foreign workers who were served with Stay Home Notices (SHNs) were required to stay in quarantine facilities and safely separated from unaffected workers at all times; and (b) whether any of the foreign workers had served out their SHNs, Leave of Absence or Quarantine Orders in their original dormitory rooms.
\tThe Minister of State for Manpower (Mr Zaqy Mohamad) (for the Minister for Manpower): Mr Speaker, in early February 2020, Singaporeans and work pass holders returning from certain countries were placed on Leave of Absence (LOA). From 19 February, LOA was ceased and replaced with Stay-Home Notices (SHN). The LOA or SHN were precautionary measures meant for persons who were unlikely to be infected by COVID-19 and could therefore be served at their places of residence.
At the time, temperature screening was conducted at our borders and only those without fever or visible signs of ill health were allowed to proceed to their place of residence by dedicated transport. Dormitory operators were required to house their residents under LOA or SHN, together with others on LOA or SHN, in a section of the dormitory that is separate from other residents, or in dedicated rooms.
Since 10 April, the requirements for SHN have been further tightened to protect the community. Given the widespread transmission of COVID-19 in many countries, SHNs must now be served at dedicated facilities.
From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, Quarantine Orders (QOs) have been issued to isolate individuals who are close contacts of COVID-19 cases. Ground officers appointed by MOH to serve the quarantine orders are empowered to assess the specific conditions of a person's residence and decide where the QO should be served.
Since 29 January 2020, MOM had proactively informed all dormitories licensed under the Foreign Employee Dormitories Act to set aside isolation facilities and conducted inspections to ensure compliance. The first cluster of COVID-19 among migrant workers was detected in early February and involved five workers, only two of whom lived in separate dormitories. Up until late March, no other clusters were detected. As the numbers of infected workers were relatively small, the close contacts of these confirmed cases were directed to serve their QOs at Government Quarantine Facilities (GQFs) or isolation areas within the dormitories.
Following the emergence of large clusters of infection in certain dormitories, movement in and out of such dormitories was restricted to minimise cross-infections in both directions. The Government set up medical posts to provide medical care to the dormitory residents. For dormitories with limited transmission, close contacts of infected workers continue to be sent to GQFs or Community Care Facilities in centralised locations. In dormitories, spaces within the dormitories were reconfigured to house workers suspected or confirmed to be infected, separately from others and this may or may not have been in the workers' original rooms.
To further control the transmission in the dormitories, the Inter-Agency Task Force (ITF) shifted about 32,000 healthy workers from the dormitories to Government-provided temporary accommodation, such as sports halls, vacant HDB blocks, army camps, floating hotels and private apartments slated for redevelopment. There are on-site isolation areas in these temporary accommodations. Residents who need medical care will be sent to regional medical posts, Public Health Preparedness Clinics (PHPCs) or hospitals in the vicinity, depending on their clinical condition. After medical review, if they do not need medical attention, they may be housed in isolation areas on site until recovery. If they are tested, they will be housed in isolation facilities until the test results are known. If they are tested positive for COVID-19, they will be transferred to an appropriate care facility.
In the medium term, the Government will continue to build up more temporary housing accommodations to reduce the density in the existing dormitories. These new dormitories will similarly set aside sufficient sick bays and isolation rooms to facilitate quick isolation of sick or infected cases.
Regardless of where the infected workers are housed, all migrant workers living in dormitories have access to medical care and attention. As of end of May, out of the 30,000 or so migrant workers residing in dormitories confirmed positive for COVID-19, about half have recovered and, of the remaining half, the vast majority are recovering well with only one requiring intensive hospital care.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Zaqy, for record purposes, I take it that you were replying to both questions.
\tMr Zaqy Mohamad: Yes, both questions, Mr Speaker. Thank you.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Workplace Injuries and Compensation Given Work-from-home Arrangements","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"16 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Manpower with more work-from-home arrangements, whether the Ministry can provide greater clarity on the treatment of work injury compensation including scope, coverage, insurance and premium when one's home is the workplace.
17 Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye asked the Minister for Manpower (a) in 2019, how many hand and finger-related injuries occurred at our workplaces; (b) how many of these workplace accidents resulted in amputations; (c) what were the top three causes for such accidents; and (d) whether the number of such work-related amputations has increased over the past 10 years despite sustained workplace safety campaigns.
\tThe Minister of State for Manpower (Mr Zaqy Mohamad) (for the Minister for Manpower): Mr Speaker, I will take Question Nos 16 and 17 together.
\tMr Speaker: Yes, please.
\tMr Zaqy Mohamad: Work-from-home arrangements do not change an employer’s responsibility for work injury compensation. The key is to ascertain that the injury arose while doing work at home and not while performing non-work activities at home. This is a fact-finding exercise that is no different from all other WICA claims. Work Injury Compensation (WIC) insurance is purchased by employers and will cover employees who were injured out of and in the course of doing work at home.
Moving on to Mr Melvin Yong’s question. In 2019, there were 149 hand and finger major injuries at work, of which 123 cases resulted in amputation. This translates to 3.5 cases of hand and finger amputations per 100,000 workers. While we remain very concerned and are continuing efforts to reduce the injury rate, we are encouraged by the trend of improvements. Compared to 2012, when the incidence of hand and finger amputations was 4.8 per 100,000 workers, the improvement we can see now is about 30%.
The top three causes for such accidents were: first, lack of effective machine guards; second, lack of adequate safe work procedures, such as lock-out-tag-out procedures to prevent machine activation during servicing; and third, failure to follow safe work procedures due to lack of experience, training or disregard for safety.
To bring down the occurrence of hand and finger injuries, the Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) Council has stepped up public education to employers and workers on the safe use of machinery. Since 2017, 41,200 workers had attended the two mandatory WSH Basic Industrial Safety training and Health Course for Supervisors, and the Metalworking Safety Orientation Course. The WSH Council has also widened and deepened its engagement efforts to jointly organise the Safe Hands Campaign and sector-specific WSH workshops with the Singapore Metal and Machinery Association, the Singapore Manufacturing Federation and Singapore Furniture Industries Council since 2018. To date, 850 companies have pledged their commitment to Safe Hands. We will continue to engage more companies to come on board.
We are heartened to note that the industry is taking greater ownership to prevent hand and finger injuries. This year, the Singapore Manufacturing Federation spearheaded the first association Safe Hands Campaign. We will keep expanding the coverage of our outreach programmes through the trade associations and unions.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Patrick Tay.
\tMr Patrick Tay Teck Guan (West Coast): I thank the Minister of State for his response and answer. I have two supplementary questions. Firstly, now that we are seeing a lot of work-from-home arrangements, particularly the circuit breaker, and, moving forward, the whole regime of the Work Injury Compensation Act and insurance premiums and so on, there would be a significant change because when the home becomes a workplace, I think the burden of proof, the level of control by employers will change drastically.
So, I have two supplementary questions. Firstly, in the circuit breaker period during these past two months, were there cases where MOM had received work injury cases as a result of working from home scenarios? Secondly, how is MOM going to determine such workplace injuries, that is, in a work-from-home scenario?
\tMr Zaqy Mohamad: Sir, the way we evaluate WICA claims, whether it is the workplace or at home will be no different. It is necessary to determine if the injury arose out of work and in the course of work for it to be compensable. So, there should be evidence that the accident occurred in the course of work while in the act of performing work at home. So, if the injury occurred while doing non-work activity, for example, on the day when the employee is working at home, the person was cooking, looking after children or doing laundry, then it does not count.
So far, if you look at all past claims, they have been successfully settled without disputes, and there have been no eligible fatal or permanent incapacity claims. We have seen this trend. So, the Member is right that since the circuit breaker started, given the increased prevalence of remote working arrangements, we have been starting to track some of these injuries at home. So far, we have only recorded two work injuries reported since the start of the circuit breaker on 7 April. But both claims are currently being examined. I cannot give too much detail now until the investigations are over. But so far, if you look at the valid claims in the past, they have been mostly minor injuries and no permanent incapacity or fatal cases.
To the Member's other question on the insurance premium, we have taken a look but we have not seen any WIC insurance premium come down or there have not been any changes so far. This has been a recent development.
\tMr Melvin Yong Yik Chye (Tanjong Pagar): Mr Speaker, I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I would like to ask the Minister of State if the Return to Work Programme has been effective for injured workers who have suffered hand and finger amputations.
\tMr Zaqy Mohamad: I thank the Member for his question. From October 2017 to December 2019, there were 38 workers who had hand and finger amputations enrolled in the Return to Work Programme. Of these, 34 out of 38, or approximately 90% of cases successfully returned to work.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Applications for Notifications for Relief under COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"18 Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Law what is the number of Notifications for Relief applied for since the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act came into effect and what are the numbers for each category.
\tThe Senior Minister of State for Law (Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai) (for the Minister for Law): Mr Speaker, the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act commenced on 20 April 2020. As at 29 May 2020, which is around five weeks since the Act commenced, 3,943 Notifications for Relief (NFRs) have been served using the online system. Parties may also serve the NFRs in hardcopy on the counter-contracting parties. We are unable to track the number of hardcopy NFRs which parties served to the counter-party.
The vast majority of the NFRs served relate to two types of contracts. First, hire-purchase agreements or conditional sale agreements for commercial plant or machinery, or commercial vehicles, as the case may be; and second, for leases or licences for non-residential properties.
The number of NFRs served as at 29 May 2020 for each category of contract is as follows:
(a) Hire-purchase and conditional sale agreements: 2,107
(b) Leases or licences of non-residential properties: 1,254
(c) Events and tourism-related contracts: 250
(d) Construction contracts and supply contracts: 213
(e) Certain secured loans to SMEs: 97
(f) Options to purchase given by housing developers, or sales and purchase agreements between purchasers and housing developers for housing accommodation, which were only added to the scheduled contracts – Members may wish to note – on 13 May 2020. For that, there were 22 NFRs.
We would like to encourage contracting parties as far as possible to be fair and reasonable to each other, considering that the impact of COVID-19 was an event that no one could expect. In doing so, parties should be better able to reach a mutually acceptable solution.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Liang Eng Hwa.
\tMr Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah): Sir, I thank the Senior Minister of State for his reply and also the Ministry for being proactive in coming up with these very helpful relief measures. Just two quick questions.
Firstly, I am really happy with the number of reliefs being sought. I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State – some of which he mentioned were related to leases – whether further assistance would be rendered to those that are not able to achieve a resolution, for example, referring them to ESG to follow up on other measures that can assist businesses.
Secondly, would the Ministry step up awareness of these relief measures so that more neighbourhood retailers and so on are aware of these reliefs that they can seek?
\tMr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Sir, I thank Mr Liang for the comments. In terms of the first question, yes, we try as far as possible to find a solution for the parties that come before the assessors, even if the precise scope of the Act might not well relate to or be able to assist the specific problem. To give an example, in some cases we try and make reference to ESG, as the Member has mentioned. In other cases, the assessors try and find a solution between the disputing parties, for example, through referring them to mediation or even, on occasions, the assessors themselves stepping in to find some common ground between the disputing parties and try and bridge the gap where possible.
On the Member's second point, again, a point well taken and we will do that. The Member may know that we have yesterday filed a notice of intention to put in a supplementary to the Bill. This relates to other aspects of the Bill. But no doubt, together with that, we will step up steps to raise consciousness and public awareness and also public education on the operation of both aspects of the (Temporary Measures) Bill.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Eligibility Criteria for COVID-19 Support Grant","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"19 Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) whether persons are eligible for the COVID-19 Support Grant (CSG) even if they have not met the required eligibility of three full months of unemployment; and (b) whether ComCare recipients who may be receiving lower financial support will be disqualified from applying for the CSG.
\tThe Minister for Social and Family Development (Mr Desmond Lee): Mr Speaker, I will address Ms Denise Phua’s question on the eligibility criteria for the COVID-19 Support Grant (CSG) in this reply, as well as the question by Mr Liang Eng Hwa1, which was filed for tomorrow.
Sir, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the livelihoods of many Singaporeans, causing job and income loss. CSG was initially designed to support lower to middle income households facing unemployment due to retrenchment or contract termination after 23 January 2020, when the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Singapore. Ms Denise Phua asks whether persons are eligible for CSG if they have not met the required eligibility of three full months of unemployment. Allow me to clarify that for applicants in this group, there is no requirement for them to be unemployed for three months before applying.
\t
Beyond supporting those who are unemployed, MSF has expanded the scheme to help employees who have been placed on involuntary no-pay-leave (NPL) for three or more consecutive months, as well as those who have lost at least 30% of their monthly salary for three or more consecutive months. The \"three or more consecutive months\" requirement for NPL and income loss scenarios is to ensure that help is channelled to those who have greater needs.
Affected employees need not wait till they are affected for three consecutive months to apply. They are eligible for CSG now if they provide supporting documents, such as a letter from their employer, showing that they will be affected for at least three consecutive months. Individuals who are ineligible for CSG but require further support can apply for ComCare assistance.
Those who are receiving ComCare assistance and who have been further impacted by the pandemic, should be assessed for further assistance under the ComCare scheme and not the CSG. ComCare provides monthly cash assistance to low-income households who need help to cover their daily living expenses, including food and other basic living needs. ComCare also provides assistance with household bills and medical expenses. Based on the families’ needs and circumstances, MSF’s Social Service Offices or SSOs, also facilitate their access to other relevant services and support by government agencies and community partners.
To further assist ComCare beneficiaries, those whose assistance would end between May and July 2020 have had their support automatically extended for a further six months. ComCare beneficiaries are invited to approach the SSOs for a review of their current support if their circumstances have changed, for instance, if they have lost their jobs or faced a reduction in income because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While reviewing their ComCare support, SSOs can also provide them with interim assistance if they have urgent financial needs.
Those who are newly placed on ComCare will receive at least six months of assistance, providing them with a longer runway to regain stability.
The Government will continue to review how we can better support those who have been adversely impacted due to COVID-19.
\tMr Speaker: Ms Denise Phua.
\tMs Denise Phua Lay Peng (Jalan Besar): I thank the Minister for his comprehensive response regarding the CSG. Clearly, the Government has covered many grounds to assist citizens and Permanent Residents (PRs) affected by the pandemic. Just one supplementary question. The different schemes are administered by different organisations – for example, ComCare applicantions will be administered by MSF, help for the self-employed persons will be by NTUC and I think the drivers who are affected are supported by MOT. Is there a way by which there is a one-stop clearing house so that a person who is affected will not need to know where to go but they can be directed by the respective personnel who are supporting them, so they know where to go to. I also want to know if MSF then would exercise flexibility. For example, if a self-employed person technically does not meet the eligibility criteria for the Self-employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) programme, will MSF be flexible enough to at least advise or support them so that they can get help, anyhow.
\tMr Desmond Lee: Sir, when people apply for certain schemes at the SSOs and my officers identify that they are self-employed and would qualify or would potentially qualify, or should apply for SIRS, then they will make the necessary referrals across. I have also seen situations where the team that administers SIRS also refers cases over to the SSOs. Essentially, we need to ensure that agenices who have deep knowledge in the schemes that they administer, to be able to focus on their schemes but also have good awareness about related schemes and programmes that are beneficial to Singaporeans at this time, to be able to make the necessary referrals, link-ups and to also point people in the right direction.
It is also very important to have good communications to make sure that Singaporeans know where to go to, whom to call, what the eligibility criteria of the different schemes are. And that is as much an important exercise in offering assistance, as is the actual administration of the scheme itself.
So, in this regard, especially for those who are more vulnerable, low-income households, MSF, People's Association (PA) and MCCY will be strengthening of our SG Cares community networks where, in phases and stages, we will bring together the community of volunteers and staff to proactively reach out to lower income, more vulnerable households, beginning with those living in rental flats – just to check in on them, find out how they are doing. Because of their situation, they tend to be more vulnerable.
In order to do so, it is not just to offer them assistance within the stable of programmes that MSF or PA or MCCY have, but to be able to understand what their needs are holistically and then, pull in the relevant schemes and programmes from other agencies, and indeed, from the local community as well. Through much better coordination, integration, data-sharing, that will allow us to provide a more seamless, integrated social safety net for those who are very hard hit by the on-going crisis.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":["1 : To ask the Minister for Social and Family Development whether low-income Singaporeans who are receiving Comcare but are further impacted by the COVID-19 crisis can also be considered for the COVID-19 Support Grant (CSG)."],"footNoteQuestions":["19"],"questionNo":"19"},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Restrictions on International Travellers to Prevent Import on COVID-19 Cases","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OA","content":"20 Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked the Minister for Trade and Industry (a) whether there will be any restrictions imposed on international travellers entering Singapore; and (b) what are the measures to prevent imported COVID-19 cases.
\tThe Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Chee Hong Tat) (for the Minister for Trade and Industry): Mr Speaker, Sir, restrictions on short-term travel into Singapore have been in place since 22 March this year to prevent the import of COVID-19 cases from abroad. In line with our phased resumption of activities safely from 2 June after circuit breaker, we will also gradually reopen our borders to safe international travel.
This will initially comprise green lane arrangements with countries that have low numbers of cases and rates of transmission. These countries should have in place effective systems to test and isolate cases, as well as detect and stop any transmission chains.
We will start on a limited scale, focusing on essential travel for businesses to function and for purposes such as maintaining critical infrastructure and providing needed services. As global conditions improve, we will gradually expand such arrangements to include more groups of travellers. Besides pre-departure checks, incoming international travellers will have to comply with safety protocols on arrival. These include testing and the use of devices for contact tracing.
As announced on 3 June, the first green lane arrangement will be launched on 8 June between Singapore and six Chinese provinces or municipalities, namely Chongqing, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Tianjin and Zhejiang. We intend to progressively expand this list to include other Chinese provinces as well as other countries, taking into account public health and safety considerations.
As a key transport and business hub, it is critical for Singapore to re-establish and strengthen our connectivity with the world. We will do so in a safe and calibrated manner, so that we can continue to protect lives and livelihoods.
\tMr Speaker: Mr Lim Biow Chuan.
\tMr Lim Biow Chuan (Mountbatten): Sir, I just wanted to ask the Senior Minister of State how we deal with countries where the numbers are low and they seem to have no community spread, and the reason is because they do not do sufficient testing. We understand that there are some countries that do not have enough test kits and they do not do sufficient testing.
The other question I have is that last month, the Minister for Health did say that we are not doing widespread community testing because the yield is very low for asymptomatic testing. To be effective, it needs to be done repeatedly because being tested negative does not reflect immunity and those who had been tested can be infected after the test. So, how do we reconcile that? Even if they are tested okay and they come over, they may still be COVID-positive.
\tMr Chee Hong Tat: Mr Speaker, I thank Mr Lim Biow Chuan for his questions. We do not just look at one number to decide which countries are safe for us to establish green lane arrangements. It is a holistic assessment of the situation in that country. Various factors have to be taken into account including their testing capacity and how well they have kept infections within the community in that country under control. So, it is a holistic assessment before we decide which are the countries that are safe enough for us to have these green lane arrangements. The other countries are making the same assessment about us. So, it has to be a bilateral, mutual agreement before we can establish such channels.
On Mr Lim's second question, this is why we have more than just one test. For the individual, based on the current arrangements with China, before you travel to China, you would have to take a PCR test within 48 hours of departure. And you must be tested negative to have a SafeTravel pass, which you must show before you are allowed to board the plane. Next, when you arrive in China, there will also be another test done, and pending the results of the test, the individual would have to stay in a pre-identified location. Only when the test is negative, then that person is allowed to resume business activities. The same is true for travellers coming from China into Singapore. There will also be two tests: one test before departure and another test upon arrival.
Other safeguards include not being allowed to roam around on their own, not allowed to take public transport as there would have to be arrangements made by the sponsoring organisation or company. The itinerary of the business traveller would be something that has to be controlled as well.
So, there are additional safeguards on top of a PCR test – multiple layers of checks. The important prerequisite for green lane to be established is that the community cases in both countries must be kept low and under control.
\tMr Speaker: Order. End of Question Time.
[Pursuant to Standing Order No 22(3), Written Answers to Question Nos 22, 24, 26-28, 30-36, 38-40, 43 and 47 on the Order Paper are reproduced in the Appendix. Question Nos 21, 23, 25, 29, 37, 41-42, 44-46, 48-49 have been postponed to the sitting of Parliament on 05 June 2020.]
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[(proc text) recommendation of President signified; presented by the Second Minister for Finance (Ms Indranee Rajah); read the First time; to be read a Second time immediately after the conclusion of proceedings on the Second Supplementary Estimates of Expenditure for FY2020/21, and to be printed. (proc text)]
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Environmental Public Health (Amendment) Bill","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"BI","content":"[(proc text) \"to amend the Environmental Public Health Act (Chapter 95 of the 2002 Revised Edition)\", (proc text)]
[(proc text) presented by the Senior Minister of State for the Environment and Water Resources (Dr Amy Khor Lean Suan) on behalf of the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources; read the First time; to be read a Second time on the next available Sitting of Parliament, and to be printed. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Order read for Resumption of Debate on Question [26 May 2020], (proc text)]
[(proc text) \"That the Ministerial Statement made by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance on the Government's Plans in Our Continuing Fight Against COVID-19 Pandemic be considered by Parliament.\" – [Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance.] (proc text)]
[(proc text) Question again proposed. (proc text)]
Mr Speaker: Mr Liang Eng Hwa.
Mr Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah): Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Finance Minister, the Government and the President for this fourth Budget in three months as we continue to navigate in unchartered territory.
Never in our wildest dream would we imagine the House to scrutinise a Budget that project an overall deficit of $74.3 billion, drawing on our past reserves for a total of $52 billion and utilising almost all our current term's reserves. Given the uncertainties that are still ahead of us, a further additional $13 billion is set aside in the Contingencies Fund.
In total, $92.9 billion or almost 20% of our GDP is dedicated to support our people to fight the pandemic.
Sir, the pandemic threatened lives and well-being of Singaporeans and has inflicted severe economic damages to businesses and Singaporeans' livelihoods. The global situation remains uncertain and we have to expect further twists and turns.
Besides taking care of the health of our people, jobs are our next foremost concerns. We know that the human costs would enormous if there are massive job losses. And having a direct bearing on jobs, are business survivability. We must prevent large number of businesses failing as it can lead to permanent damage to our economic capabilities, which will have longer term ramifications on livelihoods.
So, in view of the imperatives to save lives, save jobs and save businesses and to also pivot into seizing new opportunities ahead of us, I support the overall allocation of this fourth Budget.
Sir, the distinct focus in this fourth Budget is to shore up employment. Here, we are talking about both saving current jobs as well as creating new jobs and traineeship opportunities. This would be an uphill task, given the dire global economic circumstance and that the risk of local infections still restrict the normal function of economic activities. Understandably, businesses will take a cautious stance in new hiring. We can also expect some job loses as more companies run into financial difficulties.
The Government responded swiftly and in each of the four Budgets extended timely support and assistances to businesses, in areas of cash flow, credit and cost. The hope is that these relief measures can help buy time for companies and save jobs. And to a very large extent, this has been effective; the situation would have been worst otherwise.
Of course, all these measures also come with a very high fiscal price tag and difficult to sustain in the long run. For example, the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) itself alone accounts for about $23.5 billion of the entire $92 billion fiscal package. The JSS incentivises companies to hold on to their employees. In return, they received cash subsidies from the Government for up to 75% of most wages. By receiving direct wage support from the Government, it also obliges the company to do their part to hold on their employees which is the clear intent of the JSS.
It is commendable that some companies have come forward to return the JSS back to the Government. Others may use the wage subsidy to hire more manpower, which is also as important as it helps to absorb the excess labour in the market.
We hope those companies that can afford to hire, hire more, be it just marginally. All these add up to keep up the overall employment. Already, we have read news of companies committing to hiring more workers, some done out of corporate social responsibility.
Sir, in this very weak economic environment, we have to watch closely the employment and employability of two groups – the mid-career workers and the first-time young job seekers. We have to do whatever it takes to avoid structural unemployment from creeping up and taking root within our economy. Also, we must avoid a situation of a lost generation in the making, where young graduates are unable to find employment or being underemployed at this young age. Hence, we need a whole-of-eco-system effort to create new jobs and opportunities.
And I am glad that this fourth Budget further introduced a massive $2 billion SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package where the Government commits to a further stretched target of creating about 100,000 opportunities, 40,000 jobs, 25,000 traineeships and 30,000 skills training. The public sector will lead by example by creating 15,000 new openings and the Government will help businesses create another 25,000 with a series support measures including hiring incentives.
Sir, creating jobs is only one side of the equation. The other side is to find workers with the required skills sets that can do the job. Here is where we often run into difficulties, matching jobs to the workers with the required skills, especially for PMETs.
During the Unity Budget debate, I spoke about the inherent friction a mid-career jobseeker has to go through to make mid-career job changes. It is often a strenuous journey that comes with lots of pain points. The jobseekers often have to contend with employers' biasness or specific preferences, whether it is experience, age and others.
The other more complex challenge is a situation where there is no direct match between the jobs that are presently available versus the skills the workers currently have. We would need to train and right-skills the workers so as to match to the jobs that are available or in demand. This is, of course, a timing issue and also whether we have the ability anticipate the specific skillsets that are needed and set up the relevant training ahead of time.
The other hurdle is work experience. Employers naturally want to hire workers with the relevant experience so that the employees can ideally be productive on day one. Not an easy problem to solve but the workaround here is to offer on-the-job training by way of subsidised traineeships and programmes such as Attach-and-Train.
And I am glad the Finance Minister has noted this problem and in the fourth Budget, introduced further support and funding for traineeships and training for both recent graduates and mid-career jobseekers. Of course, this would also require employers to be open-minded about workers with no relevant experience and to take a more enlightened and a bigger picture view in the development of their workforce.
There are now a whole range of new and existing schemes helping workers to enhance employment and employability. There are also a series of initiatives for businesses to help train workers, job redesign, improve productivity and so on.
For all these efforts yield the right outcomes, the stakeholders need to work well together. whether it is their businesses, unions, Government agencies and others and the work cut across different industry, sectors and ITMs. So, this is clearly a complex and daunting undertaking – enter the National Jobs Council.
I cannot think of a better person than Senior Minister Tharman to helm this mammoth task. Senior Miniser Tharman has been instrumental in building up the SkillsFuture movement. He has in-depth knowledge and experience on the economy and the markets and certainly, the strategic wisdom, gravitas and respect to get the system going. So, I am so happy with the choice by the Deputy Prime Minister.
Mr Speaker, Sir, although the pandemic has injected unpleasant shocks to our lives and livelihoods, there are, however, a few silver linings that bode well for us post-COVID.
Safe distancing measures and minimising of physical contacts has changed our way of life and going forward, will change the way we live, work, learn and socialise.
For many years, businesses and governments have been talking about flexi-work arrangements, working from home and BCPs. It has never really gain tractions. Some even said that employers are mostly lip-servicing and the vision can never be realised.
However, COVID-19 has game-changed this in one stroke. Organisations are thrown into the deep end as governments introduced lockdowns and restrict human gathering and movements. Businesses are forced to quickly re-configure their operations and workflows and many have to hastily brush up their BCPs so that most of their employees, including management can work from home and alternate sites.
Digital connectivity becomes the life blood to keep businesses and operations going. And the good news is, offices and operations continue to function despite the tight circuit breaker measures. By and large, companies and employees have adjusted and adapted to the \"new normal\" of work. In fact, some companies are now looking to retain many of the telecommute arrangements so that a significant number of their employees can continue to work from home even after COVID-19. So, there are now more legs for an even more extensive flexi-work arrangements going forward.
In area of sales and services, those businesses and retailers with online transactional and service capabilities are able to continue doing businesses despite the circuit breaker measures. Those who have yet to adopt digitalisation, now felt more compelled to gear up their capabilities and devise new digital operating models and solutions.
So, this is the perfect timing and opportunity to mount a further home-run push for digitalisation for our small businesses. It is a case of all-stars aligned or in Chinese, they called it, 天时，地理，人和, the right time, right place and the right consensus to push for all out digital transformation.
Indeed, this what the fourth Budget has also set out to do, such as the $300 per month bonus over five months to encourage stallholders in the neigbourhood to adopt e-payments and to avoid cash handling. There is also the enhancing the SMEs Go Digital package to include a $5,000 Digital Resilience Bonus to help businesses with entry level upgrades, such as payroll, e-invoicing, e-payments and other e-commerce solutions.
This digital push should go beyond businesses and into the social spaces like the neighbourhoods, schools, homes and individuals. For digitalisation to be part of our lives, everyone should be digitally enabled so that entire eco-system can realise its full potential and to reap the benefits of scale. Here is a case where we must go down right to the last 5% and get everyone onboard. And I am very glad that MCI is doubling down on these efforts, with the announcement to recruit 1,000 Digital Ambassadors to help seniors and local stallholders be digitally enabled.
In particular, the seniors deserved our utmost attention and our concerted effort. Their quality of life can improve if they are also digitally connected. I salute MCI for setting the ambitious target of reaching out and raising the digital skills of 100,000 seniors by March 2021, in less than one year, through one-on-one efforts.
Recently, I organised e-chit chat with my grassroots seniors' group. We set up a call link and invited the seniors to join the video call. They were initially apprehensive and worried that they cannot handle the e-link up. But come the day of the meeting, I was very pleased to see almost everyone in the call. Of course, many have their children and their grandchildren by their side to help them to connect, to mute and unmute when they speak. The seniors told me they thoroughly enjoyed the session as they have not met each other for quite some time and were very glad to see the happy faces around. They were thrilled that they can speak to each other, see each other at their homes, and even took a group picture. Importantly, it helps them to overcome the mental barrier about technology and it is not as difficult as they previously thought.
Sir, while the Digital Ambassadors can help seniors overcome the mental barrier, I hope that the Government can also help the seniors lower the cost barrier, such as making available an affordable data plan and the subsidy for the necessary hardware. And this is part of the last 5% that I talked about.
Mr Speaker, Singaporeans have been in the lockdown mode for the past two months. It has not been easy for everyone. Many are looking forward to the reopening and exiting the circuit breaker measures in the coming weeks. But we must always bear in mind that the virus is still out there and there is still no vaccine yet to protect ourselves. So, every personal measure that we take to protect ourselves and others must continue.
There may well be new cases as we open up. But I believe that now, we are much better prepared. Of course, thanks to all our frontline warriors and the Multi-Ministry Task Force.
I want to specifically mention those that have worked very hard in the last few months to manage and contain the outbreak at the migrant workers' dormitories. It is a gigantic task to take care of the health and well-being of 400,000 migrant workers – a massive and complex operation that require both scale and speed of response.
While we would rather not have so many cases of infections at the dormitories, the expeditious and extensive response by the Government, which includes MOM, SAF, other stakeholders as well as volunteers to stabilise the outbreak demonstrates the strength, the versatility and the tenacity of Team Singapore.
In a way, there is now certain comfort that we do have the capability and capacity to cope with a steepened infection curve with very low fatality, although we really hope not to be stress-tested again. So, thank you to our frontline colleagues for persevering and battling on, in the most difficult circumstance and for keeping the workers and Singaporeans safe.
Sir, we are facing huge uncertainty ahead of us and not knowing how bad the situation can further develop. It is in this uncertain times and very troubling situation that all the more we need a steady hand to steer the ship and a strong leadership that unite us to overcome and forge forward. I thank the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance for his resolute effort and his decisiveness and steady handling and the leadership to help Singapore through this adversity.
I work in the financial sector and I have seen firsthand how the Deputy Prime Minister, when he was helming MAS during the Global Financial Crisis, calmly steered Singapore out of the Global Financial Crisis and in the process, strengthened our position as the premier financial hub. Hence, I am most reassured that he is now leading the charge with this comprehensive and bold response to overcome the crisis that we are now facing.
Before I end, I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister a question. He mentioned about the $16 billion contingency fund. I would like to ask if he can give us an indication of how the $16 billion contingency fund would be used potentially. What is the scope of the usage of the fund? Sir, with that, I support the Fortitude Budget.
Mr Speaker: Ms Sylvia Lim.
Ms Sylvia Lim (Aljunied): Mr Speaker, this is the Government's fourth Budget in four months. While there is a need to focus on pumping oxygen into the economy, we must squarely face what the crisis has taught us if we are to truly emerge stronger. I would like to focus my speech today on what the COVID-19 virus has shown us about blind spots and the implications for long-term recovery. I will then comment on two specific Government measures.
First, blind spots and recovery. As the COVID-19 situation wears on, we are beginning to understand more about the different impact it has on the various segments of society. In Singapore, we see how the mantra of \"stay home and save lives\" may actually harm some who are forced to stay home. Homes that are small or overcrowded are unpleasant environments to remain in for most of the day. It was reported that domestic violence cases recorded by the Singapore Police rose by 22% since the circuit breaker measures started while the NGO, AWARE, disclosed that calls about family violence in April this year were more than double those of April last year. As far as work is concerned, we see essential workers outside battling the virus while highly paid persons stay safe at home, being classified \"non-essential\". Singapore's foreign workers dormitories have become \"ground zero\" for the battle. And the fight is not over.
Globally, evidence has emerged that women are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. For instance, a United Nations report on 9 April concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic has a \"shadow pandemic\" exacerbating gender inequality. How so? Domestic violence has spiked in other countries as well. In terms of economic impact, there has been significant employment loss for women, who hold the majority of insecure, informal and lower-paying jobs. The global health workforce is estimated to comprise 67% women, with many women in roles most exposed to the virus. Unpaid work by women has also increased during this period.
Women are disproportionately affected in other ways too. For instance, there is growing evidence that female academics are publishing less than male academics during the COVID-19 lockdowns as they are bearing the brunt of family care responsibilities. This would clearly impact their careers where publications are a key performance indicator. Anecdotally, if one looks at Singapore's home-based learning for students, mothers on the whole appear to be spending much more time with their children than fathers, who may also be at home during this period. With everyone at home all day, foreign domestic workers face overwork and having inadequate rest.
While men appear more prone to succumb to the virus, it is women and girls who pay the social and economic toll. The UN urges governments to ensure that their response to the COVID-19 crisis does not intensify the gender inequality crisis. To that end, one of the UN's key recommendations is to ensure women's equal representation in all COVID-19 response planning and decision-making. In order to build future resilience for the next crisis, there is a need to study gender-aggregated data in all fields from public health to economics to communications.
Besides gender, any agency looking at long-term recovery should include diverse voices. It is especially necessary to include those familiar with segments that bore a disproportionate brunt of the virus. To that end, the Government has put together an Emerging Stronger Task Force consisting of 17 eminent persons. However, the membership of the Task Force has a gender imbalance with only two women out of 17 – a dismal 11%. This may be a missed opportunity, especially when it has been noted that management of the COVID-19 crisis has been particularly successful so far in Taiwan and New Zealand, with women at the helm. In my view, the task force could benefit from having more women, especially women who understand gender issues.
Also, there seems to be a weak representation of multiracial voices as there is no Malay member on the task force. It also does not seem that there is any representation for SMEs as well. With inadequate balance, will the final report and recommendations risk having blind spots that will prevent us from truly emerging stronger as a nation?
Finally, on this point, I hope that the task force will not be shackled by models from the past. The ways of the past may be inadequate or inappropriate today. For instance, is it time to include more stabilisers in the system? If there had been schemes such as redundancy or unemployment insurance, the Government may not need to spend as much as it is doing today to support workers. If, for instance, CPF members have some access to their excess CPF funds even before they reach 55, some would not be facing the cliff-edge today. These are just two examples of what I mean by the task force not being shackled by the models of the past.
Sir, next, I move on to two particular Government schemes which residents have asked me to speak on – the Self-Employed Persons Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) and the Seniors Go Digital movement.
First, SIRS. SIRS was announced in the Resilience Budget, promising nine months of income support to eligible self-employed persons at $1,000 per month. While it was an auto-inclusion scheme, it was announced that NTUC would be helping the Government administer appeals from those who were not auto-included. Since then, as SIRS has been rolled out, we were told that more than 60,000 appeals had been received. Questions from the ground have now emerged about the purpose and fairness of the scheme.
As pointed out by my colleague Dennis Tan during the Resilience Budget debate, one issue is what the annual value of the property one lives in has got to do with whether the person has suffered serious income disruption. It is all the more so for those who do not own the properties they live in. To illustrate, I have several residents who are disqualified from SIRS due to this criterion because they are living in their parents' homes. Others are renting. Some of their incomes have dropped to zero as they are service providers for weddings and other events, and will likely not be able to resume their work for months. Others include freelance music teachers who are unable to conduct physical classes even on a one-to-one basis.
On the other hand, SIRS is an auto-inclusion scheme that does not require the self-employed person to show income loss. The design of SIRS has thus also resulted in full SIRS payments being made to self-employed persons whose incomes are unaffected by COVID-19.
For those who appealed for SIRS, NTUC has partially allowed some appeals. In some cases, appeals resulted in payment of a reduced amount, at $800 per month instead of $1,000 per month. Others have been rejected outright. Suffice to say, these disparate outcomes have caused frustration and feelings of arbitrariness and unfairness. Questions asked include: how does NTUC decide? What are the criteria for allowing or rejecting appeals?
Speaker, SIRS involves public funds – to be exact, SIRS involves the use of past reserves. Who should be in charge of the scheme? The Government has stated that MOM oversees the scheme but NTUC helps administer appeals for those who do not automatically qualify. From the cases we have seen, it is NTUC that is fronting all communications in appeals while the role of MOM is not visible.
From a governance perspective, why was there a need to outsource the administration of SIRS appeals to NTUC in the first place? Was this done due to a lack of manpower or other reasons? Will this set a precedent for the Government to outsource its schemes to external parties to manage? What does this mean for Government accountability?
Finally, Sir, I move on to the Seniors Go Digital movement. It was announced in the Fortitude Budget that the Infocomm Media Authority (IMDA) would launch a Seniors Go Digital movement to support seniors to adopt digital channels and hone digital skills. It was highlighted that the inability to connect digitally during the circuit breaker would lead to isolation, which could affect health.
For some years now, well before COVID-19 emerged, the push for a Smart Nation had seen huge efficiencies but also costs. Everyone was channeled towards more and more digital modes of transacting with the Government, whether it be the CPF Board, LTA, or the Traffic Police. As systems got more sophisticated, citizens were required not only to log in but also to receive one-time passwords or use tokens for added security. The now default mode of needing SingPass to transact has alienated those who either cannot afford the necessary devices, who do not have the required language skills or who simply cannot wrap their heads around IT environments.
To illustrate, I visited a CPF branch office some weeks ago. I observed the typical scenario of an elderly person with his daughter. She told him in Mandarin, \"爸爸，我们现在去楼上拿SingPass\", meaning they had to go to another section to arrange for SingPass. The elderly man looked totally helpless as he quietly obeyed his daughter's instructions. In this case, the man is fortunate to have a caring daughter to help him navigate an unfamiliar frontier. But what about those who do not have anyone to rely on? Or worse, those who place their trust in the wrong people and become victims of crime? Has technology, instead of empowering them, disempowered them instead?
Sir, a resident wrote to me recently about SingPass difficulties for the elderly. He described the struggles of those who were illiterate or did not have a mobile phone or computer. For persons with no income, maintaining a mobile phone subscription is a financial outlay. Furthermore, even if family members were willing to assist, each SingPass could only be tied to one phone number. This is understandable for security reasons but it also means that children could not use their phone lines to transact for their elderly parents, thus requiring more purchases of items simply to transact with the Government.
To avoid being misunderstood, let me say that the Seniors Go Digital movement is well-intentioned and I support it. However, I hope it will not be approached from the perspective that seniors are somehow \"falling behind\" and need to \"catch up\", which would stress them even further. How will the Government initiatives adapt or customise digital solutions, to design them to be friendly to those who cannot see or hear well, or whose command of English is not strong? Will seniors have low-cost options that are basic in nature? Finally, I believe we all know of some seniors who simply do not wish to transact digitally for one reason or another. Can we not simply respect their choice in their old age and always have an option for counter service?
Sir, let me conclude. Currently, we are preoccupied, almost bogged down, by the health and economic fall-out of the virus. Nevertheless, it is necessary to look to building for the future, and to that end, we need to learn from the blind spots that the virus has uncovered, with humility and grace. Let us not waste this opportunity to amplify the voices of those most affected by the pandemic, in our search for a sustainable recovery. May we emerge stronger.
Ms Jessica Tan Soon Neo (East Coast): Mr Speaker, I want to start by thanking everyone for doing your part to contain the transmission of COVID-19 as this has enabled us to start the easing of circuit breaker this week.
With the easing of circuit breaker measures, some of us are returning to work and school. But we are certainly not going back to the way things used to be pre-circuit breaker, as COVID-19 is still not behind us. In the last two months, the priority was to keep everyone safe and ensure that we are able to take care of those who did fall ill.
The need to minimise the risk of transmission and safe distancing has changed the way we work, live and even socialise. Businesses have not been able to operate as usual with some completely not able to operate at all. This has affected jobs. Many have not had work as business operations slowed or had to stop during the circuit breaker and others had to take lower pay due to the drop in business demand, while others had to be redeployed and some have lost their jobs.
The various measures with the Unity, Resilience and Solidarity Budgets have been focused on supporting businesses with operating and wage costs with the objective to protect jobs.
The phrase that thes are “unprecedented times” has been used often these last few months. Indeed, what we are facing is not something any of us could have imagined. Everyone of us, young and old have had to make painful adjustments. While we understand the need for these adjustments to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, they have been tough and for many, jobs and livelihoods have been impacted. While still low, unemployment has risen to 3.3% and the economic impact is not trivial with the latest revised GDP for Singapore forecasted to be between -7% and -4%. Many are concerned about the future.
While the $33 billion Fortitude Budget extends more help to support individuals and households in the fight against COVID-19, the emphasis of the Fortitude Budget is on measures to enable our people and businesses to get ready for what lies ahead and to save and create jobs.
There is much in the Fortitude Budget – I will be touching on two points which is jobs and digitalisation.
Businesses large and small, across all industries have been impacted with demand and supply disruptions. This has had a direct impact on jobs and the very nature of how work is done. Anxiety over employment is felt not just by those whose jobs or incomes have been impacted but even for those who are in employment. There is a fear of further job losses as some businesses have had to close especially in sectors like F&B, retail, hospitality and tourism-related industries. While some jobs will go away, I do hope that we do not lose heart because new jobs will be created. But new skills will also be needed.
The $2 billion SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package with 40,000 jobs, 25,000 traineeships and 30,000 training places and hiring incentives is much needed and will provide quality jobs and programmes for those seeking employment. With the current economic conditions, the traineeship schemes will help new graduates entering the workforce find opportunities in emerging and growing sectors and this will allow them to gain valuable industry experience.
I am glad that the Budget has given specific attention to providing traineeship opportunities for mid-career workers who have lost their jobs as we all recognise this group of workers find it even tougher, not just in COVID times but even in ordinary times, they find it tougher and they take longer to be able to find employment after they lose their jobs.
What is key is connecting these mid-career workers who have lost their jobs with the opportunities. I hope that Deputy Prime Minister can share more on how mid-career workers can access these opportunities. While the jobs are there, there is lots of information and we need to ensure that the people who need these jobs are well-connected.
While having jobs and opportunities is critical, we must also pay attention to how work is done as the nature of work has changed, given the COVID situation. For example, the circuit breaker measures have required more companies to adopt telecommuting and although the jury is out, we can expect more jobs to adopt flexible work arrangements as a norm rather than an option even after circuit breaker.
This will mean that as we prepare workers for new opportunities, beyond just upgrading skills, attention needs to be given in terms of how to adopt new ways of working and being productive working remotely. For some, their first day of work and meeting their new bosses and colleagues will be virtually. Effectively communicating and collaborating will require skills for one to be effective in their jobs and to be successful. Even how performance is being measured needs to be taken into consideration.
I do want to highlight an area that I think needs attention. With businesses resuming operations there will be also adjustments for safe distancing measures as well as dealing with the challenges of demand, supply and in some cases manpower disruptions.
Attention needs to be paid to working conditions including work hours and workplace arrangements. Especially for essential services and front-line services, manpower supply may not have fully resumed leading to constraint on manpower. This could lead workers to have to take on longer working hours. With requirements for safe distancing measures, businesses must pay attention to also things that ordinarily they would not have to which is even providing places for their workers to have a meal properly in their short break times. This was not something that employers needed to pay attention to but all this, may be difficult for some companies and the workers' welfare may be compromised.
In the recent Straits Times report on a survey conducted by Engagerocket, 90% of the respondents indicated that they wished to continue working from home in some capacity even after the circuit breaker ends. But despite this willingness, more than half indicated their productivity had dropped and was lower. The reasons cited, of course, were practical ones that included unable to access resources as well as having family members in the house and having to share resources and space constraints. One of the factors that was highlighted was also longer working hours. I think attention needs to be paid also to the nature of work and how work is being done because the work environment now is not just in the work place but it is also virtually.
Let me now touch on digitalisation. In the last two months, COVID-19 and the circuit breaker measures have accelerated digitalisation faster than one could ever imagine. There has been a lot of push back of all the areas of digitalisation, both by users, by organisations in terms of policies. But individuals and businesses have had to leverage digital platforms to continue to be able to access services, connect and continue operations. And this has created new habits and new ways of doing things. Painful as some of it may have been, I think many have seen the benefits. And so it is a real plus point that digitalisation this COVID-19 has enabled some people and organisations to get past that barrier.
An important priority of the Fortitude Budget is digital inclusion with attention on students from lower income families, seniors and the smaller businesses and hawkers. I think this is so important to ensure that no one is left behind and more importantly to be able to meaningfully engage and connect to the services and the opportunities.
While funding and support is required to go digital, digitalisation has to be more than just about technology. Going digital is also more than just mirroring traditional ways of doing things. It is an opportunity to reimagine, improve improve and redesign how we do things and enable more to be done. So, let us not waste this opportunity and ensure that this benefit of doing things differently and doing things better through digitalisation is realised for every segment of the population.
Digitalisation, as I have mentioned, entails new behaviours whether for individuals, families, businesses large or small, as we have witnessed. So, it is indeed a brilliant move and I really must say that it is indeed a brilliant move and a commitment to invest in the Senior Go Digital Movement to support digital adoption for seniors. It is not just about teaching seniors digital skills. It is about enabling them to connect, enabling them to stay engaged and all the other groups to be able to do the same thing. I really am very happy and very supportive of this programme because, as we all know, while devices are important, funds are important, to drive change you need support, you need engagement and having that with a thousand Digital Ambassadors doing that will make that big difference and will help us get past this, and allow our seniors as well as our hawkers to really fully come on board and be digitalised.
While the funding from the Fortitude Budget is needed and welcomed, we have to also recognise that it cannot go on indefinitely. We are fortunate with prudent management that our Government has built up on our reserves and we did not have to borrow to fund such a significant support package.
How and when we beat COVID-19 is not certain. But I do not think it has to necessarily be only when a vaccine is found. During these last few months, we have witnessed many examples of the Singapore spirit, generosity as well as our resilience. I believe that all of us working together as SGUnited will allow us to overcome this crisis and emerge stronger. The Government must provide the leadership, the right programmes and the right policies to build for our future. Our businesses must rebuild, recover and invest to stay relevant. Our people will need to stay positive because it is tough, what everyone is going through is tough, but we must stay positive and work together to overcome current challenges and continue to reskill and be ready for the future. I support the Fortitude Budget.
Mr Speaker: Minister Ng Chee Meng.
The Minister, Prime Minister's Office (Mr Ng Chee Meng): Mr Speaker, we have eased out of the circuit breaker. We have stabilised the COVID spread in our community, but we still have much to do to overcome significant economic challenges. Many companies are at breaking point and many workers are struggling to cope.
I support the Fortitude Budget, as I have the previous three, because it will keep companies afloat and it will keep Singaporeans in their jobs. Without these Budgets, many more companies would fold and many more workers would be retrenched. And frankly, we would all be in deeper dire straits.
Even with the $100 billion total Budget, we need to be realistic. This money certainly helps but it cannot replace the economic activities to sustain our livelihoods. We must therefore brace ourselves for tougher times: wage cuts and inevitable job losses.
Indeed, union leaders and workers know that. But they do tell me that they have conflicting concerns: one, is of course on their jobs and their job security but the other is how can they be safe when they go back to work? I can sense their anxieties even across the cyber domain when I chat with them on the different media.
So, what can we do? There are three things we can and must do to protect our jobs and keep our workers safe.
One, keep the economy open, help the economy re-open and, importantly, keep our economy open by diligently practising safe management measures on the ground. This is the most obvious and the most important thing to do for protecting workers' lives and for opening up the lifeline towards livelihoods.
Two, while we get our economy back into shape, we need to preserve jobs. We need to create jobs, temporary ones even; and match workers to these new jobs when old jobs are lost. Make sure that at-risk groups are taken care of. This is the immediate track of things that we must do.
Three, we must make use of the current crisis to push economic transformation. Ironically, as Mr Liang Eng Hwa has mentioned, COVID-19 has sped up disruption and moved us towards Industry 4.0 in double quick time. Businesses are on a burning platform – it is now \"adopt new business models, new technologies\" or die. Workers have taken to digital technology to do their work, order their food and even to keep in touch with family at a faster rate that what was previously not possible. We must use this transformative track to redesign jobs and create new, Industry 4.0, jobs so that workers, with the appropriate training, can take up these new jobs.
Mr Speaker, the Government has a good guiding strategy to safeguard lives and livelihoods. We have stabilised the community infection and safeguarded lives. We are now restarting the economy with $100 billion worth of financial muscle on the table. The key now, really is to implement this strategy well. It is not sufficient for us to simply know what to do, but to do it well. Doing so is not only the Government's responsibility alone. Every business owner and every worker has a shared responsibility and an important role to play.
NTUC, too, will also play our part.
Ms Slyvia Lim spoke about the Self-Employed Persons Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) that NTUC helps to administer. But, maybe she does not quite remember the history of why we stepped into SIRS in the first place. Back in January, February, when COVID-19 started to hit. NTUC, with our National Taxi Association noticed that taxi drivers' incomes were dropping like a rock. I remember going to Newton Circle hawker centre with Minister Khaw to talk to taxi drivers, because their incomes were impacted, at that time, by already 50% or more.
We set up a quick reaction small group and put up $77 million to help our drivers cope with the initial hit of COVID-19.
So, why is NTUC in this space? Simply because, we care. Why are we in this space? Because we have some capabilities to augment the Government in extending this help to taxi drivers or freelancers as quickly as possible. Well, are there things that we can do better? I think, in time to come when we can settle the immediate issues that we have to deal with with COVID-19 and the transformative things NTUC is embarking on, I will humbly say that, \"Yes, we will look at areas where we can do better\".
But, as it stands now, NTUC has extended a care fund to help all workers and likewise, we would like to do our part to help freelancers or self-employed persons deal with the current situation as well. We have put up a Self-Employed Person (SEP) training fund, besides SIRS, to help as SEPs and freelancers upgrade themselves and get into some training in dealing with COVID-19.
We think that this is important. In the course of the three Budgets, NTUC provided feedback to the Government that these are needed things to do. And I recall, it was a late evening, when MOF called me up and I went to the Treasury Building and was told of the request of the Government to administer SIRS. I gladly informed MOF that NTUC will take up this role – not because we want to be at the centre of things, but because we thought we had the capability to do our part as a tripartite partner.
If we look at the National Jobs Council that is set up, should NTUC not be in it? Should the Singapore Business Federation, the Singapore National Employers' Federation not be in it? If all of us are not together in this fight against COVID-19 as a team, then I think we would have lost a capability unique to Singapore. Yes, the Government has put up the $100 billion Budget, but I think there is space for business owners, NTUC and the workers to play a part.
Tripartism is a strength. We should ride on this strength to execute this strategy that I mentioned, well and to the extent possible remain adaptive and learn lessons along the way.
I am humble enough to say that NTUC could have done better in some of the SIRS things that we have done. But let us draw those lessons when the time comes. Immediately, now, we want to extend assistance to as many as possible.
So, NTUC, as I have said, will do our part. As the economy reopens, workplaces must adapt and change to prevent new infections so that importantly, businesses can continue to stay open under Phase One or in the future, Phase Two conditions. To date, we had played another part to lead in terms of training over 1,800 union leaders, our management partners and staff on Safe Management Measures so that we can partner employers in companies to implement Safe Management Measures to keep workers safe and importantly, to keep businesses open. If we aggregate over the whole world economy, hopefully we can keep infection rates low and manageable, so that Singaporeans can resume some form of normalcy, some form of new economic life. This is critical to protecting lives and importantly, as COVID-19 drags on, to protecting livelihoods.
With this ability to ensure the health of workers, then we can work towards jobs preservation. The Government's Job Support Scheme (JSS) has helped many businesses manage part of the wage cost. As the Secretary-General, I thank the Government for responding to NTUC's feedback to expand JSS in more severely impacted industries. Many leaders, across different sectors, told me that without JSS, they really would not be able to keep workers on the payroll, even if workers were willing to do their part to help cut costs to save jobs.
Besides JSS, NTUC is also helping businesses access other tools to keep business costs as manageable as possible. These tools are actually already on the table but are often less well-known and utilised. In the hotel industry where the impact is very serious, the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union worked with Shangri-La's Rasa Sentosa Resort & Spa to send workers for training under the Enhanced Training Support Package.
A staff, Ms Pohleena, previously worked in the back-of-house in service performance management. But during this challenging period, she was needed in a front-facing role to take care of Stay-Home Notice guests. For this role, Ms Pohleena went for training at NTUC LearningHub, topped up on her people skills such as communications, so that she can do her new role. Ms Pohleena remained employed, increased her hospitality skill set and upped her value to her employer as a worker. The hotel also benefited – not only in having a more skilled worker but enjoyed absentee payroll support as well.
We also see companies elsewhere benefit. Singapore Aero Engine Services was very proactive in working with the Singapore Industrial & Services Employees' Union early on to make use of the training support. Aerospace by then was already impacted and they could foresee the further impact of COVID-19 on the industry, so they sent their workers for training. Mr Sahim Bin Anwar is one of the Technicians who was sent for digital training with NTUC LearningHub. Mr Sahim's digital knowledge has improved and this helps the company take one more step towards Industry 4.0.
In May alone, NTUC LearningHub helped more than 500 companies who sent their workers for over 20,000 days' worth of training, these companies received up to $80 a day in absentee payroll for each worker they sent. This support adds up. If you do the mathematics, it will add up to about $1.6 million in terms of absentee payroll support for these companies.
This is a win-win situation for both workers and companies. Ultimately, workers get to stay in their jobs, preserve their jobs and companies get help with the payroll and have better skilled workers on hand, poised for the eventual upturn.
Mr Speaker, in spite of all these efforts, unfortunately, there will be job losses. In the last three to four months, NTUC Job Security Council has been working hard to match at-risk and displaced workers into available jobs. At the earlier stages, we moved quickly to partner badly hit aviation companies to match workers to new jobs – some into community work, some into healthcare and some even into our own NTUC FairPrice Group – without the workers having to go through retrenchment anxieties.
So far, NTUC's Job Security Council has been able to match more than 10,000 workers, both rank-and-file and PMEs, into new jobs – easing workers' anxiety and most importantly, helping them earn a wage to sustain livelihood.
Ms Gina Ng is one beneficiary of the Job Security Council. She is a Senior Admin Assistant, working at Fairmont Singapore & Swissotel The Stamford for many years. But due to COVID-19, hotel work was drying up. The threat of losing her job was real. Our union and the Job Security Council worked with the hotel and found her an immediate match to an organisation that was employing. Gina was job-matched on a three-month secondment to NTUC FairPrice. She is now in the middle of her redeployment, gainfully employed while keeping her salary and job title in the hotel.
As we facilitate job matching, workers must also be willing to adapt and acquire new skills too. Before Gina was redeployed, she went for training in food hygiene and preparation which brought relevant skill sets and value to NTUC FairPrice. While the initial transition was challenging, Gina understood the need to be nimble and was willing to do her part to reskill and upskill. Gina is 59 years old. I am happy she has the ability and the agility to adopt a new mindset, adapt to new circumstances and importantly took action to acquire new skills so that she can stay in the workforce.
I spoke to Gina when writing my speech last night. I asked her if she had anything to tell fellow Singaporeans. She said with an audible chirp in her voice, \"Stay positive, never give up! I am learning new things in NTUC. We are in this together. We will overcome.\" Gina will return to the hotel at the end of her secondment on 13 July, keeping her job, getting a secondment out, staying in the workforce.
But we, in NTUC, also understand the looming challenges ahead and are realistic that there is much more to do to help workers. This is why I fully support the Government's move to set up the National Jobs Council. The Council will have very important work to drive tripartite efforts to help Singaporeans.
Foremost, the Government and employers' role to create 40,000 jobs is critical, not easy. And where companies are not able to do so, the 25,000 SGUnited Traineeships programme will be helpful to expose both new graduates and mid-career PMEs to the new workplace, gain useful experience and be ready when the economy recovers.
The 30,000 training spaces under the SGUnited Skills Programme will be helpful to top up skills for workers looking for jobs. It is also useful for companies to co-design the training to support business restructuring and redevelopment for Industry 4.0 so that they can be poised for new and more productive Industry 4.0 ways of doing things. NTUC, as I had said, will fully support the National Jobs Council. So, for those workers that are at-risk or those workers seeking a job, there is practical help for you.
Besides the immediate task of securing jobs to protect workers, NTUC will continue to partner companies that have the capacity and vision to seize opportunities emerging from the COVID-19. Even before COVID-19 hit us, our economy was already embarking on industry transformation brought about by technological disruption. COVID-19 has accelerated this disruption and it is clear that those who started transformation early, in fact, are coping better with the COVID-19 challenges today.
\"Transformation\" is not just a buzzword. And, in fact, COVID-19 has made it even more apparent, more plain that businesses will need to work towards digitalisation and Industry 4.0 practices more urgently. This will help them position themselves and their workers for new opportunities post-COVID.
NTUC has been working closely with Temasek companies, amongst some 350-plus companies, to push the Company Training Committees, or CTCs, to move businesses and prepare workers for Industry 4.0. I want to thank Temasek for this support over the last two years.
NTUC will redouble our efforts to partner companies through the CTC platform, to embark on Operations and Technology Roadmapping, or OTR, to transform. This will not only help companies chart a course to recovery from COVID-19, it will, importantly, help them identify new growth areas for business, exploit new technologies and create new jobs, better jobs, more productive jobs, even starting now.
This is an involved process but companies such as Energizer, amongst quite a few, show how the benefits of the OTR can translate on the ground.
Energizer is bringing in advanced, better technologies for its line machines to increase the precision and the quality of their products. These machines need better skilled operators who are familiar with the new system overall. Energizer and the United Workers of Electronics & Electrical Industries worked with one of our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to curate a specific training programme for their Operators to upskill in this technology and work with these new machines. These steps helped sustain the Energizer business and, importanly, keep workers gainfully employed in the short term. But in the transformative track, this will put Energizer on a trajectory ready for Industry 4.0 and for our workers to have more productive jobs, better work prospects emerging from COVID-19.
Ultimately, we in NTUC want to take the best care of our workers, whether they are freelancers or unionised workers, and the best way to do so is for the companies to have better business or economy to be able to generate growth, and for workers to have the necessary training and skills to access these jobs. So, it is not just for the immediate things that NTUC is busy with; even as we are helping workers cope with COVID-19, we are casting our vision further ahead and doing practical things to help companies transform to benefit workers now and in the future. Mr Speaker, in Mandarin, please.
(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] I announced in February this year that we are setting up the NTUC Job Security Council to match workers, who are at-risk of losing jobs, to companies that are hiring. We had over 4,000 companies on board the Job Security Council then.
Over the past four months, the number of companies in the Job Security Council has increased to over 7,000. More importantly, we have successfully matched 10,000 workers to new jobs. Companies in the Job Security Council are still hiring, from sectors such as the Healthcare, Transport and Logistics, Built Environment, as well as Electronics and Transport Engineering. We are redoubling our efforts to help these companies find new employees; and more importantly, match our workers to these companies and earn an income.
The National Jobs Council, with Senior Minister Tharman as Chairman and Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat as Advisor, held its first meeting yesterday to discuss how we will help Singaporeans benefit from the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package.
I am happy that NTUC is a close partner of the National Jobs Council in providing employment-related assistance to our people. NTUC will help all workers, whether you are a fresh graduate or mid-career professional, to take advantage of these nearly 100,000 jobs and training opportunities so that you will not only earn an income but gain from training and work experiences.
The Chinese word \"危机\" (for \"crisis\") consists both \"danger\" (\"危\") and \"opportunity\" (\"机\"). The most important thing is that we must remain positive and be nimble. I believe that if we stay united, we will be able to sustain our businesses, protect our workers and secure our future!
(In English) Mr Speaker, I will conclude. We have a strategy in place, backed up by a series of robust Budgets, making the necessary resources available. The key now is to implement this plan well. In the immediate term – preserve jobs, create jobs and match workers to these jobs.
But we must keep an eye out too on strengthening our economy post-COVID. We must make use of this crisis to push for industry transformation and continue developing quality jobs for quality workers and quality busineses that can out-compete in the new economy forward. These are not easy tasks but we will do our very best.
NTUC will continue to work with our tripartite partners to support our workers, our freelancers, our self-employed people – because every worker matters, every job matters. And only if we can continue the trust and the solidarity of tripartism, then we can overcome. Mr Speaker, I support the Budget.
Mr Speaker: Ms Sylvia Lim.
Ms Sylvia Lim: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have clarification for Minister Ng Chee Meng. Earlier in his response to my query, he basically said that it made sense for NTUC to be involved in SIRS because it has some understanding of the issues faced by self-employed persons. Could he clarify in this SIRS appeal process, were the appeal criteria – what factors are relevant to grant or partially grant appeals – decided by NTUC? That means NTUC came up with appeals criteria?
Mr Ng Chee Meng: Mr Speaker, NTUC work within the policy framework given to us by MOM. So, for the policy questions, the criteria, we have certain guidelines that we worked within. And Minister Josephine Teo in the right time can answer this arrangement.
Mr Speaker: Mr Patrick Tay.
Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan (West Coast): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Fortitude Budget. Just to chime in on what Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng shared earlier, I cannot help but emphasise that this Budget, I particularly like and applaud it because of its focus on workers – the actual focus on the lives and livelihoods of our workers. That is something that struck me very hard. But I thought to use my speech to highlight three important areas, which we should look at.
Firstly, I will use this opportunity to share some of the horror stories that we hear in the workplaces in light of COVID-19 circuit breaker and all the measures that I have been seeing the past couple of weeks. Secondly, to share a bit about the Singaporean Core. And thirdly, to highlight the plight of mid-career workers, in particular, the Professionals, Managers and Executives.
Firstly, on some of the horror stories. I wrote an opinion piece, which was published last Saturday in The Straits Times. This opinion piece came about and these horror stories came about because of the many engagements I had in the last eight weeks of circuit breaker with many union leaders, unionists, residents including fellow workers, through various platforms. In fact, it is quite a learning journey. I have been using Zoom, Webex, BigMarker, Microsoft Teams and through various platforms including Facebook Live and LinkedIn Live. It was a good opportunity to learn those skills but also a fantastic opportunity to engage a lot of workers that I have never had the opportunity to do during normal times because of various constraints and situations. So, it was great opportunity.
Just to share some of these horror stories that I have heard from many of these workers during this past eight weeks and moving forward. Firstly, we hear of workers being short-changed in the sense that, unilaterally, employers have reduced their work hours and even reduced their salaries. This is a stark wake-up call, particularly because in situations where this has happened, it is a situation where there was no consultation with the worker and no agreement with the worker. That is one example – a unilateral withdrawal or reduction of salaries and work hours.
A second horror story that often plays out that I hear from workers is a situation where a worker, suddenly, during this particular period, gets a very poor performance rating, and previously, he had always had a satisfactory or better rating in the past couple of years. Therefore, his exit from the company is expedited.
The third scenario or story that I hear about is also a situation where employee is given a new job scope, do something very different from what he used to do, or sometimes, even excluded for meetings and important company events. And, therefore, in a way, the worker is forced to exit the company.
The fourth scenario happens, as I shared earlier during Question Time, where workers are being contractually terminated, whether with or without notice. Sometimes, the reason happens because of a disguised retrenchment scenario, that is, the worker may be contractually terminated without reason, and subsequently, after he or she has left the company, realised that that particular slot was left vacant, totally vacant, and not filled up, which means there was a redundancy situation and they were not adequately compensated with retrenchment benefit or severance pay.
Another scenario or horror story we hear is also of safe workplaces. Just as recent as we reopened a couple of days ago, I also hear of workers who actually, in their course of work, can or are able to work from home, but are forced to go back to the companies by the management or employers. That is another horror story.
Finally, another horror story would be a situation where employers, although after they have terminated workers in March, April or even earlier, are still contributing employer's CPF to workers resulting in workers enjoying the employer's CPF and, of course, abusing public funds, in that while they contribute the employer's CPF, the companies enjoy the Job Support Scheme.
These are some of the horror stories we have come across. Fortunately, these are not rampant and many of these cases that workers shared about, whether through various platforms, private messages, emails or even conversations that I had in various platforms, most of these happened in many of the non-unionised companies. In unionised companies, we have the collective agreement as well as a lot of negotiation and discussion with companies. So, we do see quite a bit of these scenarios happening.
My suggestion is three-fold. Firstly, I am glad that Minister Josephine Teo earlier on, during Question Time, has addressed this point on some of the unfair workplace practices and some abuse in the treatment of workers. I am glad that MOM, where they detect such cases, would take resolute steps to enforce against such errant or recalcitrant employers. So, I am glad that is happening.
Secondly, I think it is important that the employers are aware of the various tripartite advisories and guidelines that have been issued. There is a few that have been rolled out, in particular, to address the COVID-19 scenarios. Of course, as we reopen and as we go into Phase One, Phase Two, Phase Three, the various scenarios and new normal or next normal, so to speak, that will happen.
I urge employers, in particular, to watch out for all these various advisories to ensure our workplaces are safe for their workers as well as for their customers and clients that visit the workplaces or offices. More importantly, the tripartite partners really should use this opportunity and will use this opportunity to work even more closely together because this is an opportunity. It is a great time, particularly, with all these practices, and a lot of rules and advisories are coming out hard and fast for everyone to work very, very closely together.
At the company level, the trust between employer and employee is very important. I cannot emphasise more the importance of regular open, transparent communication between employers and employees. I think this is the best time to build that trust because, not just the affected workers, but those who are not affected, are actually looking at how the employer is treating their employees. I think that is one area.
Secondly, employers, I hope, will work doubly hard, in particular, looking out for these various schemes, latching on them and, of course, not flouting any of the rules and advisories that had already been fleshed out and promulgated.
And thirdly, I think I cannot emphasise more, as what Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng mentioned earlier, the need for tripartism and the ability to work as a tripartite front and as a tripartite relationship. I cannot emphasise more the importance for us to work together, in particular, in reviewing some of these advisories. It could be the National Wages Council's recommendations or some advisories and guidelines to ensure and, even perhaps moving ahead, to review some of the employment laws because of the \"new normal\" that we are having to operate in and some of the new rules and more people working from home. So, that is one area – sharing some of these horror stories that are happening at workplace which I hope will be eradicated.
Secondly, with this Fortitude Budget and with the past three Budgets as well, I think it is a good time for us to reinforce the message of forging and strengthening the Singaporean Core. I am glad that through the SGUnited programme and the whole plethora of programmes that we have had. The fact that we are faced with challenges – with global lockdowns across various parts of the world and even with our neighbours – it is very important for us to relook not just self-sufficiency in many fronts, but also building and strengthening the Singaporean Core. It is a great opportunity for us to work together, to build and strengthen and hire and develop Singapore Core – which has always been our agenda in the last couple of years.
We have rolled out a series of measures in this area. We have the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP). We will continue those efforts. But it is important for employers to keep their minds open and be open to strengthening the Singaporean Core in all areas, in particular, in that space where there are a lot of professionals, managers and executives (PMETs).
At this point, I would just like to highlight the plight, anxieties and fears of many of our mid-career workers, in particular, the PMETs. If you look at the global financial crises, be it SARS and even before this entire COVID-19 saga, if you look at the labour market statistics, in terms of the increase in unemployment rate, this particular group, the mid-career workers, including PMETs, are the most vulnerable and most affected. The increase has been highest in both crises. And therefore, I cannot emphasise more the many fears and anxieties. Even prior to COVID-19, they were already a very vulnerable and susceptible group of workers. With this whole game-change and \"next normal\", I really fear and worry for them. I am glad that in the Fortitude Budget – and not just in this Fortitude Budget, even at the first Budget that we had – we focused a lot on mid-career workers, in particular the PMETs – through the Career Support Programme, Adapt-and-Grow and a whole slew of measures.
But in this Fortitude Budget, I just like to give my thanks and support for some of the things that have been rolled out. Besides the SGUnited Traineeships and SkillsFuture Traineeships, also the hiring of local workers. In terms of helping mid-career workers – 20% for six months, the 40% for six months for those above 40. These are good and resolute measures to help and encourage those companies.
Not all companies are laying off people. I think those that are, are a small group. Though they are a small group but there are still opportunities. And I hope that through this Budget and all these measures and, of course, with a close partnership amongst the tripartite partners and the newly formed National Jobs Council, we hope more employers will step forward to embrace some of these schemes – not just the traineeship programmes but, at the same time, if they have openings, if they have opportunities, to latch on some of these useful schemes and support.
I urge the Government as well, for those companies that have this strong hiring or strengthening of Singaporean Core, at the same time, a strong support of some of these schemes and good practices, not just good, not just fair, not just responsible, but progressive practices, I hope the Government can give these companies a pat on the back and also more and greater support so that they will be encouraged to do even more.
Finally, in conclusion, I cannot emphasise more during this particular period, as we overcome COVID-19 and all the ramifications, be it from the economy, from the labour market and in particular, workers, I hope we can eradicate some of these horror stories, one by one. I hope we can build the Singaporean Core. I hope also that we can pay particular attention to the mid-career workers – even before this entire saga, they were already very vulnerable. I hope for more emphasis and more support for this particular group so that they will be able to rise up to the challenge.
As we all slowly reopen, like they say, the many \"Rs\" – as we renew, as we restart, as we refresh, as we rejuvenate ourselves during circuit breaker for some – let us reinvent ourselves, let us reinvigorate, rejuvenate ourselves so that we are able to reposition ourselves and ensure that in all things that we do, we reforge that trust between the employee and employer; not just an employee-employer, but the employer and his industry; the industry needs to work together and hunt as a pack.
At the bigger picture, on the national front, how we, as tripartite partners, can work together – Government, NTUC and all the employers – so that we are able to pivot, rise to the challenge and at same time, also grab the new opportunities that come before us. And on this note, I cannot emphasise more – every worker matters, every job counts. I support the Budget. [Applause.]
Mr Speaker: Mr Melvin Yong.
Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye (Tanjong Pagar): Mr Speaker, I stand in support of the Fortitude Budget. My fellow Labour Members of Parliament have touched on – and others will continue to emphasise – the importance of job creation, job matching and the need to save jobs during this unprecedented period. My speech will focus on keeping our jobs and our workplaces safe because failing to do so may result in another unwelcome spike in COVID-19 cases and undo all our efforts and the billions of dollars that we have committed and are committing to tide our nation through this crisis.
Mr Speaker, we must tread carefully as we ease the circuit breaker measures. In China, over a 100 million people face renewed lockdown in the northeastern region. In Japan, Hokkaido suffered a second wave of coronavirus infections after lifting lockdown measures while in South Korea, new clusters have formed quickly after lockdown restrictions were eased, forcing closures of more than 250 schools last week, just days after they reopened. Is this a case of too much, too soon? Or too little, too late? With lives and livelihoods at stake, it is not an easy balance to make. But I would like to urge that we take a more careful and more calibrated approach to prevent this from happening in Singapore.
Let me first highlight the challenges on the ground that threaten to derail our efforts towards a safe reopening, and propose some suggestions on how we can address them.
Many businesses and their workers have been facing different requirements and different sets of instructions from different Government agencies over the past months. Sometimes, new requirements are issued just days after an earlier set of instructions; while other times, they see other businesses implementing these rules quite differently from them.
The mandatory use of SafeEntry is one such example. Most companies practise the check-in function but, as we know, some do not require you to check out when leaving the premises. Others provide a barcode reader to allow visitors to scan their NRIC as an alternative, but this is not practised universally.
Should safe management measures be implemented based on principles or should they be prescriptive? On the ground, it seems that bosses prefer to implement based on principles while staff who are tasked to implement the measures prefer a more prescriptive set of instructions for clarity and ease of implementation.
Whichever the approach, safe management measures must not inadvertently cause poor safety at the workplace. While we can understand that the aim of these measures is to minimise unnecessary social gatherings at the workplace, some types of work do require clear communication and coordinated teamwork. Keeping a \"safety distance\" and speaking through a mask could result in unclear communication, which may lead to heightened risks of workplace accidents. For manual work that requires heavy lifting, for example, in the construction or marine engineering sectors, wearing a mask could affect their physically demanding work.
Mr Speaker, poor implementation could also lead to risky outcomes. For example, we read last month that the safe distancing dividers on a lorry transport for workers were deemed \"not sturdy enough\" and could have caused more harm in the event of a traffic accident! I hope MOM can conduct regular reviews and inspections, especially for high risk sectors, and ensure that the safe management measures are working as intended.
Mr Speaker, cost may also be a factor for poor implementation of safe management practices. Many businesses are already reeling from the increasing costs of putting in place the ever-evolving set of protective measures to keep our workplaces safe – providing thermometers and masks, increasing the frequency of cleaning and disinfection, employing additional staff to control access and to monitor temperatures, even increasing the number of trips to ferry workers because of safe distancing requirements. Coupled with a sharp decline in revenue, our businesses are hit with a double whammy!
Many employers that I spoke to are now concerned about the costs of having to send their workers for swab tests as we continue to ramp up community testing. Today, construction workers are required to be tested every two weeks, while pre-school and nursing home staff have taken a precautionary test before returning to work. They tell me that the cost of a swab test seems to vary significantly. Online checks reveal that a swab test can range between US$1 in Senegal to more than US$3,000 in America!
To manage costs, many businesses are leveraging technology to make our workplaces safer during this pandemic. In China, AI-powered thermal cameras are used to identify those in a crowd who have a fever and facial-recognition systems are deployed widely to identify those not wearing masks. Some isolation wards in China are entirely manned by robots that take the patient's temperature, deliver food and medicine and perform disinfection tasks. We too have deployed similar robots in our community isolation facilities and elsewhere in Singapore.
However, I am deeply concerned that some businesses are marketing products that may end up doing more harm than good. For example, we read that the use of disinfectant tunnels can cause serious harm to those walking through them. Experts have cautioned against atomising and spraying copious amount of disinfectant on a person as this may cause irritation and potentially irreversible damage to the cornea, skin and even our respiratory system. Other products, which could cause prolonged UV light exposure, are also harmful to the human body. I therefore urge the Government to review and where necessary, stop the use of such unsafe interventions at our workplaces.
Mr Speaker, until we find a vaccine or an effective treatment for COVID-19, we should incentivise our companies to embrace remote working solutions. Many have adapted to working from home in the past two months and I encourage companies to use this opportunity to reinvent their business operations and where possible, embrace work-from-home arrangements permanently and seize the new opportunities that come with this new normal.
Our hawkers and wet market stallholders have shown that this is possible. During the circuit breaker, many hawkers have united to embrace e-commerce and food delivery. IMDA also taught stallholders from Tekka Market how to sell their produce using Facebook live-stream. Today, many stallholders have started to live-stream on their own and have been successful in selling their produce. The reinvention of our wet market stallholders to become \"web market superstars\" shows us that we can all adapt to and seize opportunities in this new normal.
Mr Speaker, beyond employers, workers too are facing increased levels of stress. Graduating students and retrenched workers are finding it hard to find a job. Matured workers are worried about keeping their jobs, while frontline workers fear getting an infection from prolonged exposure during work. Even young parents are struggling between balancing their work, helping their energetic children with home-based learning and taking care of their restless elderly parents.
Having a mentally healthy workforce is important as compliance to safety at the workplace may be compromised if workers are not able to focus at work. The total expenditure on mental health makes up less than 5% of MOH's annual operating expenditure. Within the population, Singapore has an estimated average of 4.4 psychiatrists for every 100,000 people. This figure is much lower than the 15 psychiatrists per 100,000 recorded by most OECD countries. I therefore urge the Government to invest more resources on mental healthcare as insufficient support in this area could lead to dire consequences, especially in this prolonged period of uncertainty, anxiety and fear.
Mr Speaker, COVID-19 has shone the spotlight on good workplace safety and health (WSH) practices. Companies are now required to appoint Safe Management Officers (SMOs) before they can resume work and NTUC has already trained over 1,700 to be SMOs. We aim to double that number in the coming months. I hope that the Government could revisit my numerous proposals to mandate a WSH representative in every company. Let us retain and expand the role of these mandatory SMOs beyond the pandemic so that our workplaces can be safer and our workers healthier.
Mr Speaker, to conclude, we are only as strong as our weakest link. To tide through this pandemic and emerge stronger, we need to rally together as one people. The Government has done much to protect lives and livelihoods through an unprecedented series of four Budgets over four months. Businesses are also doing their part to put in place measures to keep our workplaces and our workers safe. The onus is on each of us to take care of ourselves and to take care of each other as we resume \"Business Unusual\".
I call on the Government, all employers and workers to continue to partner with the Labour Movement so that together, we can save jobs and keep jobs safe, because every worker matters. I support the Budget.
Mr Speaker: Mr Douglas Foo.
Mr Douglas Foo (Nominated Member): Thank you, Mr Speaker, Sir, for the opportunity. Mr Speaker, Sir, please allow me to declare my interest as chairman of Sakae Holdings Ltd, president of the Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF), vice-chairman of the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and vice-president of the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF).
I rise to affirm my support for the recently delivered Singapore Fortitude Budget Statement and to provide a response from the business and manufacturing community.
As we prepare to exit the circuit breaker, it is again very reassuring to the business community that the central focus of the Fortitude Budget is the protection and creation of jobs. With the additional $33 billion in relief measures, the Government has now set aside close to $100 billion to support Singaporeans in our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. This unprecedented level of financial relief continues to demonstrate the Government's unwavering commitment to support our enterprises.
As I stated before in my response to the earlier Budget Statements, businesses cannot take these support measures for granted and must actively take steps to continuously examine and tweak their business models and explore how new improvements can be incorporated sustainably.
Manufacturers here are generally very appreciative of the relief measures that will help to ease commercial financial challenges. Ranging from sustained foreign worker levy rebates and waivers as well as more robust rental relief measures to training of employees and upgrading of equipment, the SMF is thankful that the Government has largely taken on board the feedback of our members in announcing a progressively more comprehensive relief package.
Our members are also heartened that on a government-to-government level, Singapore is working with other countries to keep supply chain disruptions as minimal as possible during this time. This has significantly helped businesses continue operations during the circuit breaker.
As we take the required steps to exit the circuit breaker and work towards the new normal, I would like to share some feedback on challenges faced by businesses and encourage sustained and greater collaboration within the tripartite alliance.
On safe distancing and shop floor hygiene – Singapore first became acquainted with the COVID-19 virus early this year and since then, most companies have had to adapt processes significantly to safeguard the health of employees while they struggle with the numerous external impacts on their businesses. I would like to recognise and applaud this collective effort from businesses to place safety and health above commercial concerns. In fact, in a recent survey of members of the SMF, 62% of the members surveyed ranked safety and health as their top concern as they prepare for the reopening of more businesses after the circuit breaker.
Some members have even indicated an almost four-fold increase in monthly cleaning expenses to ensure a clean environment for their workers and products. In addition to cleaning costs, companies are now maintaining their own inventory of personal protective equipment (PPE) that is likely to be required in daily operations for an extended period of time. As such, manufacturers largely expect these costs to be permanent additions to their operational costs.
In addition, the current necessity of remote work also presented significant costs for businesses to introduce mobility into their business models such as required laptops, setting up of remote servers, cloud access and so on. In addition, we have seen a number of companies modifying their shop floor to comply with safe distancing guidelines. All of these costs give rise to genuine concerns of the manufacturing community as to how Singapore can continue to be competitive globally as different countries practise different precautionary measures.
One of Singapore's advantage has always been speed and efficiency. While businesses understand that there is an ever important need to care for the safety and health of our people, businesses here hope that law and policy makers take into careful consideration the need not to be overly prescriptive and at the same time, ensure that regulatory bodies are sufficiently resourced and staffed so that required approvals do not become the bottleneck to efficiency.
On manpower concerns – the circuit breaker has also presented a wide number of manpower challenges to companies. Key among which is the uncertainty of the permitted workers' quota, which changes day to day for some companies.
The feedback from member companies is that such fluctuations are an added form of disruption as they are unable to plan ahead and schedule production schedules. This also has resulted in a core group of the workforce being stretched during this time as many find themselves taking up dual roles. Such also has a serious impact on manufacturers as they abide by safety standards and regulations, but staff fatigue is always an ever present danger.
Finally, companies are also eagerly awaiting the normalising of the human traffic between Singapore and Malaysia. Aside from being a key part of the workforce, some Malaysian workers who have chosen to remain in Singapore have been apart from their families for an extended period of time and these form mental welfare concerns for employers. Businesses know that this is not dependent on Singapore alone. Accordingly, businesses wish for the governments of both countries to expeditiously reach an agreement to facilitate trade. One area is the 14-day quarantine or Stay-Home Notice that workers going to and returning from either country face on each side, making it a total of 28 days that the worker is not able to work.
On overseas contractual obligations – another key concern for businesses is their inability to fully fulfill their contractual obligations to overseas clients due to circuit breaker measures. Many are worried that the longstanding relationships they have built over the years with customers and suppliers, especially those from overseas, lost during the circuit breaker, may be difficult to woo back.
Many of our members who trade internationally are especially concerned regarding their contractual obligations to overseas clients and that failure to fulfill the same could mean exposure to financial and reputational damages. In this regard, the SMF would like to advocate for the Government to take the lead and work towards getting agreement from other countries on a legal framework that transcends jurisdictional boundaries, much along the lines of the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act.
Mr Speaker, Sir, the above are concerns and feedback from the business community – genuine and from the ground. I hope that the relevant Ministries can assist to see how some of these issues can be even more quickly resolved. I will now like to move on to the next part of my speech – that of digitalisation and training.
On protecting livelihoods, transforming businesses – as president of the SMF, a common refrain when I engage with our members is the need for digitalisation. While the challenges presented by the measures to combat COVID-19 have indeed spurred on digitalisation and transformation for businesses, there is still much to be done.
The SMF administers the Digital Project Management Services programme as part of the SMEs Go Digital initiative. Since the circuit breaker, we have seen almost the same number of expressions of interest as in the months from August 2018 to April 2020, when the programme was launched. However, the adoption rate is still low. While many companies understand the need to transform, a number of concerns still hinder the adoption process. In a survey of the members of SMF conducted in early 2020, members cited uncertain return of investment, lack of technical capabilities as well as concerns on cybersecurity as key reasons holding them back from adopting digital technologies.
In this regard, the SMF is really glad and heartened that the Fortitude Budget pays importance towards incentivising and encouraging businesses to digitalise. We believe that the measures will go some way to pushing companies to take the plunge. The SMF will also be doing its part to complement that of Government's efforts to push for our members to take up digital solutions on an expedited basis.
Similarly, companies seeking to send employees for training during this period have also encountered some challenges that warrant some attention. One of the new initiatives under the Fortitude Budget is provision of training opportunities for the older workforce. Members have since highlighted that there is a challenge in upskilling their workforce in this age group as most courses are conducted in English and there is a relative scarcity of courses conducted in Chinese, Malay or Tamil that this age group of workers may be more comfortable with.
For the manufacturing sector, the transformation journey is one we are committed to and while the change will not be overnight, I strongly believe that our continued efforts as a community will set us on the right path.
On importance of the tripartite alliance – Mr Speaker, Sir, as I close my speech today, I would like to invite the hon Members of this House to spend some time to ponder on the delicate balance of our labour relations in Singapore.
I have, in my previous speeches, always made it a point to drive awareness and encourage the strengthening of our unique tripartite labour alliance. Yet, it is in trying times like these that the true work and importance of this alliance shines more brightly than ever before.
Amid the massive global economic upheaval, with the strength of our labour relations built up over decades, our workers are able to keep faith with their employers and employers are able to keep faith in the Government. This foundation has provided important stability for our economy during this crisis. It is therefore critical and timely, that as hon Members of this House, we remember and keep this delicate balance in view even as we canvass the interests and views of the organisations we represent. During such times of heightened uncertainty and anxiety, it is easy for a statement, though innocuously made, and, perhaps in support of one stakeholder, to engender feelings of negativity or suspicion in another.
It is therefore important that in the current circumstances, that we keep communication channels open and transparent between workers, employers and the Government. After all, we are all working collectively towards a common goal of emerging stronger as a nation after this pandemic. It is therefore exceedingly crucial that we continue to be ever mindful of how we can continue to build up such relations.
Mr Speaker, Sir, in conclusion, by promoting continuous innovation, advancement and adaptation, and with the relief the different Budget Statements have provided for businesses, I believe we can overcome.
As a partner in nation building, the SMF is committed to stand in Solidarity and Unity with our members and the Government, increase business Resilience and surmount this difficulty with Fortitude. May we be in the best possible position to better seize opportunities presented when the effects of COVID-19 recede globally. I stand in unequivocal support of the Fortitude Budget Statement.
Mr Seah Kian Peng (Marine Parade): Mr Speaker, Sir, this is the darkest of times. COVID-19 has taken a heavy toll on the economies of many countries. In Singapore, the recent circuit breaker has affected many businesses. We all have friends who have lost their jobs, or their businesses or are struggling in some way. We are certainly in this together.
This is a battle not just against COVID-19 but against some of the toughest enemies of any small state – despair, poverty, haplessness, an overwhelming sense of pessimism.
Large states have deeper resources, a stronger pull on world affairs and a sense of control and destiny. Singapore has always been a price-taker in world affairs and remains vulnerable to all the ugly forces that have come to the fore in this pandemic and we have seen this played out in many countries including Singapore.
What has come out quite starkly is the fact – a fact that we have always known, but perhaps forgotten – that we ourselves must defend Singapore, defend our laws, our rules, our way of life.
We ourselves must call out rule breakers who mock us and write home to invite their countrymen to do the same; we must think of solutions when countries where we locate our assets count their own interests above ours; in times of trouble, we must call our own home from all over the world – as our universities did to thousands of students overseas. Some of them did bring home the virus and were rightly cared for in our hospitals.
We are our best hope, and we must stand together. If we break, this dark time will not end and it will be sometime before we see more sunny days and blue skies.
We are slowly but surely emerging out of the circuit breaker.
In my speech at the debate on the Solidarity Budget, I shared how NTUC FairPrice Group proactively responded at the onset of COVID-19 to assure consumers and public on the availability and affordability of essentials. Today, I would like to share the efforts of our other various entities at NTUC Enterprise who are continuing to address the key concerns of job security and opportunity, and initiatives to moderate the cost of living. I declare my interest as the Group CEO of NTUC Enterprise and NTUC FairPrice.
First, building a resilient workforce. FairPrice Group has continued to operate our supermarket branches – on line and off line; our hawker centres, foodcourts and coffeeshops; as well as at our warehouses and central kitchens – working hard to meet consumers’ food and grocery needs and adapting to the evolving circumstances daily. These efforts help to ensure that the public have access to their daily essentials.
On a side note, I must declare that Fairprice Group has a food services division through our Kopitiam and FoodFare outlets. I wish to make a call out for all those in the F&B sector. In fact, earlier hon Member Mr Lim Biow Chuan made the same call. Those in the F&B sector have indeed been very badly hit in this crisis because the dining in crowd is a very, very important component of their overall business model.
So, whilst the various support schemes by Government have been indeed very helpful, this is but a stop-gap measure and so the earlier we can provide guidance and clarity for the F&B sector, and in particular to ensure that the various measures and reliefs that Government has announced that they accrue and are received by the F&B operators in its entirety. As is, we can expect more F&B firms to exit this industry and with it, a lot more job losses.
Of course, there will be businesses which are less affected by COVID-19. For such organisations, they should always remember to recognise the people that make up the organisation. So, like others in the essential services, FairPrice group has given special monetary awards and incentives to our colleagues, especially those working at the frontline. Many customers have also joined us in appreciating our service staff through testimonies on social media as well as through personal cards and letters of encouragement.
Over the last two months, FairPrice group has provided employment opportunities for an additional 4,000 staff – full time, part-time and temporary workers – to support operations and the high transaction volume that we experience and this includes people like Ms Gina Ng, a lady that Mr Ng Chee Meng referred to just now and, indeed, this was arranged though the Job Security Council. Ms Ng was from the Fairmont Singapore and Swissotel. Besides Fairmont, we at FairPrice group also managed to get staff from Grand Hyatt, Orchard Hotel, Ritz Carlton, Changi Airport Group, Wildlife Reserves and several others to help us out. Their stints will end some in July and some in August. We are currently looking to fill another 300 more positions and working with other agencies to provide employment for workers, especially those who have been displaced.
NTUC Enterprise group will certainly be supporting the SGUnited Traineeships Scheme and offer 300 training places to help trainees in exposure and experience in the various areas of business.
Next, let me cover what we have done in terms of commitment to learning. NTUC LearningHub continues to make learning accessible during this period. To encourage all our workers to make good use of time to upgrade their skillsets, NTUC LearningHub has provided access to online courses that covers both Adaptive Skills and Technological Skills.
In addition, LearningHub has provided opportunities for self-employed persons to earn as they train to deepen or acquire new competencies, all this in preparation for when the economy picks up and new opportunities arise.
During this circuit breaker period, two of our NTUC Social Enterprises quickly pivoted and launched new digital initiatives:
LearningHub introduced free online courses, which received close to 70,000 sign-ups. Completion rates of these courses were very encouraging and significantly higher than the industry benchmark.
On the other hand, our NTUC First Campus also launched “Kidzmatters” for parents, and this received 90,000 sign-ups. For the last two months, I think these have all been very well used by parents of such children.
Our MoneyOwl too conducted more online webinars and e-learning to educate the public on financial planning and management.
Whilst jobs continue to be a major concern for all, we were also kept busy keeping our operations running and services accessible, and at the same time, doing our best to keep cost of living in check.
During the circuit breaker period, to cope with the continued surge in demand and provide greater convenience to customers, FairPrice had to develop various solutions and initiatives. They include the setting up of pop-up and atrium stores, increasing online capacity, and instituting a \"priority shopping hour\" for the Pioneer Generation and vulnerables. And, in fact, this week we started a priority queue for healthcare workers. And then there were the mobile grocery vans which brought essential products to residents in selected areas without them having to venture too far away from home. FairPrice on Wheels is now in eight locations and growing to grow.
Our sourcing teams continued in overdrive mode as we strengthened our network of suppliers across the globe to mitigate any disruptions in supply especially that of essential items.
Efforts to contain COVID-19 will be a long and protracted one. The Labour Movement has always looked after workers and their welfare. For today, I am highlighting two areas only – jobs and cost of living. We pledge to ensure stable jobs, affordable groceries, quality and value meals. As a group, we will continue to do our part for the community through our corporate giving, whether it is donations to vulnerable and community groups or providing more relief to needy families and workers during this difficult period.
The NTUC Enterprise group of social enterprises led by FairPrice will be putting together a package to help Singaporeans and families address this for the services that we are involved. This is very much part of our DNA and what the public has grown to expect and can expect the NTUC group of Social Enterprises to continue to do so. We are finalising these measures and will share with the public soon. Secretary-General Mr Ng Chee Meng indeed will be the one, together with a few of us, to launch this.
Yes, in the best of times, we cared less for bread and butter – opting for sashimi and salmon. We aim for high pay and long holidays. Today, travel, dining out and shopping seem like a dream from the past.
But Singapore was born on dreams. We made a nation out of nothing but gumption and a Separation Agreement. Our first meals were from lean tables; and we can today, endure and grow from these hard times to strength and prosperity. The sun will shine on Singapore again, but we must ourselves first break through the darkness. Sir, I support the Fortitude Budget.
Mr Speaker: Senior Minister of State Koh Poh Koon.
The Senior Minister of State for National Development and Trade and Industry (Dr Koh Poh Koon): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to speak in support of the Fortitude Budget as Deputy Secretary-General of NTUC.
Sir, COVID-19 has transformed our world drastically and the past few months had been challenging for everybody. Since MTI’s last review in March, the disruptions to economic activity in major economies around the world have been more severe than expected due to the stringent containment measures taken by various governments to slow the spread of COVID-19. Most of the major advanced economies as well as the emerging economies are now projected to see full-year recessions in 2020.
Against this backdrop, the outlook for the Singapore economy has weakened further.
As a small and open economy, Singapore’s GDP growth is expected to come in at -7% to -4%. Sectors such as manufacturing, wholesale trade and transportation and storage will be adversely affected by the sharper-than-expected slowdown in many of Singapore’s key markets and there will be prolonged uncertainties as well disruptions in the global supply chains.
The implementation of circuit breaker measures to contain the COVID-19 virus in Singapore was necessary but it has also created an impact on our economy – business operations were disrupted and non-essential business services were forced to close during the circuit breaker period; workers have to make alternative arrangements to work from home.
While we have managed to flatten the epidemic curve, we must now shift our focus to tackle the \"unemployment\" curve as retrenchment and job losses will inevitably rise. As the Executive Secretary of the Metal Industries Workers’ Union (MIWU), I had the chance to speak with many of our employer partners as well as our workers on the ground. They were seeing reduced work hours, shorter work weeks and even no-pay leave is becoming more frequent now in many of our branches and our partner companies. So, naturally, I understand that our union leaders and workers are concerned about their job security in the immediate and longer term.
Therefore, the Labour Movement welcomes the Fortitude Budget that supports the gradual reopening of our economy. The enhancement to the Jobs Support Scheme will help to sustain companies in the early phase of reopening and reduce the pressure to retrench workers.
PMETs and workers, aged in the 40s to 50s, are expected to be more impacted by any retrenchments. They are more likely to face difficulties in finding jobs in this distressed job market. To help workers stay employed and employable, the new SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package will create close to 100,000 placement opportunities in the three areas of jobs, traineeships and training. This is very much welcomed by union leaders and workers that I spoke to.
The National Jobs Council chaired by Senior Minister Tharman will oversee this effort. NTUC hopes that the NJC will leverage the NTUC Job Security Council set up earlier in February this year to pre-emptively match at-risk and soon-to-be displaced workers into available job opportunities. NTUC JSC, as Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng has shared earlier, has more than 7,000 companies in our network and has emplaced more than 10,000 workers into job opportunities. These jobs were mainly in essential services or to support COVID-19 efforts, especially in sectors such as healthcare, retail and logistics.
Through this, and with the help of many of our unions and the various Company Training Committees (CTCs), NTUC stands ready to support the Government in the National Jobs Council, leveraging our existing capabilities and our network to help match workers to new jobs and also to equip them with deeper skills at the national level.
I hope policy incentives being considered by National Jobs Council can further support the early success of NTUC Job Security Council and encourage more companies to join us in this network to create more traineeship placements and more job opportunities.
One of the key enablers to allow better job matching is skills training to ensure our workers acquire future-ready and industry relevant skills. During this economic slowdown, NTUC has been working closely with our unions to encourage companies to send their workers for training and to take advantage of the various schemes, like absentee payroll, for example, to help defray wage costs when the workers are away on training. Companies should also leverage on the CTCs to identify skills and training needs to better upskill their workers.
One example is Diethelm Keller Aviation (DKA). This is an unionised company under Metal Industries Workers Union (MIWU). Together with the union, the company set up a CTC in 2019, with the aim of furthering workers' career prospects through relevant skills training. The company engaged NTUC's e2i or the Employment and Employability Institute, to redesign the jobs and raised productivity of their workers. While DKA's business in the aviation sector has been affected by COVID-19, they will be using this downtime to cross-skill workers through structured on-the-job training so that they have flexibility to re-deploy workers to areas of need and emerge stronger from the crisis.
Many companies like DKA in the manufacturing sector has been impacted by disruption to the Malaysian workers commuting across from the Causeway due to the lockdowns and the situation in Malaysia. And by cross-skilling their workers, they are able to respond to this transient manpower shortages and cope with the skill gaps that they may have.
Some companies have pivoted to other business segments with growth opportunities and accelerated their business transformation during this period. One example is Certact Engineering, a unionised company under MIWU as well. This company has recently transformed their business from a plastic and aluminum manufacturing company, to manufacture medical equipment components like the COVID-19 test kits and ventilator component parts. To support the new business requirements, Certact had to remodel their business processes, redesign existing jobs and send their workers for training to operate their new manufacturing lines. So, even as I speak today, Certact is partnering NTUC to leverage the CTC and Operations Technology Roadmapping (OTR) process to implement their new business model and strengthen their workforce capabilities.
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, physical OTR sessions cannot be conducted. Hence, NTUC worked with A*STAR to develop a virtual-OTR methodology and we embarked on this virtual OTR process with Certact Engineering recently. They have given good feedback. It is a useful process. It allows us to conduct such processes even with circuit breaker measures. We will be conducting more virtual-OTRs with the various CTCs using online platforms to ensure that companies' transformation needs and workers' training needs continue to be served by the virtual-OTR during this pandemic.
Workers have also shared with me that training-related costs may deter their employers facing cashflow challenges during COVID-19 pandemic from undertaking skills upgrading for their workers. NTUC introduced the NTUC-Education and Training Fund (NETF) Collaborative Fund (NCF) in March 2019 to provide training-related funding support to our unionised companies who send their unionised employees for training programmes.
To help the increasing number of affected workers and to ensure that training costs to companies are further reduced during this COVID-19 period, I am glad to share that NTUC has increased the training support funding cap of this NCF from S$30,000 to S$50,000 per unionised company. To speed up business recovery, we will also introduce NETF Collaborative Fund Lite or NCF-Lite, for non-unionised companies with 50 or more NTUC union members in their workforce, with training support of up to $8,000 per company.
I want to encourage more companies, both unionised and non-unionised, to approach NTUC to set up CTCs and tap into the additional funding support to send their workers for training.
Sir, Singapore is not immune to the disruptions brought about by COVID-19. We have in place structures and initiatives to help the Singapore economy recover. The Government has set aside nearly $100 billion through the four Budgets to support both businesses and workers. The Labour Movement also stands ready to journey with our tripartite partners through this challenging period.
We will continue to work closely with our tripartite partners to keep our workers in jobs, to enhance job matching and job creation for our workers, to encourage skills training so that we can collectively navigate through the new post-COVID era. Tough times do not last but tough people do. And I believe that if we continue to stay united, band together, face the challenges head-on as One United Singapore, we will be able to go through this global pandemic together and be ready when the upturn comes. With that, Sir, I stand in support of the Budget.
Mr Speaker: Ang Hin Kee.
Mr Ang Hin Kee (Ang Mo Kio): Mr Speaker, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the livelihood of over 200,000 freelancers and self-employed persons (SEPs). Thankfully, many received support in various forms during this period. Unfortunately, their income continues to be severely affected. To assist SEPs cover their immediate and future needs, I have three proposals to make. These are: support to mitigate income drop, support for licensing and accreditation and support in finding new income sources.
Firstly, we need solutions to help them deal with a sudden and likely prolonged drop in income. This is a most pressing need. A case in point is with the two largest groups of SEPs in Singapore, namely, taxi and private hire drivers. Together, the National Taxi Association and the National Private Hire Vehicles Association, the Point-to-Point operators and MOT worked out several solutions to deal with a severe drop in passenger numbers and earnings.
Mr Speaker, in the past, in this House and outside this House, I have debated actively with the Ministry and the operators on things to improve and tackle challenges faced by drivers. But this is a time where we collaborate and work together. And, as a result, we were able to pool our resources and swiftly rolled out rental rebates and financial aids to drivers. We, in the NTUC, were also able to extend further assistance to those who were union members.
On their part, I am very grateful to the Point-to-Point operators who gave additional support such as rental waiver, which means they did not collect a single dollar in rental during the circuit breaker period from the taxi drivers and rental reductions even after the circuit breaker period has ended. Drivers I spoke too are deeply appreciative of the various support given.
Mr Speaker, during this whole entire period of COVID impact, our union leaders also went down to the ground to gather with the operator staff, the officials from the Ministry, to hand out masks, take temperature, give out food packs and bentos to the drivers in need. This is indeed tripartism in action.
MOT has also supported not just full-time drivers but part-time drivers as well. Part-time private hire drivers who do not qualify for the daily rental rebates under the Special Relief Fund was given a $300 Driver Care Fund which the Ministry provides for part-time driver. NTUC helped administered the Fund and over 3,500 drivers have benefited from that scheme. We handled the administration because we know the ground and could handle the appeal process swiftly.
As takings are unlikely to return to pre-COVID levels anytime soon, the Ministry has extended the Special Relief Fund to help full-time drivers with rental costs. But the Driver Care Fund has not been extended for part-time drivers who are also struggling. I hope MOT and MOF can consider giving part-time private hire drivers a second tranche of Driver Care Fund and to review the eligibility criteria and allow more drivers to qualify.
Secondly, the second support I would like to propose is in licensing and accreditation for SEPs. To help them deal with a sudden drop in income, we heard earlier about the $9,000 Self-employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS). SIRS, based on eligibility criteria, benefited 130,000 SEPs who are auto-qualify to benefit. Those who do not meet the criteria have submitted applications. Understandably, many SEPs who are not in the auto-qualify group are anxious.
One common issue they face is the lack of a licensing regime to verify if they are SEPs and whether they are struggling with a severe drop in income. Many also had not been diligent in contributing to their MediSave or filing their income tax returns. This added to the lack of information to verify their status.
Previously, in this House, I have appealed for more groups of SEPs to be issued with a licence. I have also called upon the Government to offer co-contributions to help them contribute to their MediSave. I would like to repeat that call today.
For instance, SEPs, such as private hire drivers and tour guides hold a vocational licence and are contracted with an operator. That allowed accurate identification of those who have suffered a severe drop in income. Furthermore, those SEPs who are registered with the unions could grant and gain immediate access to help offered by the NTUC. This covers people such as those who in the National Instructors and Coaches Association who are dealing mainly with people who are sports instructors and coaches offering services.
However, we do not yet have a licensing regime for people such as tuition teachers, photographers, performers, dancers, riggers, sound system men in the self-employed group. Whether it is to offer financial assistance or training help, much effort is needed to ensure that genuine freelancers in need are identified and assisted.
MOM had earlier launched the Contribute-As-You-Earn initiative to help SEPs contribute regularly into their MediSave account. However, it is only in its early stage and has not reached many of the 200,000 SEPs in Singapore.
It is a useful scheme. Therefore, I would like to propose that MOM spearhead a whole-of-Government approach to have more groups of SEPs issued with a vocation licence or to form accredited professional guilds or join the union. This will allow for proper assessment of their professional needs and provide them with support during a downturn.
The NTUC has, in the past, formed unions for different groups of SEPs and we stand ready to work with the Government to do more.
Mr Speaker, there is a need to do more for this group but we need the recognition by the industry and the Government agencies in order for the guilds and the unions to take work. Only then will guilds be effective and more SEPs see a need to join.
This has been my experience as an advisor with the union, working together with the Point-to-Point Operators and MOT. Because of the strong tripartite relationship, we were able to deliver strong support swiftly to many taxi and private hire drivers. My other union colleagues shared the same experience when they work with the travel operators and MTI to help our tour guides. Moving forward, we must ensure that more SEPs can benefit from such a tripartite arrangement.
Furthermore, I would like to repeat my call for a one-off co-funding by the Government to self-employed persons who make voluntary contributions to their MediSave. This will also go towards ensuring that more of them will be able to save up for their immediate and future medical needs.
And finally, we also need to look at ways to help self-employed persons find new sources of income. Many lost their income when their clients stopped buying services from them because of restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The NTUC's Employment & Employability Institute has been conducting job-matching for self-employed persons who would like to consider temporary jobs or make a career switch. The recently announced National Jobs Council is indeed a further boost to this effort.
There are sectors that are still hiring and the most pressing task now is to quickly acquire the skills needed and match workers to those vacancies. But are our self-employed persons ready and have the appropriate mindset to make such switches? I have spoken to many drivers, taxi drivers and private hire drivers, who have changed career tracks and become bus captains as well as event emcees and tour guides, who have taken on temporary roles as temperature screeners or swabbers.
Also, we read recently that over 10,000 taxi and private hire drivers have moved from serving commuters to delivering food, groceries and parcels – this is thanks to the MOT's help to liberalise the current point-to-point regulations. The drivers learnt the skills of engaging customers on delivery matters, use cashless payment and even made adjustments to their daily routine – no more do they queue outside at the airport, but outside of restaurants or supermarkets in order to collect the delivery on time. Our workers are indeed adaptable.
To support them, I hope that the National Jobs Council can look at enabling more self-employed persons attain more vocational skills and to earn income from various channels. This way, our scarce manpower can be better deployed across various industries. It will also support self-employed persons reduce their downtime through matching them with various assignments. There may be concern that this multi-skilling of self-employed persons would eat into the domain of other trades. But the COVID-19 pandemic has already compelled even countries to relook at their longstanding economic strategy and even geared up to becoming less reliant on others.
Similarly, we must help reduce the risks self-employed persons face, support them to acquire new skills and leverage on digital tools to optimise their access to work assignments. Due to the pandemic, more of us have begun to better understand the needs of the over 200,000 self-employed persons in Singapore. All businesses and service buyers, and yes, including Government as buyers, can help by looking beyond the boundaries of contractual relationships and support our self-employed persons.
It is imperative that we work towards ensuring that the self-employed persons workforce that contributes significantly to the development of many sectors remain viable and intact even after the pandemic has ended. Mr Speaker, I support the Budget.
Mr Zainal Sapari (Pasir Ris-Punggol): Mr Speaker, COVID-19 has caused massive disruptions in our way of life. Experts are predicting that the way we live, work and play will be very much different post COVID-19. There will be a new normal. We experienced some of this possible new normal during the circuit breaker period. As a nation, we were united, we showed resilience, we fought in solidarity, we strengthened our fortitude.
But this crisis also revealed our vulnerabilities. We know we need to reduce our dependence in some areas and at the same time, develop new mindset and capabilities for us to live, work and play in the new normal.
This current crisis has forced many to re-think on the value that our society has placed on essential service workers. The services provided by these workers are truly useful, necessary and the impact will be felt if the work is not done. Unfortunately, in many societies, the more useful the work is, the less they pay you. However, this crisis has caused some to change their attitude and behaviour, and we have witnessed many more people who are being gracious, generous and grateful for the work of our essential service workers.
NTUC, together with our affiliated unions and associations, have long championed the cause of our low-wage essential service workers. To us, every worker matters and every job counts. While I am heartened that we have made good progress in terms of pushing for better wages and skills, there is much more to be done. In post COVID-19, what would be the new normal for essential service workers in the outsourced sectors that keep Singapore safe, clean and green?
Currently, most of the companies in the outsourced industries where the Progressive Wage Model is made mandatory, are characterised by an older workforce, limited use of technology, relatively low productivity, heavy reliance on foreign manpower, and their salaries hover at the bottom fifth percentile of the resident workforce in terms of gross monthly salary.
This situation cannot persist in post COVID-19. As a society, if we truly value the work of our essential service workers, then it is time for all stakeholders to be bold and embrace change in the new normal.
In the new normal, we must change how we treat our essential service workers. We must continue to find ways to narrow the income gap and ensure their average wage growth continue to be higher than the median. Currently, under the mandatory Progessive Wage Model (PWM), our cleaners and landscape workers are given only two weeks of PWM bonus but, there is none for the security officers. Simply giving them an annual bonus of one month would increase the percentage of wage increment by about 8%. The tripartite committees overseeing these essential services must work together to enhance the skills and wage ladders to ensure our workers continue to remain relevant and due recognition be given for the importance of their work.
In the new normal, we need a PWM where these essential services would be anchored by a skillful and productive workforce, balanced with both the young and old. Attracting a younger or more skillful workforce has always been a key outcome desired under PWM and to achieve this, we must change how we do things by leveraging technology and digitalisation to support higher productivity and sustain higher wages to attract younger Singaporeans to be essential service workers.
As there will be older workers in these sectors, we also need to drive a change in our mindset. We must inculcate in all workers a growth mindset where one is never too old to learn new things. We need to encourage them to embrace technology to make the work safer and smarter.
Changing the way we do things for the future is already mapped out in the different Industry Transformation Maps for the respective essential services industries. This plan must be reviewed for the new normal. We need to change the assumptions when these plans were developed to accelerate the transformation of the industry for the new normal where we drive productivity increase through technology and digitalisation. All of this require a highly skilled workforce and the new PWM must reflect the changes in skills and productivity required to justify higher salaries.
In the new normal, we must change how we classify occupations. This crisis has shown the importance of the work of these essential service workers. With higher skills and greater productivity, these environmental services workers, security officers and landscape specialists should be regarded as specialists in their own respective areas and would not be seen or regarded as low-wage workers. Only then perhaps, younger Singaporeans will see this as a viable career.
In the new normal, we need to change consumers' and service buyers' behaviour where we demand higher standards of procurement practices. Outcome-based Contracting must be the norm for procuring services and service buyers should only award contracts to companies with progressive employment practices that reward and recognise their workers right. It is important that every socially responsible service buyer leads by example and reject service providers that provide services at low cost but always at the expense of the welfare of these essential service workers.
This crisis has also forced us to reflect our core values and principles to fellow human beings and highlighted our unseen class system. At the same time, it also showed that we can rise to the occasion to put things right. I would like to take this opportunity to applaud all those who have played a part to help, protect and support our migrant workers.
In the new normal, we must change how we regard the migrant workers and welcome them in our community. We must realise that they are the ones who keep Singapore going; cleaners and maintenance workers who keep our neighbourhoods clean and hygienic, workers who keep our transport running so we can get our essential supplies, workers who keep electricity and water flowing to our homes, and workers who provide other services in our neighbourhoods.
Some of these migrant workers will be housed in vacated school sites to ensure that the safety and welfare of our migrant workers as they continue working during this crisis. In my constituency, I am heartened that many of my residents demonstrated understanding for the need to have this arrangement but, what if these temporary dormitories must remain for a much longer period? Do we then adopt the perverse attitude of resisting them again because we do not want them in our backyard? I hope the new normal for our foreign friends will see them being accepted as a fellow human being who has the right to enjoy the surrounding that they helped to maintain and build.
I see the changes needed for the new normal will complement our efforts to create better jobs, better wages and better welfare for our workers regardless of collar, age, nationalities and sector. Mr Speaker, in Malay.
(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.]: In our efforts to change to the new normal, it is important that we take cognizance of the challenge faced by workers currently as they can be in financial distress due to the crisis now. In a recent survey conducted by OCBC, it was shared that 70% of working adults do not have enough funds to last them beyond six months if they were to lose their jobs now. I would not be surprised if many low-wage workers would fall into this group as they have very little savings. Hence, I would like the Government to consider reviewing the criteria for Short to Mid-Term ComCare Assistance to enable more households to be eligible.
Many WIS recipients welcome the $3000 one-off special cash payment which will be paid over two equal payments of $1,500 each, in July and October 2020. I hope that should the crisis be prolonged, the Government could consider another one-off special payment but perhaps in smaller amount spread over a longer period.
(In English): In conclusion, the road ahead will be a long one, but hard times create strong people. Every one of us must play our part to create a new normal. This will require a shift in mindset for many, but we must also not lose sight of the opportunities ahead. If the $100 billion we have spent in this crisis does not lead us to a future where we can be more progressive, more equitable and more enlightened, then indeed it would be a tragedy if the only thing we did was just trying to survive, rather than coming out stronger as a society. I support the Budget.
Mr Arasu Duraisamy (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, COVID-19 has impacted economies worldwide. Singapore is also not spared. With supply chains being impacted, the transport and logistic sector will also be affected. As the General Secretary of the Singapore Port Workers' Union, I too, am worried for my brothers and sisters in the sector.
As compared to the four sectors worst hit by COVID-19, the impact on the transport and logistics sectors are not as pronounced yet. However, workers are concerned that they might soon be the \"next in line\" as they see telling signs of businesses slowing down, a reduction in overtime and incentive earnings as well as being asked to clear their vocational leave due to the low activities. It is not just our local workers who are worried about losing their jobs or having a reduction in their take-home pay; our migrant workers in the transport and logistics sectors are also concerned. It is in the time of crisis where we must leverage the existing labour-management relations or LMR in short, to help workers and companies through this challenging period.
I recall when Malaysia first announced the Movement Control Order, the union and PSA management quickly came together to make arrangements to house our Malaysian counterparts in PSA-operated dormitories. Issues raised by these members were resolved quickly and amicably. When the Singapore Government imposed movement restrictions on workers staying at the dormitories, once again, the union and the management partners moved quickly to ensure that the workers' needs are taken care of. Union leaders and members volunteered their help to support the management in the distribution of meals and daily essentials to these workers in the dormitories. Some even stepped up to be safe distancing ambassadors at the dormitories and the workplaces.
These are just some of my personal experiences of how LMR has come to play an essential role during this challenging period. Even as Singapore gradually reopens our economy, LMR can continue to play a crucial role to ensure that workers can return to work safely and businesses can continue to operate.
For companies to resume operations, safe management measures must be put in place to minimise the re-emergence of COVID-19 community cases. While it might bring about some inconveniences, we all know that these measures are necessary. Due to this necessity, NTUC has worked with Ong Teng Cheong Labour Leadership Institute and NTUC LearningHub to facilitate the training of union leaders, management partners and union staff as Safe Management Officers. Having knowledge of safe management measures, union leaders will then be able to work with their management partners to coordinate and implement these measures on the ground. Each one of us must do our part in adhering to these measures, and I hope that more companies can come on board and get trained so that businesses can continue to operate safely and workers can work in a safe environment.
Another area that we can leverage LMR is in workers’ training. Compared to pre-COVID times, business activity might not be as high during this period, and we should make use of this time to retrain workers. In the port sector, our unions are working with the company to train workers to have dual skills so that they can be cross-deployed across roles. One example is how we are encouraging our crane operators and drivers to be reskilled as reefer and equipment maintenance technicians. This will not only give the company the flexibility to deploy these workers but also increase the value-add the workers bring to the company. I believe we can also explore similar cross-training opportunities in other sectors.
Our unions and management must work even more closely during this challenging period to give confidence to our workers. In areas, such as workers’ safety and workers’ training, we should take proactive steps to reassure our workers that we are still doing our utmost best to improve their wages, welfare and work prospects.
Moving forward, what else can we do to keep our workers' jobs and livelihoods? At a recent dialogue with PSA Group CEO Tan Chong Meng, our union leaders and PSA’s senior management partners, he shared with us four steps which we can take to help the organisation move forward in post-COVID times. Taking a page out of that, I feel that these steps are very much relevant to us as a nation.
First, be prepared for recession. In the most recent estimate by MTI, Singapore’s GDP is projected to be -7% to -4%. Job losses and retrenchments are inevitable. In a typical business environment, it takes a retrenched worker about three to six months to secure a new job. But the current climate has exacerbated these norms.
In light of this possible impact on workers, can the Government explore making COVID-19 Support Grant a long-term help to provide workers facing short-term unemployment? For example, can the Government consider extending the length of support beyond three months, with each applicant reassessed every three months based on their past training and job search efforts? Can we also increase the quantum of assistance to $1,000 per month, aligning with Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) because both employees and the self-employed face the same pressure during the period of unemployment? Can the scheme be more favourable to workers who are sole breadwinners of their families, as they would be under greater financial pressure compared to dual-income families?
Second, be resilient. As a country, we need to be resilient. Businesses can use this time to relook at work processes and business strategies while workers can review their training needs. Take this opportunity to reflect and learn from our past experiences and, hopefully, this will bring about new and innovative solutions which we can leverage when the economy recovers. Let us work together as a country to develop more win-win solutions for both companies and workers to enable us to be more resilient in the face of future adversities.
While there might be some short-term pains, it is not all doom and gloom as the recovery will eventually come. Therefore, we must use this downtime strategically to transform our economy and accelerate the push for Industry 4.0 in the various sectors. If we can take this period to leverage and adopt technology, increase productivity, reduce our reliance on foreign workforce and reskill our workers to take up new jobs, I believe Singapore is well-poised to take advantage of the new opportunities when the global economy recovers.
Third, be prepared to go regional. As supply chain and global manufacturing start to shift away from China, we need to refocus on regional manufacturing zones, such as Central and Eastern Europe (or CEE) for Europe, Mexico for the Americas, as well as India and South-East Asia countries for Asia. These shifts in the supply chain will cause inter-regional trade to slow down but intra-regional trade will likely grow at a faster pace. We must support our businesses to venture into these countries and prepare our workforce to work in these regions.
Fourth, prepare to reform. While Singapore has embarked on transforming our economy and our businesses to adopt Industry 4.0 technological advances, the progress is not as fast as we had expected it to be. However, with COVID-19, it has accelerated some of these transformations, particularly in the area of digital transformation. Adoption of digital solutions has increased exponentially. This calls for reformation, a change in our convictions or perhaps a rewiring of our professional DNA to open up to transformation or reforms. Within the last six weeks, we have learnt how to work and study from home, shop online, pay via e-payment, entertain and socially interact online. Online shopping, ordering of food and services via apps, telecommuting and virtual meetings have become the new norm. It has changed the way we look at everything, including the way we transform and the speed of transformation. Thus, I applaud the Government for sustaining the momentum of digitalisation. But can we do more by extending this support to all sectors?
Sir, in conclusion, never in the history of this nation has this House approved four Budgets within four months. So, let us not let these efforts go to waste and press ahead with the transformation. Let us be prepared for recession, be resilient, be prepared to go regional and be prepared to reform.
This assistance cannot go on indefinitely and we cannot keep drawing down on our Reserves. Whether you are a worker, business owner or even just a citizen of Singapore, let us all do our part to support one another through this challenging period. Let us unite in solidarity as one people, one nation, one Singapore. With resilience and fortitude, we shall prevail. I support the Budget.
Mr Desmond Choo (Tampines): Mr Speaker, the COVID-19 pandemic and the circuit breaker have gotten many of our families to experience first-hand and, more than ever before, the maniacal task of balancing work, household and childcare duties. Of course, this juggling act is nothing new to many women. After all, they had and still assumed the bulk of care-giving duties. For many men like myself, we are getting a really close first-row view of the Herculean effort needed to work from home, get through the work calls while participating in home-based learning (HBL), attending to potty calls and getting food on the table. The circuit breaker is perhaps also called the “Grand Resocialisation of the Working Men”. It would have been clear to many by now that juggling work and family should never have been just a women's thing. It is a family's thing.
For many of my male friends with young children and had the chance to work from home, this was the golden age of family togetherness. We are mindful that not all families could do that, especially those in essential services and needed at the frontlines. We are fortunate that we get to participate deeper than ever in our children's lives. We learned how they learn. We learned how they like to be loved. We learned how to love all over again. And amidst this strengthened bedrock of family, we discovered working without ostensibly losing productivity. We saw how work and family can thrive if only we work together.
In taking on more care-giving duties, we were forced to probe and challenge the fallacies of gendered norms. There might be a sea change in gendered norms creating a wave of gender equality greater than that experienced before. It is an important change that a progressive society must embrace. And we would do well to keep this momentum going. As we ought not to let a good crisis go to waste, we should not let this revival of family togetherness go to waste.
For a very long time – even now – we have often framed flexible work arrangement (FWA) as a support to care-givers, especially women on maternity or with young children. We have framed it such that women needed more support. COVID-19 has torn up such a frame. It is still true that they need more support. But that support must be a family-based one, with men strongly leaning in and making that change. For the first time since the advent of work have we seen so many people on FWA. But it is also evident that FWA can only work if (a) there is a strong care-giving infrastructure, and (b) FWA must be pervasive. For example, wherein FWA is unable to apply for essential workers needed in hospitals, a good childcare is critical for those workers. For those who can work from home, both parents really need to be around and both of them will need FWA.
The post-circuit breaker and COVID-19 workplace will not and must not be the same. FWA is, after all, no longer just a mark of a progressive employer but the enabler of a safer workplace. Many companies, such as Facebook, Twitter and larger banks, are preparing for some of their workforce to be telecommuting permanently. It is their way of building resilience within their workforce and, perhaps, also reap savings from reducing city office rentals and lost productivity through commuting.
Thus, the pandemic has shown employers that employees cannot be productive without accommodating their family responsibilities. We must now consider institutionalising the right to FWA for families. Such a right was previously denied to workers because companies found it impossible to adjust their business processes. Where CEOs have failed, COVID-19 has succeeded. Even traditional companies are conducting their work via Zoom. Employers should have a better idea now of how to successfully operationalise telecommuting and even other types of FWA. COVID-19 will bring down the last bastion of industrial era workplace practices.
As much as it is difficult to look beyond the next few months on how deep this crisis might be, some forward-looking companies are already looking at the scale and structure of their workforce. This is critical to emerging stronger from this crisis. We will need to consider changing the traditional work structure which is incompatible with the modern workforce. The traditional work structure assumes that there is a spouse at home or a childcare centre that allows that employee to work nine to 12 hours at the shopfloor or office. The new work structure prioritises care-giving and equips an employee to work away from the office.
On the other hand, we do acknowledge that not all businesses have the resources to allow for full telecommuting or FWA. With so many of our workers in SMEs, it is an important obstacle to overcome and we must do more to help them. The WorkPro Grant has been instrumental. Can we also consider enhancing this so that we can entrench telecommuting and FWA for the smaller companies?
Also, even though schools and childcare centres are slowly reopening, we need to be prepared for the possibility that we may have to close them again, should a second wave occur. We must explore how childcare or student care can be better provided if the whole family needs to remain at home. I have heard of some who even provided babysitting services and entertainment over Zoom for slightly older children.
The next thing is that the pandemic has also forced us to re-examine breadwinning vs care-giving. Breadwinning has always occupied primacy roles. After all, it generates economic output. Care-giving is that supporting enabler of breadwinning. This crisis has shown that we need both to be as important if we want to evolve to a higher form of the workforce. Thus, we will need to change our mindset on a couple of things.
One, valuing care-giving and unpaid work correctly. We have usually given higher childcare subsidies to working women. There are good reasons for doing this. Firstly, it encourages a higher workforce participation rate and, secondly, perhaps only those who work need childcare. But what if one of them has another family member that needs care-giving? And does keeping a family or household going require as much effort as working? A shorter duration of child or student care service is needed even by the best of homemakers at times. I hope that we can value unpaid work more accurately and provide greater support to our homemakers.
This crisis has illustrated that we need a care-giving infrastructure as much as building tunnels and data networks. This infrastructure should help families to better cope with family care-giving such as balancing the costs of child and elder care-giving. In addition, with added medical checks and costs of running childcare and eldercare facilities, fees might increase and increase the burden on families. How, then, can the Government reassure families?
Lastly, as I was hopelessly trying to attend to home-based learning or HBL and work calls as I was this morning, it dawned on me how lucky I was to have my wife to rotate HBL duties. Many families have that type of arrangement. But what about single parent families? The support for them is even more needed.
Next, I would like to turn our attention to support for younger Singaporeans.
With no end in sight to the spread of COVID-19, most companies have put off hiring if they have not already reduced excess manpower. For the graduating class of 2020 and some graduates in 2019, job prospects are not rosy. Many of them are concerned about getting jobs, let alone getting one of their preferred ones. One resident even told me that her University internship has been shortened to part-time because the company's workload had reduced drastically. This would affect her industrial learning and training exposure.
It is not surprising that many of our younger Singaporeans are anxious, having to worry about job prospects on top of the need to pay off their student loans. Since the pandemic started, Young NTUC, the youth wing of NTUC, has been actively engaging younger Singaporeans to help them secure jobs, upgrade their skills and build up resilience in the face of this unprecedented crisis. We have extended a series of career programmes to provide timely support and career guidance to help fresh graduates and young workers navigate in a post COVID-19 world.
The Resilience Budget's student loan repayment relief is a huge relief for graduating students. We also hope that in this Budget, that the Government can work with private education institutions and banks to provide similar relief for our private education institute (PEI) students. Their tuition fees are unsubsidised and the amount owed can be substantial.
Some studies have suggested that students graduating in a recession year earn less than their peers graduating in non-recession years, and that effect continues for a few years. This is primarily because new hires have scant bargaining powers and companies have reduced manpower budget during dire times, and pay increases will not jump dramatically post-recession. I would like to suggest a couple of ways to help them. The SGUnited Traineeship programme is very useful. We should also consider incentivising companies to convert these into full-time hires and support.
Even with the additional traineeships, it might not be possible to absorb so many new graduates. For some younger Singaporeans, it might be better to stay in school, further their studies or pick up new skills. I suggest that we can help to provide subsidies and loans for second diplomas, degrees or masters to give them the option to do so. For National Servicemen (NSFs) who are going to have their Operationally Ready Date (ORD) this year, could the uniformed services consider giving them the option to extend their National Service (NS) and deepen their skills since training has been compromised due to COVID-19 and that paramedic and security functions, for example, have continued to be in acute supply? Notwithstanding my suggestions on the Fortitude Budget, I support the Bill.
Mr Speaker: Order. I propose to take a break now. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair at 4.40 pm.
Sitting accordingly suspended
at 4.19 pm until 4.40 pm.
Sitting resumed at 4.40 pm.
[Deputy Speaker (Mr Charles Chong) in the Chair]
[(proc text) Debate resumed. (proc text)]
Mr Deputy Speaker: Senior Minister of State Heng Chee How.
The Senior Minister of State for Defence (Mr Heng Chee How): Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for allowing me to join this debate. I stand in support of the Budget.
In late July 2019, MOM estimated that there were 60,000 vacancies in our economy waiting to be filled. Now, less than a year later, we are staring at an annual GDP shrinkage of between -4% and -7%. Before the year 2020 began, the global economy was already feeling the effects of the US-China trade war. And then COVID-19 struck. The world became a totally different place for everyone.
If the projected shrinkage of the national pie materialises, it would be the worst since Singapore’s Independence. It reflects the serious anxiety we see on the ground – businesses worrying about survival, workers worrying about their jobs. This is why the Government has had to roll out four Budgets totalling $93 billion in as many months, and which entails drawing $52 billion from our national reserves – all unprecedented moves.
Even so, we cannot realistically expect the cushioning to completely counter what COVID-19 has done or will do – hitting both supply and demand at the same time. Not all businesses will survive this. Neither can all jobs be saved from this tsunami.
When push comes to shove, and beyond what the very important Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) can do for businesses and to save the jobs for all local workers, what specificaly will happen to the older segment of our workforce?
Over the past weeks, I have had discussions with union leaders and also with employers' representatives over the subject of older workers, in the context of COVID-19 and our economy. They shared their views candidly with me and I have put them together and will share some of their views here, and to make some recommendations.
First, on saving jobs. We know from experience and studies that older workers are at greater risk of being retrenched than younger workers. We also know that when an older worker loses his job, he will take longer than a younger worker of an otherwise similar profile to find new work, and even then, would in all likelihood take a substantial pay cut. Therefore, the most merciful thing to do for older workers is to minimise the risk of retrenchment.
The tripartite agreement to delay the CPF contribution rate changes from January 2020 to January 2022, the original proposed increases, that agreement to delay is a step in this direction, a step taken in order not to inadvertently raise the risk of retrenchment for older workers aged 55 and above.
In delaying the change of the increase, Government also decided to remove the corresponding wage offset which was meant to help employers shoulder half the cost of that CPF increase.
I hope that Government can consider re-channelling the $80 million originally earmarked for that transitional offset into strengthening the Senior Employment Credit for the next one year. This Senior Employment Credit, which was announced in the Unity Budget, incentivises companies to hire older workers aged 55 and above. So, it is paying for an outcome and every percentage help to companies is helpful towards inventivising employment and employability of workers. I believe that if Government is prepared to do so, it will send a strong and visible signal to both employers and older workers that it is resolute in wanting to save jobs for older workers in this difficult time.
In the Unity Budget 2020, Government also announced a new Part-time Re-employment Grant, or PTRG, for employers who offer it to re-employed workers aged 62 and above, who request for it. I hope that Government can apply this incentive to a slightly younger age group from age 55 and above, those who would be employed on that basis for the next one year, because this one year is a critical period.
I make this call not only to lower the cost of such workers to their employers who respond positively to suchrequest, but also in view of the fact that COVID-19 is especially harsh toward older persons and employers are therefore also worried about how to deploy such workers and manage their safe return to work; they have concerns. We must therefore find ways to incentivise employers to keep such workers hired, whether full-time or part-time, back to work at the workplace or telecommute, rather than to have the employers decide that they will do without them.
Next, matching jobs. No matter how hard we try, I think it is inevitable that some older workers will be displaced as companies take measures to cope and to transform. It is imperative that we find ways to help as many older workers earn income as possible. If not, they will become structurally unemployed prematurely, and will then have to depend more on their children, who themselves are under pressure, or on general taxes for support.
In this regard, I urge our National Jobs Council to pay due attention to job preservation and job creation for older workers as well. The Circuit-Breaker period has illustrated cross-industry job possibilities. Whether it is Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs) for older PMEs or full-time/part-time/gig jobs in retail, logistics, healthcare, transport, the public sector and others, let us give older workers a fair go at these opportunities as well.
I recall that when we battled SARS back in 2003, there were a number of big projects that created many thousands of new jobs. That helped absorbed displaced workers. This time round, the Government has also announced moves to create public and private sector jobs and traineeships. MTI has also just very recently announced a very good investment pipeline coming into Singapore that will create thousands of jobs as well.
Aside from opportunities in areas such as healthcare and e-logistics, we should also consider how areas that might be linked to our longer term security, such as urban farming, renewable energy, such areas as well; whether jobs could also be created are this be given due attention and development.
Next, advocating fairness and opportunity at workplaces. Over the years, through wage reform, many jobs have wages that have become much more performance-based rather than seniority-based. I urge employers, therefore, in considering how to manage their excess manpower to be fair. Please do not target older workers as a category. The Labour Movement and tripartite partners will be on the look-out for age-specific and other unfair practices.
COVID-19 has also revealed the sudden disruption to manning when segments of workers are stuck elsewhere even when the company is allowed to operate. There is therefore scope for localisation to help companies be more resilient against such sudden supply disruptions. There will be roles that can be done by willing and properly trained and re-trained local workers, including older workers. The Labour Movement will be keen to work with companies on such initiatives through the Company Training Committees (CTCs) and the NTUC Jobs Security Council (JSC), which will now also function in support of our National Jobs Council.
In this regard, the hiring incentive that was introduced as part of the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package (SMCSP) in February's Unity Budget will come in very handy. This Incentive targets employers who hire local workers aged 40 and above through eligible re-skilling programmes, and it was meant to last six months. I call for the duration of this hiring incentive to be extended from six months to 12 months, in order to make the incentive more attractive to employers to offer job contracts of at least a year to such mature, mid-career job seekers.
I also ask Government to consider help – both monetary and non-monetary – to enable organisations, workplaces, to be reshaped to be COVID-safe for workers of all ages, to be age barrier free, with respect to COVID-19. This should become part and parcel of the basic Workplace Safety and Health, or WSH, specifications, so that Singapore will have a sustainable operating model in this new normal, and we will not just work on the notion or the assumption that COVID-19 is a one-off event and somehow it will go away and neither it nor anything similar will hit us in future. We have to now be ready for all time.
As part of the reopening of the economy after the circuit breaker ends, workers will progressively return to work in some way. For occupations that employ a large number of older workers at the frontline, I urge the Government to prioritise testing for these workers. This will give both they, their employers and their customers greater peace of mind. It would also enable those infected to be identified as early as possible and given treatment, and thus limiting transmission, both in the community and at the workplace.
Next, recreating jobs. While I call for the preservation of jobs for older workers, this does not mean that the way in which these jobs are to be carried out should remain the same. Far from it. Unless companies and workers transform job designs and work processes, and increase their use of technology and spur innovation, they will not escape the worst that this storm will bring. This COVID-19 storm is so furious that there simply would not be enough resources to prop up zombie companies and jobs. This means that we must spur companies to press on with job redesign.
I call for practical support for companies, again, in both monetary and non-monetary, such as expertise terms, to help them quickly redesign jobs and processes that incorporate the following key dimensions.
First, how to re-engineer processes and use technology to render more jobs Easier, Safer and Smarter, or what we call ESS. ESS jobs, the concept is not new at all. The hon Mr Lim Swee Say, when he was Secretary-General NTUC as well as Manpower Minister, tried very hard to promote the adoption and innovation in this area. What is different though is that current times provide the opportunity to take this up, because companies now can see for themselves the obvious need, advantage and imperative of doing so; it increases competitiveness, enhances resilience, attractiveness, increase your flexibility. And here, the WorkPro Job Redesign Grant of up to $300,000 per company can be reviewed and re-energised to spur action in this harsh but opportune moment.
Next, with many SMEs struggling badly and yet in total employing some two-thirds of our workforce, and within that two-thirds, many are older workers as well, how we help SMEs redesign processes, jobs, their entire operations for this new enviornment and transform, if we can do that, that will really move the needle as well. Is it easy? It is not easy; it has been tried before; it is so dispersed – very hard to do. But if that ground does not move or does not move quick or well enough, then actually it is very difficult to move the overall; it is just simply because the number of businesses that are SMEs.
Again, tapping into the moment that we are in now, where everybody knows that we have to change, not because you like it but because that is the reality, then let us do it with a concerted tripartite effort, at least minimally, let us target the more promising SMEs, and through them to show to the rest, let them lead the pack in this transformation.
Next, training and re-training. This topic has been covered in depth earlier by the Senior Minister of State Koh Poh Koon, so I will not belabour the points on training except to make one, which is once again call on employers to remember and to please invest in the training and re-training of your older workers. Do not leave them out, do not just do it for your younger workers. Give these older workers, your older workers, a fair go at training, especially training that makes them digitally employable.
When the dust settles, countries that best invest in their workforce and infrastructure to be fighting fit in a very digital future are likely to out-compete the rest.
An employer who views his older workers as assets and another employer who views them as liabilities will both be right, because they will each act in a self-fulfilling manner. The enlightened employer will continue investing in sharpening the skills of his older workers just as he does his younger ones. The ageist employer will deny his older workers the opportunities to keep current and they will rust away, just as he predicted. I therefore call on employers to adopt a progressive mindset.
I thank every progressive employer who are already doing so, and I say it needs a proper and equally progressive response from olders workers. Therefore, likewise, I urge my fellow older workers to be enthusiastic about learning new skills to stay employable. This is the best favour we can do for ourselves in this environment.
Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, disease and geo-politics have put Singapore in particularly daunting circumstances. But we shall not be daunted. Mr Lee Kuan Yew, speaking at the 1966 National Day Rally, said \"Never be depressed, never be deflated by setbacks. We face facts. This is one of the greatest strengths about Singapore: its willingness to face reality… not because we wished it to be but because it was. This capacity to face up to situations, however intractable, however unpleasant, is one of the great qualities for survival. A people able to look facts squarely in the face, able to calculate the odds, to weigh the chances and then to decide to go for it, are a people not likely to go under.\"
Mr Deputy Speaker, we are that people. We can and we will overcome. I support the Budget.
Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Walter Theseira.
Assoc Prof Walter Theseira (Nominated Member): Mr Deputy Speaker, while Singapore has managed the COVID-19 pandemic with courage and strength, we must acknowledge our shortcomings as well. Even as we Singaporeans slowly return to work, we must be mindful that many of our migrant worker friends cannot. They remain restricted to their dormitories to help protect our community from infection risks. Initial shortcomings aside, we are now sparing no effort to make things right. The Government has committed to improve living conditions for migrant workers.
But this only addresses the public health aspects of our migrant worker population. There are more fundamental questions about the structure of our economy and our reliance on foreign labour that must be explored if we are to emerge stronger from this pandemic. Old assumptions about these matters have never been properly examined.
In 1970, there were about 21,000 foreign workers in Singapore making up just above 3% of the labour force. By 2019, the number was closer to 1.42 million, which is about 38% of our labour force.
What are the reasons behind this vast increase in foreign labour and what have been the effects on our economy?
Let me first put migration in perspective. The facts are that successful cities throughout history have grown rapidly through migration and not because of the fertility of the existing population. If we had remained part of Malaysia, we would have grown through domestic migration from the hinterland. The major Chinese cities have grown through domestic migration, as has Jakarta, Tokyo, London, New York. Because we have no hinterland, every migrant is, by definition, foreign. But like those global cities, we attract migrants because we offer the opportunity to build a better life.
Nonetheless, migration is still a policy choice, even within a country. The Chinese cities impose the Hukou system, which differentiates between urban residents and rural migrants. Malaysians cannot freely migrate between Peninsular and East Malaysia. So, the question of whether to slow or stop migration is relevant even when migrants carry the same passport.
So, when can we justify growing the labour force through migration? In some sense, the answer is trivial. We permit migration to grow our economy faster than our purely local labour force can. This gives us a bigger pie so that everyone – migrants and locals alike – can meet their needs and aspirations better. But even if overall growth is positive, migration creates winners and losers. We have an obligation to the public to understand how labour migration affects Singaporean jobs and to discuss the consequences of migration on our economy – positive and negative.
Consider the sector at the heart of our COVID-19 outbreak. There are nearly 300,000 work permit holders in construction. Including other work passes, foreign labour accounts for nearly four out of every five workers in construction. Some argue that reliance on low cost work permit holders has made our construction industry less skill intensive than other developed countries. There is some evidence for that, but that is not the whole story. Within the 20% of construction workforce who are locals, more than half are actually PMETs – our project and engineering managers. In comparison, in the United States, one in four of their construction workforce are PMETs.
So, because less skilled positions are filled by migrant workers, the Singaporean workforce can actually be more skill intensive compared to their counterparts elsewhere. There are also benefits to Singaporeans in manual construction work as they supervise migrant workers. Median wages for Singaporean supervisors and foremen are close to $3,000 a month – much higher than similarly skilled workers in some other sectors. Migrant workers may well complement our Singaporean core in construction.
However, we must also consider cases where migrant labour may have mixed effects on Singaporean workers. In food and beverage (F&B) services, and cleaning and landscape maintenance, the share of foreign labour is also high. At the broad sectoral level, about half of the workers are foreign. But the wages and conditions of work for locals are not as good as in construction. Median wages for cleaners, F&B assistants and maintenance workers are below $1,500 a month and employment benefits and conditions of work can be poor.
We should ask whether this is because migrant labour in these sectors often fill the same types of jobs that locals do, including supervisor positions. It is the degree of substitutability that matters and migrant labour in many service sectors could potentially replace local labour, which would then pressure wages and benefits downwards.
Taking a step back, the next question is how our migrant labour policy affects our economic structure, productivity and growth.
The economist Alwyn Young famously argued in 1992 that Singapore's rapid growth was driven by the accumulation of labour and capital rather than by total factor productivity growth. Singaporean economists Linda Lim and Pang Eng Fong, in an article published on academia.sg on 2 June, noted that concerns on the impact of foreign labour date back to the 1970s. They hold the view that \"an over-reliance on cheap foreign labour...distorts factor prices and resource allocation, resulting in economic inefficiency and inequality, without enabling higher growth.\"
These are, as you can see, very old questions. Yet, we seem to have made little progress in understanding the role of foreign labour in Singapore's economy since then. There are relatively few rigorous pieces of research on the Singapore economy and labour market, despite the high quality of our economists. This is partially because microeconomic data on the Singapore labour market is rarely available to researchers.
It does not need to be this way. In 2013, the World Bank released a report on immigration in Malaysia. The Malaysian government commissioned the report and provided detailed labour market data. The World Bank found that migrant labour improved employment and wages for medium to high-skilled Malaysians. However, there were also negative effects for the lowest skilled Malaysians. What would we find in Singapore if we were to conduct such a study?
Sir, the Government has likely conducted many such high quality studies on migrant labour and the Singapore economy over the years. But the quality of the public discourse is harmed when such research is not put into the public eye, is not taught or conducted by our Universities and is not debated by the public. This is an issue that goes beyond politics. It is part of the democratic discourse that we need to progress as a nation.
A great society is able to confront the unpleasant realities beneath the surface and resolve to make painful but necessary changes for collective progress. Our present economic structure and migrant labour system has created entrenched interests who would be harmed by and will resist any attempts at reform. I speak not just of the obvious interests among business owners who rely on migrant workers but also of each one of us as ordinary Singaporeans who benefit from the system regardless whether we directly employ a migrant worker. The high quality of life that we take for granted is built in part on the ceaseless toil of a vast trickle-up economy of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, Malaysian day workers and even our own Singaporean low-wage workers. We must examine the hidden costs to social stability when we expect to have a first-world standard of living, delivered at third-world prices.
Despite what we consider to be low wages and difficult working conditions, many migrant workers want to work in Singapore. They build a pathway to the middle class or better back home with their earnings. Our own low-wage workers do and must continue to get substantial Government support. But while we do not bear the moral stain of forced labour, we have fallen short of providing dignified work conditions for all. Our collective indifference to the struggles of low-wage workers in Singapore, whatever their nationality, has hurt our ability to cope with this crisis and it will continue to harm our ability to build a compassionate and resilient society. If we fail to build the capacity to question, understand and reform our system, if necessary, to provide better treatment and living wages for low-wage workers, we will each bear the complicity of the bystander.
We will face the question in the coming months of how to restructure our economy and society for a more sustainable and resilient future. The unceasing efforts of the Government, healthcare system and volunteers have forestalled what could have been a humanitarian disaster in our migrant worker dormitories due to the COVID-19 outbreak. We have also committed vast sums from the reserves to preserve as many Singaporean jobs as possible and to help provide for those whose jobs cannot be saved. But we must resist the temptation to use the reserves simply to preserve the economic model of the past in the hopes that we can return to it once the COVID-19 outbreak subsides.
Is the right economic model for our future that which has driven us over the past decades, one where we aim as far as possible to have Singaporeans take up PMET jobs and migrant workers the rest? I think there are some real difficulties with that approach. It is akin to running an army with only sergeants and officers. If we recognise that all work, especially socially essential work, has value, then we need to agree there is no shame in having Singaporeans take up manual and service jobs. The only shame is if we who have power and influence fail to ensure that the conditions of work and wages in these service jobs are such that Singaporeans find no dignity in taking them up.
More generally, we should realise now that it is neither safe nor resilient to decouple essential service jobs that must physically take place in Singapore from residency in Singapore. The on-going closure of the Malaysian border, which has forced our Malaysian day workers to choose between their families and their jobs, has dealt a blow mitigated only by the temporary hibernation of our economy during the circuit breaker.
This is not a problem unique to Singapore. The unseen engine behind global cities worldwide is a vast army of essential workers who are frequently paid too little to live next to those they provide services to. Singapore has been able to cope in part because migrant workers and Malaysian day workers are willing to do these jobs at wages which are nearly unliveable in Singapore. But it is not sustainable to depend on continuing low wages in migrant worker source countries to excuse us from finding a solution.
If anything, we should recognise that essential services and manual jobs, by their physical presence requirements, offer some resilience against a world where office work can be shifted globally. Working from home has weakened the physical link between doing business in Singapore and having that business actually be done by a Singaporean here. Rather than develop an economy where most Singaporeans, despite their different skills and talents, feel compelled to earn degrees to hold down PMET jobs, we can build an economy that also includes many skilled and decently paid craftsmen, technicians and service workers.
Sir, I am heartened that this Government appreciates many of the challenges I have discussed, although I do not presume that it agrees with all of my views. Unlike many countries worldwide, economic restructuring and transformation is an integral part of our public spending to deal with COVID-19. But we would be shortsighted to assume that our own entrenched interests, our implicit assumptions, our comfort with the existing economic structure play no role in affecting the quality of our judgments about the path ahead.
I therefore suggest that we broaden representation on the councils that we have set up – the Emerging Stronger Task Force and the National Jobs Council – beyond just the captains of industry and state. We should consider having members from the rank and file, the essential services, social services, civil society and academia.
And we must engage the public in this great exercise of economic restructuring – not as a public consultation exercise, but as equal partners in the creation of a new Singapore. Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I support the Government's Fortitude Budget.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Er Dr Lee Bee Wah.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, first of all, I would like to record my appreciation to our Minister for Finance and his team, who have worked tirelessly to produce our four Budgets in less than four months. With COVID-19, nobody really knows when things will start to brighten up. But we can take heart that our Government is determined to make things right. Businesses and individuals must make the best use of resources provided by our Government and put our best foot forward.
It is heartwarming to hear about the businesses who returned the benefits from the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) to the Government. Then, there are others, some food and beverage businesses, who are cooking and distributing food to the needy. And those who helped free up commercial resources for mass production of surgical masks or pooling together resources to sew reusable masks. Many of my residents and supporters donated masks, face shields, sanitisers and vitamins, and some of them even donated their $600 which they received from the Government.
This is truly a display of our nation's fortitude. But in the meantime, some challenges remain which require attention.
First, more help for home-grown large companies with a localised workforce which have ventured abroad.
The focus of our four Budgets is to preserve lives and livelihoods, saving and creating jobs. It benefits almost all our SMEs. How about our bigger home-grown companies whose sales turnover are more than $100 million, like Charles & Keith, Osim, Breadtalk and many others? Do we give them sufficient support? They hire many Singaporeans; they venture and expand overseas.
Now that the global economy is doing poorly, they are also struggling to keep above water. Will they be given rental rebates too for their shops in Singapore? It takes decades for some of these made-in-Singapore brands to achieve the regional and global recognition. Does the Government have a strategy to reach out to them to see what help these local companies require? I am glad that Temasek came in to help SIA so that we do not lose our national carrier.
Next, I would like to talk about the construction sector. Before I proceed further, I would like to declare my interest as a professional engineer (PE) and my involvement in property development and construction.
At first, when the Government announced that the construction sector can start work in Phase One, all the contractors were very happy. All those businesses who can start business in Phase One, they were very happy. But their happiness turned to frustration soon when they found out about the number of approvals required before they can start work. And I have received many complaints from them. They were very confused and unhappy. Why? They are faced with many challenges and let me share with the House.
First, more stringent dormitory requirements from MOM, which is expected because of the recent COVID-19 spread in the dormitories. But suddenly, MOM said no double decker beds – each one must have at least 6 m2 instead of 4.5 m2 and so on. So, all the current dormitories do not comply. So, if you do not have dormitories that comply, no approval for safe dormitories, cannot start work. So, how to comply to new requirements within a short period? Normally, such requirements, the process of approval from various Government agencies will take at least three months.
Medical experts have been saying that as long as people live together, they are likely to infect each other since COVID-19 is very contagious. So, is the 6 m2 requirement much safer than the current provision? Of course, contractors are not convinced.
For those who are currently stay in factory-converted dormitories (FCD) or in the construction temporary quarters (CTQ) where all their workers are healthy, can we let them maintain the status quo for now, quickly arrange swab tests for the workers so that they can start work without shifting them and without further delay?
Now, every contractor is scratching their head – how to meet the new MOM requirements? Where to house their workers? Can MOM be more flexible on the existing CTQ and FCD? Otherwise, how to start work?
The next challenge is the compulsory swab tests. What is our swabbing capacity? Why such long queue? Why those S Pass holders who are not living in dormitory are unable to register for swab tests? Those who are housed in their own factory dormitory, well taken care of for the last two months, just because they are not swab tested, they cannot start work. A contractor said: 等来等去, swab 来, swab 去, 天都亮了。 This compulsory swab test exercise can easily stretch until August or September. So, how to start work?
The next challenge – compulsory safe management officer (SMO), safe distancing officer (SDO). For contractors to start work, they must have SMO, SDO. There is long queue too for training of SMO and SDO. I checked two days ago. The next available session is 5 July. And this is an online course. Why this is not conducted during circuit breaker? Can we have more sessions so that this does not become a bottleneck? So, no SMO, no SDO, no start work.
An uproar came last Sunday, 24 May. Suddenly, I received many text messages and phone calls. Why? Contractors have to give consent to MOM to deploy their workers who have recovered from COVID-19. Otherwise, they will not get the levy waiver. And the consent must be given by 10 June. Is this not very high-handed? Why does not MOM just return the workers to the rightful employers? Why force people to give up their workers?
For some sub-contractors, they said they only have two or three charge hands, that means, important staff. And they say if MOM were to take them away, they cannot function when their works can restart. For those who are forced to take in workers, also not happy. They said it is very difficult to use other people's workers to work in your team. Perhaps, it works only for housekeeping or general works. So, why not leave it to them to handle their own workers?
This pandemic further illustrates the need to have multi-agencies working together and not in silos. BCA, MOM, MOH and FAST Team all are working very hard but they need to work together, and also get industry input and not force their way through. There needs to be more communication so that the intent is well understood.
Many contractors I spoke to say let those workers who are healthy and swab tested, start work first. No need to follow BCA tiers. Currently, for all the projects, BCA has given them tiers – tier A, tier B, tier C, tier D. And the contractors do not know their project is in which tier. So, what they want is let more projects start but gradually. For those who do not have enough workers to start, contractors will know how to work out among themselves.
With all these challenges, many will not be able to start work for at least another three months, perhaps September. And the income will only come in another two to three months later, maybe end of the year. Meanwhile, operating costs are running every day! Operating costs are going up due to more stringent requirements while productivity is going down. I am afraid many firms will go bust. As one contractor puts it: all these administrative roadblocks are turning Phase One restart into an extended circuit breaker for the construction industry.
I wish to appeal for more support for the construction industry.
Thanks to the Government for the JSS. But contractors have many other bills to pay, such as machineries rental, dormitory, loans and so on. They have been having zero income since April. Definitely, they need more help. May I appeal to the Deputy Prime Minister for his understanding?
I would like to propose the following additional help.
First, can the Government absorb the swab testing cost beyond August? Because currently, the swab test is free only up to August. But after August, every worker needs to be sent for a swab test every 14 days and they did not price in all these costs. Or perhaps by then, we can remove the swab test.
Second, can the Government extend 100% workers levy waiver and $750 rebates till August since most of them will not be able to work until September or later? Currently, they are given 100% waiver for June only. From July, it is 50%. So, can we give them full rebate until August?
Third, the industry feedback is that it seems like there is not much help given by JTC. Can the Government extend the 30% property tax rebate to all industrial buildings as most of the contractors occupy industrial buildings and waive the land rental till August?
Fourth, another group of people serving the construction industry – that is, consultants, engineers and architects – will they be given similar support like what we have given to contractors, especially the JSS, because they are very worried about the staff cost? Will resident engineers and resident technical officers be similarly supported? Because in the industry, they are very confused – they are not sure.
Enough said about the construction industry. My next topic in this speech is the opening of sports facilities.
I have always been a huge advocate of active living. With this pandemic, sport has taken a huge hit. A resident, Josephine, told me that she had vertigo 20 years ago and it went away because of sport. With the circuit breaker, her vertigo came back with a vengeance.
I urge the Government to consider allowing the commencement of non-contact sports during Phase One. A study was done by the Italian Ministry of Sport and Italian Olympic Committee to evaluate the risk of contracting COVID-19 for various sports. It was a long report. I think it is 400 pages. The risk was found to be non-existent or weak for individual non-contact sports like athletics, that means running, sailing, open water swimming, golf and tennis. In fact, many other countries allowed some sports in their first phase of restart with some safety measures. For example, Malaysia allows two golfers per flight, but cannot share buggy. Swimmers are back in the pools in Australia, the Netherlands, Japan, China and so on with safe distancing measures, such as one swimmer per lane and some started without the opening of changing rooms.
Can we not open up our stadiums with SafeEntry, crowd size control, designated lane usage and so on? I am sure it can be much safer than some of the park connectors which are so congested.
In fact, many associations such as Singapore Swimming Association, many clubs already have thought about this. They would like more guidance and to resume their activities. Will the Government work with SportsSG to determine the sports suitable to make a return for Phase One with relevant safety guidelines? And I hope whatever measures that we want to put in place, the training can commence now. Otherwise, it may lead to bottlenecks like what happened to the construction industry. So many people feel so stressed when they cannot do their favourite sports. Also, there are many freelance coaches who can no longer survive without income. Sir, in Chinese, please.
(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.]: Some residents told me that this Fortitude Budget gave more support to businesses, but less to families. The increased utilities expenses due to telecommuting may have exceeded the $100 subsidy. They hope that people living in 3-room flats can also receive grocery vouchers, if their per capita income is relatively low.
The outbreak has also quickened the pace of digitalisation. This is encouraging. However, many people are worried that the vulnerable groups may not be able to keep up with this pace. I hope the Government can continue to pay attention to those who cannot afford a computer or data connection, and make sure that those students whose family environment is not conducive for home-based learning are not lagging further behind.
In addition, while we introduce e-payment in the neighbourhood, the seniors should not feel that they cannot adapt. When we introduce these measures, we should give those who are not used to using smart phones sufficient training and time to adjust, including stallholders at coffee shops and hawkers at hawker centres.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Er Dr Lee, you have 30 seconds to wrap up your speech.
Er Dr Lee Bee Wah: Yes, I am going to conclude. We may have to live with COVID-19 for a long time. We must support everyone in our society to adapt to this new normal. So, we must help local businesses and contractors stay afloat. Our businesses first and foremost want to get back to work, to stand on their own two feet. Therefore, they hope the Government can be flexible in its requirements and listen more to their feedback. We must also look after the physical and mental well-being of our people.
Singapore has pulled through many crises in the past. Each time, we have not just survived, but emerged stronger. This time let us again pull together and help every Singaporean get through this. We are SGUnited. I support the Budget.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Christopher de Souza, please.
Mr Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah): Sir, fortitude is about courage in adversity. Just as gold is refined in fire so also do the testing and hardships of life build character. Today we are debating the Fortitude Budget – a Budget to strengthen Singapore as we forge ahead.
In a recent survey conducted by OCBC on over 1,000 Singaporean and Permanent Resident working adults at about 1.5 months into the circuit breaker, about 55% reported experiencing some form of wage cut, reduction in commissioning earnings, wage freezing and being forced to convert to a part-time role, contractual instead of permanent role, or to take no-pay leave. Almost half were worried about being retrenched or terminated within the next six months.
In light of the heightened concern on being retrenched or terminated, it is important that our workers have sufficient protection from disguised retrenchments, which would not only remove any retrenchment benefit that a worker may be entitled to and would desperately need in today’s job climate, but would also obscure our ability to monitor the situation on retrenchments.
Even though the “Advisory on retrenchment benefits payable to retrenched employees as a result of business difficulties due to COVID-19” issued on 20 May 2020 specify that “an employer who terminates an employment contract with no plan to fill the vacancy any time soon is presumed to have retrenched the employee,” it is unclear whether it goes far enough to protect employees from disguised retrenchments.
How soon is “some time soon” and how will employees who have been terminated know whether or not there are any plans to fill the vacancy any time soon? As employees need to bring a claim of wrongful dismissal to the Tripartite Alliance of Dispute Management within one month of being terminated, the uncertainty and practical difficulties of this guideline could have a real impact on the employee’s ability to potentially seek redress.
The current 100,000 places in SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package may or, in fact, is likely less than the estimated number of retrenchments as well if you combine them that job entrants such as fresh graduates entering the workforce. Here I would like to make the point that with the accelerated digitalisation of the world, the skill gap needed to be overcome by job seekers has, in some instances, also increased tremendously. If not, the gap dividing the people who have the ability to understand the digital world and the equipment and those who do not, that gap will exponentially widen. Is the current training support sufficient, especially for those who require extensive reskilling of workers after their jobs may become obsolete in the post COVID world, especially where digitalisation is concerned?
While there is only so much that can be done to create jobs, would the Government consider promoting mentorship programmes as well, where the focus is on professional development and exposure, though may not necessarily be salaried or fully salaried. Being able to work on ad hoc projects, for instance, to be provided guidance from an industry professional on what courses are industry relevant, as well as being introduced to a network of other professionals may also be invaluable for job seekers even if they are unable to find a permanent job at the moment.
COVID-19 has accelerated digitalisation, making digital literacy something necessary; no longer merely supplementary. The global mass working from home exercise has caused employers to rethink the need for employees to be physically present in the workplace, with some companies like Facebook even thinking of hiring remote staff who would permanently telecommute. What I am getting at is that COVID-19 has changed the labour market, the need for such large commercial rental space and also skillsets. The strong uptake of digitalisation and support for telecommuting will provide opportunities job seekers in previous generations would find hard to imagine.
For instance, while it may be that job seekers will face global competition, the converse is also true – job seekers have opportunities from all around the world, able to live in Singapore but able to work for an overseas employer. Riding this wave of digitalisation is therefore key to ensuring our Singaporeans are equipped and ready for borderless job opportunities.
For others, the greater support for working from home, that is, flexible work arrangements, may mean greater opportunities for mothers seeking to re-enter the workforce.
We can convert adversity into strength, supporting workers and businesses in digitalisation. Companies who can implement work from home arrangements well, will in turn be able to reduce the commercial floor space they need, reducing rental fees and overhead charges. This would free up costs in the long run to invest in the development of personnel, it will also allow more money to be deployed into planning for the future instead of paying large amounts of commercial rent; it will allow effective utilisation of technology; it will create a future for the company through virtual communication.
How companies cope and adapt to the COVID-19 virus is important to the Fortitude Budget.
And at this point, I like to record my thanks to the Deputy Prime Minister and his MOF team for putting out a fourth Budget in record time.
Indeed, the Job Support Scheme focuses on the ability to captalise on our reserves to support employers at this time. The Fortitude Budget extends the Job Support Scheme to those businesses that are still unable to reopen.
It is good that the sectors of aviation and aerospace, tourism, hospitality, conventions and exhibitions and the built environment will receive 1st tier support for June to August 2020. Even for essential projects that have been allowed to reopen, many have not been able to. Indeed, many will not be able to hit the ground running at pre-circuit breaker levels even if they can reopen in Phase One. Besides getting workers swabbed, having dormitories cleared, those in some industries may need to seek workers from other companies due to border restrictions and manpower supply shortages. Those with many workers who are still in Malaysia will have to plan their teams without the level of manpower that they once had. Even for those who have been able to work from home, their clients or customers may not have sufficient cash flow to pay them for the services rendered during the circuit breaker period owing to the whole demand-supply shock and disruption. So, bills go unpaid.
Due to how the circuit breaker pushed the pause button on most of our businesses and firms as well as how integrated our whole economy is even on a domestic level, would the Deputy Prime Minister and the relevant ministries consider increasing the Jobs Support Scheme to 75% for all firms and businesses up to and including August 2020?
Sir, onto another topic – specifically onto home renovation works, I would like to raise a suggestion. As a result of the circuit breaker, home renovation works had to be halted. Some families had to rent another place for accommodation for an extended period of time and now need to rethink whether they need to extend their tenancies and pay additional rent because their home is still in the middle of a renovation that has been halted. Other families have or are still roughing it out in their half-completed homes. The home renovation sector is part of the built environment sector that requires specific approval to resume works.
On 3 June 2020, BCA and the relevant agencies and Ministries clarified some of the delays, simplified the process to obtain approval, and estimated a shorter period for approval if the application is in order. There are still difficulties that some home renovation contractors face. I understand that testing of workers is essential. Given the homes are half-renovated and much disamenity is caused to the families, would there be priority given to test these workers so that the renovation can then be completed. This will seriously assist the family waiting for their renovation to be completed in their actual home, the contractor as well as the sub-contractors.
Sir, the COVID-19 pandemic does not merely impact businesses or individuals but also has a knock-on effect on society. Something important that arises out of the COVID-19 pandemic and our response to it, is ensuring social inclusion in a society of increased digitalisation.
In my constituency, we have procured laptops for students for lower income families to support their studies during the period of home-based learning, but on a national scale this is also very important. It is good that there will be Digital Ambassadors who will help introduce stallholders and the elderly to the online world. They play an important role. In an age of digitalisation and digital gadgets, we should be cautious about the exponentially wide gap this will create between children whose parents can afford the digital equipment and the children whose parents may not be able to afford. It is something that needs to be watched out for and bridged, where possible, ensuring that individuals and families can have access to wifi and certain core digital equipment that may be deemed essential in this day and age.
I look forward to hearing the details on how this will be addressed nationally. In the meantime, we will continue to carry out the local laptop, wifi and free Zoom tuition programmes in Ulu Pandan, the constituency I serve and I am responsible for.
Sir, even as the central focus of the Budget is on jobs, behind jobs there are workers, there are businesses and there is the society to which we all belong. In concluding, Sir, I wish to lean on the wise words of an Ulu Pandan Pioneer Generation resident whom I briefly met at a mask collection point over the last weekend. He shared with me a formula to overcome this crisis. He said, and I quote:
\"We must have the right stamina
We must have the right attitude
For we are all sons of the soil.\"
Indeed, he is right. We are all in this together – facing this crisis. With the right stamina, with the right attitude and with the right unity, we will prevail. And that, to me, Sir, is fortitude.
Mr Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap (Aljunied): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I will deliver my speech in Malay.
(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.]: This is the fourth budget tabled in this House in the span of a few months. I have submitted several proposals and expressed concern in my speech for the previous Budget debate and I will state a few more suggestions and would also like to seek some clarification in my speech this time.
Firstly, I would like to touch on the rental fees for rental flats under the HDB Public Rental Scheme. I would like to know whether there is an increase in the number of flat tenants who failed to pay their rental payments in the past few months.
Sir, one of the long-term objectives of HDB's provision of rental flats under the Public Rental Scheme is to provide short-term residence for individuals or families while they are trying to build and strengthen their finances, so that one day, they will buy and own permanent housing that belongs to them.
A large number of tenants under this scheme are Singaporeans with low household income. In recent months, I have been contacted by some of my residents who are asking for exemption in their rental fees during these challenging times. I would like to ask the government to consider this request. Any support in this matter can further ease the burden of Singaporeans living in rental flats under the HDB Public Rental Scheme. Such assistance will help them to maintain a financial position, which is already weak to begin with, from becoming fragile. This is especially for those who are striving to strengthen their financial position in order to get their permanent dream home.
The second issue is also related to the provision of support for low-income Singaporeans. Currently, our country is undertaking government-led efforts to spur our society towards digitalisation to achieve the goal of a \"Smart Nation\". I am confident that we want every Singaporean regardless of their socio-economic background to move together and not be left behind in this digitalisation effort.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance for every home to have an internet connection to enable learning and to work from home. I believe many members of this Chamber have met low-income residents who sought help to appeal on their behalf about their outstanding internet subscription bills.
In our country's preparation and effort to achieve the \"Smart Nation\" goal, I would like the government to consider my suggestion to introduce a rebate scheme to help in the payment of internet subscription fees to support Singaporeans with low household incomes so that they can continue to have a more stable and uninterrupted internet connection.
At this time, I think it is not wrong to say that internet connectivity is a basic need.
Presently, there is a government rebate scheme to help ease the cost of basic necessities such as the utilities rebate, and the services and conservancy charges (S&CC) rebate. My proposal is to incorporate the internet subscription fee into the existing list of rebates.
Sir, my recommendations to provide support to Singaporeans who belong to the low household income group by providing exemptions to flat rental fees and rebates for Internet subscription fees, are appropriate and in line with the objectives of our four national budgets, that is, to instill a sense of unity and resilience, so that we can overcome the challenges that arise from this pandemic with solidarity and fortitude. I sincerely hope that both of my proposals will be given the best consideration.
The next matter is the COVID-19 swab test. It has been reported that all teachers and staff of pre-school centres and kindergartens have to undergo the COVID-19 swab test. As explained by the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) through media reports, this is a precautionary measure in preparation for the reopening of kindergartens and pre-school centres.
I would like to find out why the COVID-19 swab test is not conducted on teachers and staff of Primary and Secondary Schools, as well as Junior Colleges and Centralised Institutes.
Sir, finally, I would like to seek clarification on the process of obtaining consent from the President for the use of the national reserves (past reserves). To date, three out of four budgets require the use of national reserves.
For the use of reserves, the process to go through is that the government needs to provide a detailed explanation that is supported by information and facts to the President. The President will consult and consider with assistance and advice from the Council of Presidential Advisers (CPA) whether to approve the government's request or otherwise.
The Elected President scheme was introduced in 1991. One of the main objectives of the scheme was for the elected President, who received the the people’s mandate through the electoral process, to be given the role or responsibility as the co-protector or the second key to the national reserves. In short, the elected President has the power to say \"yes\" or \"no\" if the Government wants to use the national reserves.
I would like to seek clarification on whether during the process of obtaining the consent to use the national reserves – was President Madam Halimah Yacob given information on the balance or amount that we have in the national reserves? Such critical information is very crucial for the President make an evaluation in order to reach a decision.
Sir, in general, it is a practice or a must in any entity, whether a Government entity, for example a Ministry and a Statutory Board, or a private entity, that critical information about the balance of an account or a fund will be disclosed to any party or a decision-making body about the evaluation process, so as to make an informed decision, whether or not to allow an expenditure or the use of funds.
I hope Deputy Prime Minister Heng can explain whether the President has been given information about the amount available in the national reserves, when the Government presented the information and facts to support its request to obtain the President's consent, to use the national reserves for the three budgets, Solidarity, Resilience and Fortitude.
Sir, I conclude my speech by expressing my support for this Budget. Thank you, Sir.
Mr Alex Yam (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Mr Deputy Speaker, in 1978, the number one song on the \"US Billboard Hot 100 pop chart\" was a comeback duet by Johnny Matthis and Deniece Williams. Many of you may remember the title of the song as being \"Too Much, Too Little, Too Late\". It spent 18 weeks on the charts. Incidentally, this past Tuesday marked 18 weeks since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Singapore on 23 January 2020.
For a song, 18 weeks is a good run on the billboard. For us in Singapore, these have been 18 very long and extraordinary weeks. Here in Parliament, we have also witnessed unprecedented times. Since the first Unity Budget 15 weeks ago, we are now into our fourth Budget, almost one Budget per month and almost $100 billion committed to save lives and to save livelihoods.
But there have been varied reactions to our commitment, much like the title of the song. A small number say: \"Too much for them, too little for me, too late for us.\"
One example is the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS). Some say that \"you have given too much to MNCs, they are profitable at the end of the day, give less to them, because there’s too little for me. And even if you do, it may be too late for us.\"
Is it really true? That more for them means less for us and therefore, less for them means more for us? To me, it is a misinterpretation of the intent. It is not \"for them\", the MNCs, but for \"us\", the jobs that they provide. We are preserving the jobs, the jobs that could easily go somewhere else at a moment's notice.
This is an investment, an investment for jobs, for jobs to remain here.
Yes, some of the MNCs have already decided that they do not need the JSS. They have returned it, they have donated it. But the MNCs know that here in Singapore, we care for our workers, we care enough to pay a significant part of their salary, so that in the future, the company, the MNCs remain and thus, the jobs also remain.
We are not in a dichotomy of one or the other, all livelihoods that we can preserve, secure, retain are worth the investment in. And we cannot wait until it is too late to do so.
On the other hand, for the COVID-19 Support Grant (CSG) or SIRS for self-employed people, these are unprecedented as well. A serious commitment of this Government to Singaporeans.
There are others, who are worried. Worried about our health, also about money, worried about how we are using our reserves. Some say that this is too much, too generous. Others say it is too little left for the future or too late to reverse the positions that have already been made. Yet, there are also others who say that there is too much in the reserves. There is too little that is being spent on us and it is too late to make a difference. Is it really too much? Or too little? Or are we too late?
But, it can never be too much to do whatever we can to save lives, to save jobs. We cannot, in the biggest existential crisis that we are facing since the withdrawal of the British in 1967, to do too little too late. What we can be assured of, and I have had a few video conferences with fellow legislators, friends from overseas, that even if we are accused of spending too much, we are not borrowing it, we are not spending money that is not ours. This is money that we have saved over the years.
So, that the decision on maintaining our reserves has been the right one. We can be comforted that it was not wrong. Even if some believe that we have too much reserves, it is not wrong too, to use whatever we have to save lives and save jobs, to not use too little during this crisis and that we did not wait till it was too late for us to do so. It is also not wrong to ensure that the keys to our reserves ensure that we use it prudently, wisely, rightly.
In the same song, the lyrics in the rift say, \"Somewhere we lost the key, So little left for you and me and it's clear to see.\"
We have a responsible Government and we have a second key – in the hand of our elected President. In taking prudent decisions, we are able to save wisely, spend prudently and put it to the best use possible.
There are still others who talk about other issues that have arisen during COVID-19. For example, migrant workers have been a hot topic for a number of weeks. Some say that too much is being done for migrant workers, too little for the rest of us, too late in reacting to the high numbers. Still more also say: too much talk over the years, too little done in the past, too late to try again. Even more may exclaim: too much reliance on foreign workers, too little investment in our local workforce, too late now for Singapore. Is it really too much, too little or too late?
We can all admit that we can do much more to improve living conditions but we are certainly not housing our migrant workers in slums. We can all admit that we must not pay too little attention to building up local capability, especially in construction in our built sector, but there are certainly sacrifices that we must all make. And it is certainly never too late.
But there is one point worth clarifying on the accusation of being too late, that we did too much in tracing and testing, resulting in too much an increase in numbers; that we did too little, resulting in high daily numbers for our migrant workers; that it was too late, resulting in the explosion of numbers.
I am not medically trained, but I believe that the transparency of our system in identifying every risk – isolating and putting the workers in quarantine – is far better than classifying some while ignoring others, just so that our numbers may look better.
Some expound conspiracy theories, saying that it is a mess in the facilities, that is why there are so many cases.
Again, I am not a medical professional, but I believe cases do not just burn themselves out. It is not just a medical 21 days of being in isolation and, therefore, there are no other cases.
We just need to ask ourselves. At home, let us say, you have a family of five people. One of you gets the common cold. You get home. It does not mean that all four other family members get the common cold instantly. Perhaps, not all will get it even. Maybe your wife will get it the next day. Your kid? Maybe a few days later. And maybe your kid did not catch it from you but caught it from your wife, not you.
So, it is not as simple as saying 21 days have passed, something must be horrendously wrong and, therefore, we have so many cases.
But what we must know is that we must never be afraid that just because we do so many tests, resulting in too high a number, because, as I have mentioned earlier, it is far better for us to be transparent, cautious and safe than to regret later and say, really, it was too late. If not, we will really be accused of doing too little, too late.
In the spirit of the song, I do urge the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance to reassure the House and Singaporeans that we really have not spent too much. I believe that we can never do too much for our citizens during this crisis. Better too much than too little. But do we have enough? And as we project ahead, as the crisis continues – not just in Singapore but across the world – do we have enough?
I also ask that our agencies take the gentlest possible touch with citizens during these unprecedented times in listening to those who feel that because of their circumstances, they have too little and will need much more. We are all in the same choppy oceans now but, perhaps, we are all in different vessels. It is not just about having a great captain on every boat or lighthouse to provide comfort. We need all hands on deck. We need the coast guard, lighter boatmen, pilots, pilot boats to help the different vessels.
We have different needs and are in different situations. Many hon Members before me have raised examples like housing agents, car salesmen who have been facing difficulties over the years, F&B operators, casual workers, low-income families, persons with disabilities. We can never be too late. If not, even if we spend too much, it will truly be too little for some and too late for Singapore.
The chorus of the song goes, \"Too much, too little, too late to ever try again. Too much, too little, too late, we knew it had to end.\" It is a nice sentimental chorus for a song, but it will be a tragedy if we ever have to sing about this, about our Singapore.
So, let us not be afraid to do much more for our citizens. It is never too late to do more and we can never have too little heart as we work to save lives and livelihoods in Singapore.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Lim Biow Chuan.
Mr Lim Biow Chuan (Mountbatten): Sir, in the Ministerial Statement made by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance on 5 May, he explained that large parts of the last three Budgets were directed at protecting the livelihoods of our workers. The central focus of the Fortitude Budget is on jobs.
Sir, I support the focus of the Fortitude Budget, which sees a further commitment of $33 billion by the Government to support companies and residents affected by COVID-19. In particular, the extension of the Jobs Support Scheme to affected businesses would certainly help businesses adjust to the loss of revenue during this period.
I also support the $2.7 billion stimulus to strengthen employment and to create more jobs, traineeships and skills training. In the COVID-19 environment, many businesses face uncertainty about the future and many are scaling down their hiring as they worry about an impending recession. Many businesses ask, \"With a slowing economy, would my business be able to survive, much less employ new staff?\"
Thus, the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package would help to assure jobseekers, especially those entering the workforce after graduation, that there are still job opportunities and skills training or upgrading available to citizens who want a job.
It has been seven weeks since the Solidarity Budget was announced. Over the past two months, due to the circuit breaker measures, many businesses which are non-essential have to cease operations totally. Although the Solidarity Budget announced on 7 April 2020 had helped many businesses, the financial impact on many others who have not benefited from the budgetary provisions are felt deeply and keenly.
I wish to highlight one group, and this would be persons who are self-employed but not eligible for the Self-Employed Persons Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) due to the eligibility criteria. Some of them had missed out because their trade income had exceeded $100,000. Some had missed out because they reside in homes with an annual value of more than $21,000. Even if the homes are not owned by them but rented by them, or even if they are staying with their parents, they would not be eligible if the annual values of the home exceed $21,000.
Sir, I urge the Minister for Finance to reconsider the eligibility criteria. I received many messages from self-employed persons like housing agents, insurance agents, tuition teachers, instructors, contractors and people in the sales industry. They said that for the last two months, their income had fallen drastically because they were all required to stay at home and unable to carry out their business activities. For some of the housing agents, they said their income had been totally zero for the past two months, even though they tried to sell properties online. They dread that their income will remain zero for the third month because the Council of Estate Agents had informed them that they are still not allowed to bring their clients to the show flats.
Many of them accept that it is part of their duty as Singaporeans to stay at home and are willing to do their part to break the COVID-19 virus transmission. However, for a person who has a net trade income of, say, $120,000 per annum or an average of $10,000 per month, he would not be eligible for the income relief scheme. From earning an average of $10,000 per month, he now gets zero income for two or even three months. Hence, he would struggle to bear the entire expenses for his family.
I have received emails from my residents appealing for help. One said that she is a licensed estate agent divorced a few years ago. She has four children aged between 10 and 15 in her custody. She has a wheelchair-bound mother to look after. Another wrote to me stating that she needed to financially provide for her aged parents and their children. Her spouse had just been retrenched. And on top of all their daily living expenses, they still had to pay for their housing mortgage loans for the past two months.
The recent announcement that some of their businesses cannot resume even after 2 June has caused them more financial pain as they have to struggle for another one to two months.
Sir, as a general principle, taxpayers' monies should be used to help the lower-income or those in greater need, and I am not referring to the really higher income residents who have deeper pockets or have large savings. But I submit that the fact that some self-employed persons who had a higher income in the last year or that they lived in a home with a higher annual value of more than $21,000 does not mean that they have the ability to survive two to three more months without any income. It all depends on their savings and expenses. In a recent OCBC survey of Singaporeans' ability to save, 18% of working adults say that they do not have savings to last them one month, and 28% say that they do not have savings to last them beyond three months. That means that 46% cannot last three months.
Thus, if these self-employed persons had less savings or they had higher expenses, should they be left without any support from the Government? If they happen to stay with their parents in a better home, should they also be excluded from the Self-Employed Persons Income Relief Scheme?
If the intent of the Government is to protect the livelihood of the workers, then I submit that we must do more to help self-employed persons who are badly affected by the COVID-19 crisis. Even as we ask our citizens to make a sacrifice, the Government should also bear part of the sacrifice with them. The $1,000 per month for nine months is not a big sum of money, compared to what they have lost during this period.
This group of people are not asking for charity. They would be much happier carrying out their commercial activities, earning their income based on their skills and expertise. They do expect a drastic fall in their income due to the expected financial downturn even after the COVID-19 crisis. But what they are asking for is some form of financial support to tide them over to meet their basic expenses during this period because their businesses are forced to cease operations. I am of the view that this request is not unreasonable.
Sir, I urge the Government to extend the benefits of the Self-Employed Persons Income Relief Scheme to more self-employed persons. Consider raising the criteria of the trade income to $250,000 per annum and remove the criteria of the annual value of the homes.
In unprecedented times like this, the Government should try to assist as many people as possible. And for those who do not require any help from the Government, they can always be encouraged to return the grant or the subsidies back to the Government, which has already been done by many companies.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Minister Josephine Teo.
The Minister for Manpower (Mrs Josephine Teo): Mr Deputy Speaker, the overwhelming majority of Members of Parliament speaking today expressed concerns about jobs. Since the last quarter of 2019 before COVID-19 hit, I had described Singapore's job market as experiencing \"persistent showers with pockets of sunshine\". With the evolving COVID-19 situation, the weather has become even more uneven and unpredictable. Clearly, some sectors have experienced a downpour. Others are beginning to brighten up. However, unlike cyclical downturns, with COVID-19, there is much less visibility about the future. It is hard to tell if a bigger storm is brewing or how long it may last.
Bad weather is something my husband and I learnt to embrace. On our travels, we like to go hiking. When we were younger, we used to fret whenever the weather turned bad. Later, we learnt a saying that is popular among Scandinavians, that \"there is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.\"
Even with the best of plans, bad weather cannot always be avoided. Instead of being frustrated, we learnt to gear up and be ready to step out in any weather. It is not just to wander aimlessly, but to try and make our way to where there are clearer skies and to get back in the sun. It takes a lot of effort, but it is better than to be stuck with nowhere to go.
That is how I think we can deal with the situation today. Focus on getting ready for a possible storm, and put all our energies into gearing up.
Part of the gearing up is the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) and other support programmes under the Unity, Resilience, Solidarity and Fortitude Budgets. Each of these schemes is helping to cushion the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the labour market. They are providing much needed cover to businesses and workers, saving jobs and livelihoods. If we did not have this cover, we would already be drenched in soaring unemployment, as can be seen in some countries. We would be dealing with a very different problem today.
Instead, we now have a window of opportunity to get organised. This year, we expect the economy to shrink by between 4% and 7%. We must gear up for further job losses, although we do not know exactly how severe it will be. Uncertainty about the future will also moderate hiring.
Besides defending existing jobs, we must try to open up many more pathways to jobs. There is a Chinese idiom \"未雨绸缪\". It reminds us to plan ahead before the storm hits. This will be critical in the months ahead.
There will have to be a big push for many pathways to jobs: pathways for retrenched and mid-career persons from all sectors and all ages, middle-aged or older; pathways for fresh graduates from our ITEs, Polytechnics, Universities and other educational institutions; pathways for self-employed persons (SEPs) who want to remain SEPs or to move into regular employment.
We will need tight coordination to create multiple pathways for a whole range of workers. But where should these pathways lead?
Ideally, they should lead to a job. But in today’s context, it may not be an immediate job or even a permanent one at the start. It should, however, be a pathway that allows for people to use their time meaningfully, learn something useful and gain valuable experience. As much as possible, it should be a path to a better, brighter future.
We have a real stake in doing this well. Not only do we want to enable every Singaporean to remain meaningfully occupied, we want to help each citizen to preserve his or her human capital and to build on it. Collectively for Singapore, this means not allowing the downturn to erode our human capital but, instead, to enhance it so that we can emerge stronger as one. This is the challenge we should set for ourselves.
I need not tell Members how enormous this challenge is. The Government, as a whole, has declared our collective ambition – to generate close to 100,000 opportunities in jobs, traineeships or attachments and skills training through the SGUnited Jobs and Skills package.
To give Members a sense of scale, Workforce Singapore (WSG) and its partners like NTUC's e2i and MAS placed an average of 29,000 locals into jobs every year in the last three years – 29,000 as opposed to the 100,000 that we are aiming for between now and the end of the year. Each of these 29,000, on average, already involves painstaking work. In many cases, there are job and skills mismatches. In others, there are mismatches of wage expectations.
In today’s context, we must add another significant mismatch and it has to do with timing. Many jobseekers will be hungry for work and school leavers eager to start their careers. But employers will be hesitant and not ready to hire. After all, they may not themselves have enough visibility about the business. As a result, there will likely be many more jobseekers than jobs available. We must expect many roadblocks on previously well-established pathways to jobs.
As a millennial might put it, it is an epic challenge to create new pathways for 100,000 people under such circumstances. Recognising the enormity of the task, Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam has described the National Jobs Council (NJC) as a “national team” to rally and mobilise every possible partner to build up a pipeline of such opportunities, catering to multiple sectors and every skill level. The target of close to 100,000 opportunities is not insurmountable but the NJC will have to work very, very hard to create the pathways, involving multiple partners.
Notwithstanding the challenges, our top-most priority is still to promote jobs and making sure that jobseekers have access to them. The SGUnited Jobs initiative will be scaled up to provide more than 40,000 jobs in 2020.
Many of the permanent positions in the public sector are a result of hiring plans being brought forward. These include science and engineering roles in agencies like HTX and positions in early childhood education, healthcare and long-term care.
We will also ramp up capacity of career conversion programmes to help jobseekers reskill for new roles in the private sector, such as for Auxiliary Police Officers in the security sector. As businesses transform, workers may become redundant. We will work with employers to prepare them for redeployment rather than unemployment.
In this climate, I think we should be realistic but also opportunistic – in a good way. Employers may hold back job offers but we can encourage them to offer traineeship or attachment pathways, through meaningful funding support. These traineeships may not provide the same security as a job, but they will provide valuable industry-relevant experience and better position a jobseeker when the economy recovers.
For a start, we aim to open up about 25,000 traineeship pathways for recent graduates and mid-career jobseekers. We are heartened that more than 1,000 organisations, including many SMEs, have stepped forward to offer to host more than 11,000 traineeships. One example is familiar to us – Carousell, a homegrown tech scale-up – no longer a start-up but a scale-up. Carousell created a new trainee position for graduates to learn how the company strategises to grow its markets and build customer loyalty. The experience of working in a start-up culture or scale-up culture is certainly useful.
We are also very keen to open up attachment pathways for mid-career jobseekers. At the first NJC meeting yesterday, there was intense discussion about the potential for such experienced mid-career persons to help businesses transform, particularly SMEs. This will supplement the resources of hard-pressed SMEs to build up their capabilities. More pathways of this type could be win-win.
Another important pathway could be through the Continuing Education and Training (CET) Centres and Institutes of Higher Learning. While looking to land a job or attachment pathway, it is useful to acquire new skills through a structured programme. Such programmes can have a combination of classroom training and company involvement, such as industrial project work. The SGUnited Skills programme aims to create up to 30,000 of such pathways.
To help jobseekers find the most suitable pathway, we will expand our ground presence. We now have five career centres island-wide and partnerships with NTUC’s e2i, the Social Service Offices, CDCs, self-help groups, such as MENDAKI. To be closer to jobseekers, we aim to build up a presence in all HDB towns through satellite career centres.
But in any case, not every jobseeker needs to come through WSG's physical door. This is why we have significantly built up our digital presence and range of digital services on MyCareersFuture.sg. Even before the circuit breaker, we rolled out a series of thematic Virtual Career Fairs (VCFs) in sectors, such as ICT, Logistics & Transport, and Healthcare and Community Care. We will bring this to the SGUnited Traineeships as well.
Let me put this plainly. We will spare no effort to open up new pathways for jobseekers and guide them appropriately – as big a push as we can muster. But for matches to happen, I urge jobseekers to keep an open mind – stay open to pathways that you would not have considered previously. Give the employers a chance and give yourself a chance.
To extend our reach to more workers and employers, we have been working closely with our tripartite partners, with encouraging results. When air travel came to a standstill due to COVID-19, NTUC played an instrumental role in kick-starting job redesign projects. Close to 4,000 workers in the Air Transport sector will be reskilled for new roles, ready when our airhub opens in a much bigger way. NTUC's e2i has been working through the NTUC Job Security Council to push out short-term and long-term job opportunities for retrenched workers. The Singapore Business Federation signed up to be our main programme partner for the SGUnited Traineeships Programme.
We will reach out and partner more trade associations and chambers to open up pathways in their respective sectors. We value the networks that they have and we believe that by working closely with them, we will be able to reach more businesses and enable more pathways to open up for jobseekers. I want to also add that these partnerships can include SEP associations like those for sports coaches and media freelancers. We welcome all partners.
Mr Speaker, I said at the start that we should gear up for a storm. This may sound frightening and, indeed, we should not underestimate how rough the weather might become. But we are not going in without some cover. In fact, I think there are at least three reasons to be hopeful.
First, for well over a decade, we have invested heavily in our CET infrastructure and embarked on the SkillsFuture movement since 2015. We now have a very vibrant CET ecosystem that provides quality training to working adults, which we will continue to strengthen under the Next Bound of SkillsFuture. When I meet with my international counterparts, this very well-developed CET eco-system and the SkillsFuture movement are a great source of envy for them.
Second, even with low visibility, we are not navigating without compasses and searchlights. For several years now, we have developed Industry Transformation Maps and carefully positioned each sector for future growth. This is the work of the Future Economy Council, which Deputy Prime Minister Heng chairs, and it has been investing a tremendous amount of time and effort to ensure that the roadmap to the future is well outlined at the very least and we know what we need to do.
In Financial Services, for example, we know the new skills needed within the next three years for practically every job role there is – that level of detail – every job role. That makes for much more effective curation of training and attachment pathways.
Third, and perhaps most important of all, Singapore's unique brand of tripartism means that even in stormy waters, we can row as one, in unison towards the same destination. In Chinese, we would say: \"风雨同舟, 向前推进\". Few other countries have this extraordinary advantage. Working together, we can clear roadblocks, widen existing pathways and open up new pathways where none existed.
A big push for these pathways will inspire hope and confidence in our people and keep us moving forward.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not a particularly big fan of motivational quotes but this one by a certain Vivian Greene struck a chord. She says poetically, \"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain\".
COVID-19 is a powerful virus that has unleashed a storm worldwide. But for Singapore, it is igniting something quite remarkable – our unity, resilience, solidarity and fortitude. And along the way, if we also learn to dance in the rain, why not? Mr Deputy Speaker, I support the Budget.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Ms Tin Pei Ling.
Ms Tin Pei Ling (MacPherson): Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, this is my third speech on the Budget in this House this year.
Today, I will focus on three points. First, on the Budgets being a responsive one and finetuning for maximum impact. Second, our fiscal sustainability, reserves for next generation and shared responsibility in crisis. And third, that this is a good time now to transform.
On the first point, responsive Budgets, finetuning for maximum impact.
We are now midway through the year 2020. This pandemic has wreaked havoc in many ways around the world. Over 200 countries affected, more than six million infected and close to 400,000 deaths, so far. Economists described this as equivalent to the Great Depression in the 1930s. Even some of my older residents told me that they had not experienced such hardship in decades.
Therefore, I am grateful that our Government introduced four budgets to help our people cope with the hardship. Each successive Budget responded to the latest development and the latest emerging need. No other country has done so.
New schemes, such as the TRF, COVID-19 Support Grant and Solidarity payments were administered in record short time. This is untypical of governments. But it is clear that our Government wants to put cash into people's hands as soon as possible to reduce the pain.
Still, we see and feel the pain. Residents write to me to say how the rolling living and business expenses are \"killing\" them figuratively and mentally. They know that the pandemic is a worldwide problem and appreciate the cash assistance. But it is not enough.
A self-employed home cleaner David told me that he could not work for three months and has to pay bills and rental. The monthly rental of the van he uses to transport tools alone already cost him $1,700, exceeding the cash assistance he could receive in April or May. Of course, he has to give up the van at this moment. He is now desperately looking forward to resuming his work and start earning again.
During the distribution of Government-issued masks, I met an 80-year-old uncle who is still raising his family. He was crying as he told me about his job loss and his fears of being unable to see his son through school. To see a man cry is hard, to see an elderly man cry is just heartbreaking.
This crisis is indeed unprecedented. Many households that used to get by or used to do well are now under water.
When the help schemes were announced, many rejoiced. But concerns also emerged as they tried to apply for it. For example, loan deferment. Businesses appreciate the reprieve that this can offer. But a resident Andy told me that when he and his peers realised they still have to pay significant interest during the deferment period, they all backed out. In Andy's case, the deferment interest is more than the cash assistance he could get and there is no certainty whether his business will have a full recovery before the bank starts asking him to pay again. This seems to defeat the purpose of having this facility, even for viable businesses.
Such a situation will save companies with normally healthy cashflow, but perhaps not those that may have been or are planning to invest in strategic capabilities. Despite this, I can understand that there are implications on banks and therefore the entire system. But could we help these businesses by offering a 0.1% low interest to existing business loans in this deferment period, similar to new ESG loans?
Second, on rental. There were still fears that the initial reliefs are not enough and some subtenants fear that waivers will not be passed down to them or that landlords will take a long time to do so. But this will be addressed in the amendments to the Temporary Measures Act later, so this is great news!
Third, SafeEntry. The reasons for contact tracing and using technology to do so are understandable. But this is causing some difficulty for seniors to access certain essential services, because manual registration at present is only a guideline. For example, my resident Yui Mun said that her mother and other elderly cannot enter the private clinics they usually go to, because they do not have smartphones with data plan to scan and register via SafeEntry. The normal argument would have been to take the business elsewhere, but in this case, it is disruptive to switch as elderly usually have longstanding relationships with their GPs. Might there be ways to compel such operators to accommodate?
Therefore, I urge the Government to continue finetuning the measures implemented, as we learn from experience and start stabilising.
The second point is really about fiscal sustainability, having reserves for next generation and sharing the responsibility in a crisis.
As we battle this crisis, I am again thankful that our past and present leaders have been judicious in managing our reserves, painstakingly saving up for \"storms\" like this. Because of this, we can now confidently dip in to help Singaporeans – for the third time. Within a short span of five months, our Government is pumping in S$93 billion just to combat the pandemic. This amount already exceeds the total full year public expenditure in 2019.
Looking around the world, only Japan and Singapore are able to pump in hefty stimulus packages. Comparatively, others in our region may find it difficult to implement similar support packages. Some of our neighbours do not have deep reserves, and while they could reach loans with ultra-low interest rates, this could threaten their fiscal sustainability.
To give a sense of how much our Government is putting in to help Singaporeans and businesses, I did a back-of-envelope estimation of economic relief per capita – migrant not included – among developed countries.
If we look at the relief per citizen or PR, Singapore tops the chart at S$23,225 per capita. Japan is next at S$21,355 per capita. The United States – world superpower, world largest economy and worst hit by the pandemic – is third at S$12,765 per capita. These are calculated based on publicly available figures.
These figures are coarse estimations taking into account direct and indirect support. But it gives us a very good sense of our Government's determination in supporting our people and seeing Singapore through this crisis.
Alas, this pandemic is expected to last for many more months and the world economy remains uncertain. Some experts think that the worst has yet to come. Therefore, I wonder how many more packages we will need and how much more might we have to dip into our reserves for.
Lest I get misunderstood, let me state that I believe it is necessary for us to draw on our reserves to help Singapore and Singaporeans get through this storm.
But I am concerned if we have enough to leave behind for our future generations. Again, I want to ask how do we moderate ourselves and is there a red line beyond which we shall not draw further from our reserves? How can we sustain help and not deplete this pot of gold for our children and theirs?
Our Pioneers took more than 50 years to save up this pot of gold because they want to protect their children and future generations. Similarly, we have a duty to use this pot of gold wisely and make sure that we put back what we took once we can, so that our children and their children will continue to have this asset to fall back on when they face the crisis of their generation. Will the Government assure us that it will do so? How does it plan to do so?
To this end, I therefore think that it is important that we all shoulder the responsibility of overcoming this crisis together.
The Government will draw from our treasury and reserves to provide the financial stimulus and put in place schemes and legislation to ensure fair distribution of help and boost sectors that are flailing. Businesses will have to do its best to survive and keep jobs for the workers; and workers need to be willing to accept concessions so that everyone can stay above water. Landlords need to learn to share because they have a symbiotic relationship with tenants. If the tenants fail, they may not find another and all will suffer. At the society level, the more abled need to be willing to take less and give more. The less abled need to be willing to try their best to adjust, to change track, to upskill and to progress.
Everyone is affected. It would be quite difficult for the Government alone to eradicate all the pain for everyone, although it is trying.
If we can all be more accommodating, a bit more \"give-and-take\" and try a bit harder, we will have a good chance of succeeding together. By sharing more is perhaps the only way to attain a more sustainable future.
And onto my third point, that this is a good time now to transform.
On this note, as we look ahead, we can expect the world to change post COVID-19. It is a tough time now, but since we are already in this predicament, there is also no better time to transform for the future.
McKinsey, in a recent article, suggested that there will be seven key changes. I am going to paraphrase them here.
First, \"distance is back\" with technology enabling communications, work and trade being done without physical proximity. Second, in strategising, businesses need to be able to absorb shock, on top of just being efficient. Third, rise of the contact-free economy, including digital commerce, telemedicine and automation. Fourth, more Government intervention to ensure fairer distribution of precious resources. Fifth, more scrutiny for businesses as they will increasingly be expected by the public to contribute more socially for the public good. Sixth, industry structures, consumer behaviours, market positions and sector attractiveness will change. And seventh, everyone is compelled to innovate to connect and solve problems in new ways.
The pandemic displaced many individuals and businesses. In some instances, they may not find a way back to their old jobs. But there are new opportunities on the horizon.
Despite our circumstances, Singapore secured about S$13 billion in investment commitments in the first half of this year for the \"next few years\". These investments, in sectors including electronics and infocomm, will generate \"a few thousand jobs\" for workers in Singapore in the coming years. But all these jobs will demand a new set of skills in the innovation and technology area.
Therefore, Singaporeans need to be prepared to train for it. Human capital and the quality of our talent pool will be a crucial differentiating factor for Singapore.
In a recent encounter, a very wise elder and prominent business leader asked me about what I thought about the fourth industrial revolution. I was a bit surprised as I am a junior but I suppose he just wanted to know how a younger person like me think about this issue. So, I shared that the digital future is inevitable and we all know why it is important. I trust the Government to get the infrastructure, the big pieces right and ready. But the quality of our people will decide whether Singapore continues to have a voice on the world stage. Our people have to be ready fast and my own estimate of our window of opportunity would be two to three years or maybe even faster.
If we do not have enough people with the right skills to fill these new jobs, investments can go away and we will all be for the poorer. As countries around us step up, our talent pool must be ready earlier than them so that we can anchor these opportunities here in Singapore. Ultimately, it is the quality of our people that will determine if we can lead in this innovation race.
Hence, I am heartened that this fourth Budget not only addresses immediate needs, but also locked its vision on the future.
I welcome the digital resilience bonus. I hope this will be the final push to reach the tipping point for our SMEs to transform. If this proves to be successful, I hope the bonus can be applied to other sectors in time to come as well. I will describe this as \"涅槃重生，破茧成蝶\" – to breakthrough and rise from the ashes.
I also welcome the creation of SG Digital Office and 1,000 digital ambassadors. I spoke about avoiding a new social divide inadvertently caused by our push for digitalisation in past years' debates. On the ground, I have also been working with our grassroots to champion digital readiness for our seniors and low-income families. I hope we can press on and scale up. From observations, seniors who are digital converts are well placed to help other seniors. If we can leverage them more actively and allow them to earn an extra allowance, I believe we will see better results.
And since we are investing in digital capabilities, might the Government consider offering a \"digital conversion bonus\" for our seniors in the very near future? Similar in spirit to the digital resilience bonus, perhaps a digital wallet with e-cash vouchers would incentivise more seniors to give digital solutions a chance. And in the spirit of sharing responsibilities, local grassroots could explore strategic partnerships to raise funds and issue these vouchers. It is doing the same thing but in a different way.
(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.]: COVID-19 is a major event that has changed the whole world. Some experts are of the view that this pandemic has caused more harm than the Great Depression in the 1930s. Some residents in my constituency remarked that this was the most serious crisis they have seen in the past decades.
In this crisis, no one can be spared. Everyone is facing a certain amount of challenges and sufferings. Too many uncertainties can be confusing. Many of my residents came to me for help. It is heart breaking to see that they are full of anxieties and are at a loss.
As the pandemic evolves and demand changes, the Government has introduced 4 Budgets to help Singaporeans and businesses. Based on rough calculations, the Government has provided an average of $23,225 per person to cope with COVID-19, much higher than many other developed countries. This demonstrated the Government's determination to help our people. It is the fiscal prudence by our past and present government that has enabled us to draw such a big sum of money from the past reserves to deal with this crisis. We must thank our forefathers for their hard work.
The Government has been flexible, and acted boldly and decisively to introduce a series of measures to revive the economy and assist the people. This is much appreciated by the people and I agree with them.
However, the pandemic is still raging. The fight against COVID-19 seems to be a prolonged battle. I cannot help worrying whether our reserves, built up painstakingly over the years, will be depleted. If our future generations were to face such situation, what are they going to rely upon?
I would like to ask the Government once again: do we have some kind of mechanism to define how we should effectively make use of our reserves and how much we can use? Will the Government promise to return the money to the reserves when the economy gets better and how is the Government going to fulfil this promise?
Take a step back. In times of crisis, everyone could and should help to shoulder responsibilities, working in solidarity to overcome the difficulties. The Government is setting aside a huge amount of money to revitalise the economy and help the people. Employers should do their best to keep the business going and retain their workers; Workers should cooperate with the company to make necessary adjustments. Landlords should be compassionate to the tenants and give them some breathing space. There will be many days ahead as long as we manage to survive this outbreak. In the community, the abled can make more sacrifices, and the beneficiaries should solider on with fortitude. By doing this, we will be able to achieve sustainability in the future.
This is a difficult time. I keep thinking of this poem \"Grass\" which says that \"Grass in the wild are not thoroughly burned off; they will grow again in the spring\". I often recite this poem to my two sons. I hope they can develop in them the same tenacious spirit as the wild grass.
I would like to borrow a phrase from Venerable Master Xing Yue. He once said, \"The tiny grass does not succumb to adversities. It does not feel inferior just because it is tiny. This is the spirit of a tiny grass.\"
A sparkle can ignite a whole prairie; small streams can converge into rivers and oceans; a tiny seed can grow into a big tree, a small tiny screw can affect the performance of the entire machine.
We may feel that we are insignificant, but when united we can be very powerful. Perhaps, this is what the Fortitude Budget seeks to achieve.
(In English): I support the Budget.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Exempted Business","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OS","content":"Mr Deputy Speaker: Leader.
The Leader of the House (Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien): Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to move that, \"That the proceedings on the business set down on the Order Paper for today be exempted at this day's sitting from the provisions of Standing Order No 2.\"
[(proc text) Question put, and agreed to. (proc text)]
[(proc text) Resolved, \"That the proceedings on the business set down on the Order Paper for today be exempted at this day's sitting from the provisions of Standing Order No 2.\" (proc text)]
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Government's Plans in our Continued Fight against COVID-19 Pandemic","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OS","content":"[(proc text) Debate resumed. (proc text)]
Mr Deputy Speaker: Minister Iswaran.
The Minister for Communications and Information and Information (Mr S Iswaran): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. In the course of today's debate, several Members have spoken on the work of my Ministry, and our strategies to build a digital economy, and a digitally inclusive society which is also a key thrust in Deputy Prime Minister's Fortitude Budget.
I would like to thank Mr Liang Eng Hwa, Ms Sylvia Lim, Ms Jessica Tan, Mr Douglas Foo, Mr Patrick Tay, Mr Melvin Yong, Mdm Lee Bee Wah, Mr Christopher de Souza, Mr Muhd Faisal Manap and Ms Tin Pei Ling for their thoughtful comments and valuable ideas on this important national effort.
COVID-19 poses an unprecedented challenge – to our health, our society and our economy. It has turned the world upside down, and we have seen competing narratives on how different societies, cultures and political systems have dealt, for better or worse, with the challenges posed by the virus.
Now, as we emerge from the various measures to curb the spread of the virus, we will have to face the stark reality of its economic impact. So far, we been somewhat cushioned by the major fiscal measures announced by the Government – amounting to nearly $100 billion and 20% of our GDP. As Deputy Prime Minister Heng has said in his Budget speech, the Government has the responsibility to make the best use of our resources, to keep people safe, save jobs, transform businesses and, most of all, emerge stronger.
But let us be clear. The global economic outlook is bleak and Singapore will not be spared. Based on the latest data, MTI expects our economy to contract by 4% to 7% this year, and there remain significant downside risks. We have tough challenges ahead. But they are not insurmountable. And we are taking decisive steps to deal with them.
In this uncertain environment, the overriding economic imperative is to create opportunities and jobs for our people. That is the concern of Singaporeans. That is the focus of the Fortitude Budget. And that is the mission of the National Jobs Council established by Deputy Prime Minister Heng and chaired by Senior Minister Tharman.
We are doubling down in our effort to identify jobs across the economy – be they permanent jobs, temporary jobs, part-time jobs, or traineeships. We will spare no effort to prepare and place our people in these roles – be they fresh graduates, from Universities, Polytechnics and ITEs, or mature workers in our economy. And, we will work closely with the Labour Movement and employers in this difficult but critical effort.
One sector that holds promise is ICT, because COVID-19 has brought home the importance of digitalisation to our economy and digital inclusion to our society. Whether for individuals or families, businesses or industries, it is patently clear that digitalisation is no longer an optional extra. It is a critical necessity, if we are to survive this crisis and emerge stronger in a post COVID world.
We will therefore seize this moment to make a decisive push towards a digital future, with three key thrusts: digital opportunities for workers; digital inclusion for all; and a concerted push for a digital future.
In this year's COS debate, I noted that the promise of digitalisation is tempered by the uncertainty of change. Change and disruption have descended upon us now in dramatic fashion in the guise of COVID-19. The silver lining is that this crisis has crystallised the need and opportunity for digitalisation.
Consequently, the ICT sector remains one of the bright spots in our economy amidst the economic uncertainty. Digital and tech roles are in demand, within the ICT sector, but also across the rest of the economy as all sectors seek digital solutions. In the first quarter of this year, the ICT sector expanded by 3.5% with 1,100 new jobs.
But we have to keep it real. Even in the ICT sector, jobs will be harder to come by now compared to pre-COVID times. In the current economic climate, ICT enterprises, like others, will be more restrained in their hiring decisions.
That is why we are stepping up our partnership with the private sector. The TechSkills Accelerator initiative or TeSA will be enhanced in two important ways to help Singaporeans seize job opportunities in the ICT sector.
First, we will scale up the Company-Led Training programme. In other words, we will partner leading tech and non-tech companies to place and train 3,000 Singaporeans in good tech jobs over the next two to three years – in functions like digital marketing, software engineering, cybersecurity and data analytics.
Secondly, the TeSA Mid-Career Advance programme will run in parallel and create an additional 2,500 place and train opportunities for mid-career professionals aged 40 and above.
Our goal is to help fresh graduates and mid-career professionals alike to secure these jobs, advance their skills and start a fulfilling career in one of the more promising sectors in our economy today.
We adopt a similar broad-based approach to help enterprises at different stages in their digital journey. The SMEs Go Digital programme has Start Digital for new SMEs and Grow Digital for those expanding overseas using e-commerce platforms.
We are augmenting this with sector-level digital solutions for F&B and Retail – two sectors that have many enterprises, that collectively employ many workers, and that have been significantly affected by COVID-19. We will introduce the Digital Resilience Bonus to encourage these businesses to adopt digital solutions like online ordering, e-invoicing, inventory management and e-payments to operate in the post COVID new normal.
IMDA will give more details but let me use the example of Foreword Coffee Roasters, which serves specialty coffee and hires workers with special needs, to illustrate how this will help our F&B businesses.
Foreword Coffee uses the baseline PayNow Corporate and PEPPOL e-invoicing accounts for transactions. The company also adopted a solution to create its online shopfront. Its new website was launched at the start of the circuit breaker and orders increased tenfold within one month. This digital initiative will allow them to receive a payout of $2,500 under the Digital Resilience Bonus.
To advance its digitalisation journey, Foreword Coffee’s owner Mr Lim Wei Jie adopted a digital ordering solution and he also plans to deploy HR, payroll and accounting solutions in the coming months. That will entitle the company to an additional $2,500 under the Digital Resilience Bonus Scheme.
Businesses that already have basic digital capabilities will receive an additional $5,000 should they decide to adopt advanced digital solutions like data mining and data analytics.
I would like to assure Ms Tin Pei Ling in particular that we will be extending the Digital Resilience Bonus to F&B and retail enterprises in the first instance, but based on our experience, we will then ssess how we can expand this to other sectors subsequently and this is a discussion that we will continue to have with MOF.
But let me now move to digital inclusion. Digitalisation is not an end in itself; it is a means to better lives and livelihoods. That is why digital inclusion has always been at the heart of the Government’s digitalisation effort. Our digital push must reach all segments of our economy and society, like our hawkers and senior citizens, so that they too can benefit and participate.
Hawkers Go Digital will boost e-payment adoption among stallholders from hawker centres, wet markets, coffee shops and industrial canteens. Apart from the obvious public health benefits, this initiative is also a good launch point for stallholders’ digital transformation journeys.
In this multi-agency effort by IMDA, Enterprise Singapore, NEA, JTC and HDB, we will reach out to and help over 18,000 stallholders adopt e-payment solutions by the middle of next year. Hawkers who sign up for the unified e-payment solution and fulfil the minimum transaction requirements will receive a bonus of up to $300 per month over five months.
Among our seniors, it is gratifying to note that digital adoption has been increasing, with smartphone usage more than doubling over the past five years. But we can and want to do more. Digital literacy will enable our seniors to lead more engaged, informed and fulfilling lives. For seniors who are employed, digital skills will enhance their skills and productivity.
We will therefore strengthen digital literacy and access among our seniors with the Seniors Go Digital Programme. The programme will help all our seniors build digital capabilities through virtual classes, one-on-one coaching at community places, once the Circuit Breaker measures allow for them, and that includes in libraries and community centres, small group learning with their friends and other hands-on learning opportunities.
IMDA is also working with our telcos to offer better mobile data plans for our seniors. We will also provide financial assistance to seniors who cannot afford devices and data plans. These were important points raised by several Members.
I understand the point made by Ms Sylvia Lim about keeping low cost non-digital options open for seniors and others who might need it. Indeed, that is the experience we have had and the effort we have made. For example, in the SafeEntry app, you can use your phone but you can also use the physical Identity Card (IC). In general, the idea is to encourage the adoption of digital solutions but to keep open the option of using non-digital solutions because we know that there will be some who still prefer them or are uncomfortable with the digital part. The same applies for cybersecurity; it is something that we will continue to emphasise in our training programmes with seniors and how we can instil greater cybersecurity awareness amongst them.
These new initiatives will complement our current digital inclusion programmes such as NEU PC Plus and Home Access to ensure digital access and connectivity for low-income households, including those with school-going children, and persons with disabilities. We have and will continue to enhance these programmes to meet the changing needs arising from COVID-19 and the Circuit Breaker measures.
Digitalisation and digital inclusion are the twin engines that will take us to our digital future. COVID-19 has catalysed a heightened interest and need among individuals, families, workers and enterprises to be equipped with digital access and to acquire the requisite skills. It has given us the impetus to invest in a decisive, all-out push towards a digital future.
A few days back, I announced the formation of the SG Digital Office, under IMDA, to drive a national movement for digital transformation in our economy and our communities. We will mobilise 1,000 Digital Ambassadors for this effort, to reach 18,000 hawkers and 100,000 seniors, so that they can all Go Digital. This effort will mark a quantum shift in our digitalisation effort in the community and greatly benefit the lives and livelihoods of our people.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I have outlined in some detail our initiatives to create jobs and opportunities in this challenging economic environment, and to make a decisive push towards digitalisation in our economy and digital inclusion in our society. The SG Digital Office, our Digital Ambassadors who will be embedded in the community, TeSA, the Digital Resilience Bonus, the Hawkers-go-Digital and Seniors-go-Digital programmes – all of these and many others are a measure of the scale and scope of our ambition for this national digitalisation movement and the resources we are committing to it.
However, to succeed in this effort, we need the \"X\" factor. And that \"X\" factor is our people, our mindset, and our willingness to learn and adapt to the \"new normal\", as some have described it. It means workers who are prepared to pick up new skills and adjust to new jobs and circumstances, no matter what their background; it means seniors showing us the way that age is not a barrier to learning and making the digital transition; and it means hawkers who have the gumption to \"try lah\", as one hawker representative vividly put it to me, because of the conviction that this is a good thing.
I know that some will be anxious about these changes and what it means for them. To them I say, on behalf of the Government, we will leave no one behind and will walk this digital journey with you. So, let us come together, seize this opportunity fully and secure a bright digital future for each and every Singaporean.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Miss Cheryl Chan.
Miss Cheryl Chan Wei Ling (Fengshan): Mr Deputy Speaker, today, there is still much uncertainty around COVID-19. Will there be a second wave locally or globally? What would the transmission rate be like after circuit breaker? How long would the downturn last? There are many questions that will still be left unanswered even if the entire nation is COVID-19 tested, assuming no mutation of the virus or until an effective vaccine against COVID-19 is found.
However, what is certain at this point is we cannot afford to be in a standstill indefinitely. Reduced global trade has taken a toll on the global economy and businesses are struggling to stay afloat and retain their workers. The current situation is not just about economy, it greatly impacts lives. The central question is: how will we as a country recover from this pandemic and ensure we learn to put continuity in place if we ever face the next crisis.
Budget 2020 is an unprecedented one in history both in magnitude and the support coverage across all segments in Singapore. In the Fortitude Budget, a further $33 billion is set aside to ensure livelihoods are broadly sustained and it seeks to provide a lifeline for businesses to resume in small steps. For many SMEs, sectors affected due to the nature of their trade and companies impacted by global restrictions, these grants are certainly welcome but they are still insufficient. At the same time, we also hear calls from concerned citizens to exercise prudence as they are worried the country’s reserves may be depleted before a full recovery is in sight.
Personally, I am heartened that the Government has listened and continue to make adjustments to bridge and support the gaps in society through all subsequent Budgets from February. Having done these in a quick and calibrated manner, reaching out to the public, social sectors and the business groups, putting in place step measures as we continue our fight against COVID-19.
I associate this to Our Singapore Conversation, which was first initiated in 2012. However, this time it had taken place in a much condensed timeframe of about four months. Are we done with the conversation? I do not think so.
While many measures spelt out in the Budget serve its primary intent of rescuing situations in a downturn, I think it is pertinent for us to look at how to approach such resolutions through a whole-of-society involvement.
Let me highlight a few areas to explain why it is inadequate for the Government or agencies alone to navigate these challenges.
First, the trade classification on resumption of business after circuit breaker.
It is understandable why the need for us to re-open in three phases but the rationale of why one trade is allowed to open in Phase One while another quite similar in nature is not allowed to do so had raised brows on how MTI decided the trade classification for business resumption.
Take an example – after 2 June, the pet owners can bring their pets for grooming services but certain vet services are not allowed like the routine elective preventive care services or vaccines for their pets. It is not surprising some of these pet owners who are puzzled as to which is more important – the health condition or the looks of their pets.
And while some companies are allowed to open in Phase One, their suppliers are placed in a different phase for re-opening or their sub-contractors could not receive approval to resume operations from Government agencies. An example of this is the construction, landscaping and renovation sector, in which many of our SMEs are affected. It is typical in these sectors for a single project to be fulfilled by a pool of suppliers and workers of varying skillsets from different companies. Main contractors outsource some parts of the project, have workers from different companies, staying in different dormitories to provide service at the same work site. This scenario, though typical in the past, have now become an insurmountable management task due to the new measures in place. Even if the companies understand and wish to comply with the new rules, some of the rules are impractical, or they would reduce productivity owing to its long roll-out period and further exacerbated by the inconsistency of the new measures that is detailed across the agencies.
Citing one of the new measures on mandating workers to be sent for swab test every fortnight before they are allowed on the work site, cost being one concern, but the ability to have enough testing and rapid results made available would likely be the bottleneck in the months ahead. Based on current test rate, we only managed to test over 10% of the total foreign worker population mainly residing in the dormitories. With the added test requirement, how should the construction sector manage their schedule?
Some of the works are also physically unviable to be done by a sole worker at the site under reasonable safe distance. How then can these companies work in compliance with all the new measures.
While the manifestation of COVID-19 amongst the foreign workers is an unfortunate situation, the biggest challenge any business owner faced is a restart date that is not determined by the end of circuit breaker. Instead, it hinges upon whether their network of suppliers is allowed to provide them services, the ability to obtain approval for start work order from the different Government agencies and whether they have the financial means to survive without a definite start date. Most of these SMEs have on-going liabilities like stocks, worker levy, rental, utilities and general expenses. In short, taking a SME loan or having tax deferment do not help a company that cannot generate revenue in the short term or when the visibility to begin work is beyond their control.
Second, mindset change is pivotal in this recovery process. We need positivity and adaptability to adjust to this changing landscape and imbue resilience to emerge stronger when the pandemic passes. With the right mindset to face and overcome this pandemic is the starting point for most of us. This includes how we sustain and apply current changes to a new normal in life, people’s willingness to learn and adapt constantly on their own free will and those in society who will step forward to help others with less resources.
Over the past months, we have seen living examples of individuals and companies in Singapore who played their part actively in society. Some ingeniously came up with new ideas, roped in others within their sector or amongst their friends and made good use of the lull period to help others financially and in kind.
This is the Singapore spirit we aspire to promote and uphold. In order to achieve this, the thought and act of it must largely come from ourselves. The Government can act as a catalyst, but we ourselves must be the change makers.
Just take a look at the F&B sector. Before COVID-19, we would not imagine it possible for many hawkers and stallholders to be willing to sell their products and take orders online. In Singapore’s digitalisation push over the years, the agencies collaborated with the private sector to encourage more takers to come onboard. Though it gained traction, it was not progressing swiftly at the adoption rate we hope to achieve. But it took a crisis to absolutely move the needle. The sheer need to survive made it possible, as what Minister Iswaran has just said, from online wet marketing to incessant online food deliveries, it has become a much needed change in traditional business models and the merchants recognise this. They are willing to try for efficiency and for a larger share of the market. So, we must not let this opportunity slip and should do more henceforth.
I am glad that Minister Iswaran has just mentioned the national push for this effort is no longer optional and the need for it to be inclusive. The Digital Ambassadors can bring more to this partnership for business owners and to help our seniors in the community navigate this digital giant. For those who are willing to support our hawker and wet market culture, this is the time to help the community.
On this note of digitalisation, I would like to ask the Minister about the Safe Management Officers mandated training by BCA. There is ground feedback of insufficient training slots available until early July. Given the pervasiveness of technology and the ease of setting virtual meetings, is it not possible for several mass online training sessions to be conducted for workers even if they do not belong to the same company?
Also, if there is a need for certifications, the workers who are trained can individually do the assessments online using their mobile phones and be certified via these platforms. This would be more efficient and enable more companies to harness their resources which are already hard strapped, given the need for workers to be cohorted or put on segregated teams.
And lastly, collective wisdom of the society will bring us further in this marathon of nation building.
As seen in this fight against COVID-19, organisations, institutions, trade associations and individuals have demonstrated that much of this knowledge exist within different groups. In preparation for business resumption, there are companies which are not classified for opening under Phase 1 but have detailed plans of how they have modified their business models to fit the new normal and can operate safely. Some even expressed their willingness to take the lead to begin operations earlier if allowed to, adjust quickly and share their experiences with fellow sector operators on how they can also embark on this change and be ready. As much as adjustments should be made to businesses, we need to recognise there are some service industries which inevitably require a human and not robots or online transactions to deliver the service or experience.
Other industries like the automotive industry have trade nature in which huge capital commitment is involved and are dependent on the local regulatory system that significantly impacts its product sales and volume. To enable these businesses and industries to restart in the new normal, the Ministries must be prepared to solicit inputs, take onboard the industries' proposals and make specific adjustments instead of broad measures.
In my view, there is no better time to put Our Singapore Conversation and the making of our future economy to the test than now by bringing people with direct experience and deep trade insights together – people from all walks of life – and partnering them as we promised. Likewise, the trade associations and merchant groups can now rise to the challenge and revamp their industries of which we hope the Industry Transformation Roadmaps would bring about. This will truly give a fresh breath of life to the industries at an accelerated pace – one which adapts to the new environment and concurrently creates new jobs, revamps job scopes, provides upskilling and new customer experiences that are sustainable.
Sir, I am certain that as fellow Singaporeans, we all feel and understand where we are in this downturn. But in every crisis, there lies opportunities. There will also come a time when an upturn will occur. It is a matter of when. Today, we know deeply that we need to roll up our sleeves and work together through all these challenges unflinchingly with one another. Thus, my clarion call for a whole-of-society involvement.
The five core aspirations that emerged from Our Singapore Conversations earlier are: purpose, opportunities, assurance, spirit and trust. I trust this Government does not shy away from making the right decisions and moves for our future generations. As Prime Minister Lee said on the COVID-19 situation, \"If there is any country that can see this through, it is Singapore.\"
Sir, I cannot agree more. We are all in it together and we will get there. With this, I support the Fortitude Budget.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Mr Saktiandi Supaat.
Mr Saktiandi Supaat (Bishan-Toa Payoh): Mr Deputy Speaker, these are unprecedented times, indeed, as we witness the rolling out of a fourth Budget in less than half a year to help save and create jobs and speed up the pace of recovery when the economy exits from the circuit breaker measures. Some economists and analysts highlight that the Fortitude Budget schemes will help to contain the job losses to around 100,000 to 150,000 or less – down from earlier estimates of about 150,000 to 200,000 – for the full year.
So, thank you, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Heng and his team for their relentless hard work. COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on the economy and on the lives of people around the world. Singapore, being highly dependent on the global economy, has not been spared from the brunt of it. But first and foremost, I am grateful that the practical policies, dedicated essential workers and our mostly sensible Singaporeans and people have shielded us from the worst.
I will be sharing today on three issues covering support for workers and businesses, emerging stronger from this pandemic and some views on the use of Reserves.
First, the coronavirus crisis has split the workforce into three groups. First, those who have lost jobs or at least some pay – we have seen that and some Members here have shared some of their experiences with some residents. Second, we have those who are deemed essential workers who must labour on through the crisis, often at great risk to their own health. And third, there are those who are virtual knowledge workers whose lives have hardly been affected.
I am glad to see that more help and support have been made available for middle-aged Singaporeans through the 4,000 traineeships and enhanced hiring incentives. There is also the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package that aims to create close to 100,000 jobs, traineeships and skills training opportunities. As the number of job losses has been projected to hit around 100,000 in 2020, this is a highly adequate effort. But wage reduction or downward income adjustment is a significant problem that we must not neglect.
I know a family – a typical sandwiched middle income group, husband-and-wife who were laid off from the airline industry. They have two school-going children and elderly parents with chronic illnesses. They found jobs as social distancing ambassadors and are very thankful. But their household income has been drastically reduced and they worry about affording their parents' medical bills and the housing loan thereafter as well as possible far-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 on their children. They had to completely re-adapt to a new format of learning and then big sacrifices will have to be made as they make adjustments to their new income level.
Such accounts are not uncommon among many of the sandwiched generation, who had been fairly comfortable managing their various commitments and liabilities until COVID-19 hit. In our pursuit to help workers and match jobs for affected workers, we may not be able to fully equalise the outcomes, but we can and we must strive to create equal opportunities and access to resources for all families and future generations – the children. I hope that further down the road, more healthcare and financial assistance for education cost assistance will be given to affected lower middle and middle income families with higher income thresholds and for those families with above 40-year-old breadwinners.
Next, I want to talk in particular about income tax deferments. Businesses and employees pay income tax based on income and earnings in the previous fiscal year. Many middle and high-income earners as well as self-employed persons were doing relatively well last year. But this year, many will see their wages and earnings severely affected. Yet, they still have to pay income tax for Year of Assessment 2019. The tax filing deadline has been extended to 31 May 2020 but I hope that the Government can consider further deferring this timeline, considering that this is still a developing situation. I also hope the Government will soften the blow with tax credits or rebates. Tax authorities in other countries are reviewing policies to offer relief to affected taxpayers. Canada, for example, has extended tax payment deadline from 30 April to 1 September 2020. Thailand has extended their tax filing and payment deadline from 31 March to 30 June 2020. These will go a long way to help the sandwiched middle income households and probably a significant number of those aged 40 and above.
Mr Deputy Speaker, in Malay, please.
(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.]: The third point I want to raise is about empathy for small landlords.
On help for businesses, I have received feedback from some residents who are small landlords affected by COVID-19, such as those who own shops that are rented out at lower rates, and in fact, it cannot even cover their mortgage repayment. They have voiced out their concerns about the over-protection of tenants. One of my residents highlighted that, while thus far the focus has been to push landlords to give rebates to their tenants, what happens to the landlords who are themselves in a tight predicament where the rent collected is only a pittance? Should these smaller landlords then be given some relief since the tenants are given two months' rent waiver?
It is bad enough that the rent cannot cover the loan repayment. But it is a double blow to have to forgo a two-month rent. I hope the Government can continue to look at the individual circumstances of some of these small landlords, and offer them support through higher property tax rebates, or even through longer bank mortgage deferments. I was happy to hear that MOF, IRAS, ESG and MAS announced a package of measures on Wednesday (yesterday) to support these smaller landlords who may face cash flow constraints due to the relief given to tenants via the deferment of principal and interest repayment up to 31 Dec 2020.
In addition, I would also like to touch on the best ways for us to adapt and emerge stronger.
Balancing the efficiency and equity effects of technology has always been a perennial challenge for societies. This issue was highlighted in Minister Iswaran's speech earlier, which shows that the Government is looking at the challenges of technology. This is likely to get worse with this crisis, given the newfound urgency to push for greater digitalisation and automation. I am glad we are accelerating the timeline for Secondary School students from the previous projection for them to own digital learning devices in 2028. I look forward to hearing more details from Minister Ong Ye Kung, particularly on the updated timeline.
Therefore, in spite of best efforts by the schools, community and social services, some students of low-income families find it challenging to do their home-based learning. Some had to share the devices with multiple siblings. Others received second-hand devices that were incompatible or could not support the software required to run the Home-Based Learning lessons smoothly. By the time we could get them the necessary assistance, they had already missed important lessons.
These are just cracks on the surface. Moving deeper, we will find that some of these children are facing many troubling distractions at home, from domestic violence, to having to play the role of parents to their younger siblings. These problems existed pre-COVID-19, and are made worse when everyone is spending a lot more time together at home.
Regardless, going digital is the future, and we must equip all our students with the skills and tools to navigate the digital landscape. We must spend more to build on our digital inclusion programmes, as mentioned by Minister Iswaran earlier. This would come on top of enhanced comprehensive efforts to address the challenges faced by students from families that have challenges. Hence, with social distancing measures, social services are stretching their already limited resources to cope with a rising number of cases. May I ask how is the Government working with the social services sector to ensure that they are equipped with the necessary resources to help their clients through this crisis? Social workers too can suffer from burnout in times of crisis. In our pursuit to narrow of the inequality gap, we cannot equalise the outcomes, but we can and we must strive to create equal opportunities and access to resources for all families. The objective of sustainable and inclusive growth must continue to be our goal beyond this Budget.
(In English): Mr Deputy Speaker, in English, please.
My last point in this section is about addressing economic hysteresis.
Monetary stimulus has been limited due to several factors – already low rates and limited impact of weaker exchange rates on exports, lower demand for goods globally and the trend of de-globalisation. Over the next five to 10 years, if many countries carry out fiscal austerity at the same time, the reduction of incomes in each country will likely increase because not all countries can reduce the value of their foreign exchange rates while increasing net exports simultaneously.
So, fiscal consolidation could add to the pain of those who are likely to be already impacted by the current demand and supply impact of COVID-19. On the one hand, being dependent on global supply chains running reliably means we will see prices of daily necessities going up. Some of our local businesses and manufacturers are facing labour uncertainty and shortage because their workers have gone back overseas or are in quarantine. On the other hand, Singaporeans are losing jobs or at risk of losing jobs.
Sir, the pandemic has taught all of us an important thing – self-sufficiency is important, be it on supplies or labour. There is greater urgency than ever to ramp up self-sufficiency, especially on basic necessities like food, re-develop empty properties and land to do high-tech farming and encourage more Singaporeans to venture into this area so that we can localise the sector and be less reliant on foreigners. In the meantime, our people are gainfully re-employed so we can avoid or reduce hysteresis. That is, there is a permanent change in the workforce from the loss of job skills, making workers less employable even after a recession has ended.
To be less reliant on a foreign workforce, we need to localise the workforce. So, we need to build the Singapore Core – as Member Mr Patrick Tay has mentioned – is very important and key. But first, we need to do very purposeful public education to get Singaporeans to change their mindsets and embrace the new norm. In recent years, community gardens and farmer's markets have gained substantial interest among the population. We need to encourage them to turn their interest into a career, by making this career one that is respectable and provides sustainable incomes. This applies to other areas of essential services.
Mr Deputy Speaker, my last section is on the of reserves – prudent management of national reserves.
The amount of fiscal support so far is indeed staggering. The Government set aside another S$33 billion in the fourth Budget this year, with a big focus on helping firms stay afloat and creating jobs. This brings the total fiscal support to $93 billion, about 20% of GDP, placing Singapore as among the top spenders in this global pandemic. Out of the $33 billion, $13 billion was set aside in the Contingencies Fund, which the Government can draw from in the case of unforeseen developments. So, it is a significant large amount. This is more than seven times, in terms of fiscal deficit, estimated in the first Unity Budget which was about $10.5 billion.
Going forward, to ensure sufficient buffer, the Singapore Government is required to maintain a balanced Budget over each term of Government under the Constitution. Elections will likely take place soon and the \"new\" Government will have less fiscal room in the new term under current fiscal rules.
So, if the crisis or its after-effects drags on into 2021 with no improvement in sight, or if other shocks hit us along the way, the fiscal constraint may be overly tight. The Government can keep on tapping and running down its fiscal reserves, of which $52 billion has already been drawn and counting but runs the risk of depleting its war chest. With these concerns in mind, I seek to put forth some suggestions.
First, can a case be made that under such a crisis and national emergency, the Government can borrow and tap on the bond market to fund fiscal spending? Under the Government Securities Act, the Government cannot spend the money raised from the three existing domestic debt securities it issues. So, all borrowing proceeds from the issuance of debt are invested. The fiscal deficit in FY2021 will likely remain large, as any economic recovery will be very gradual.
Singapore is rated AAA from all three international credit rating agencies and can tap on the bond market at record low interest rates at the moment. The 10-year SGS bond yield is currently trading at 0.8%. This may be a more optimal fiscal option than further running down fiscal reserves and liquidating assets when markets are down. The financing costs of debt is exceptionally low now, while the longer-term return on reserve assets will likely be much higher.
Second, to expand our fiscal room and options, should the Government also consider allowing the relaxation of the constitutional requirement of a balanced Budget over the term of Government? I believe temporarily relaxing the requirement is favourable to depleting the reserves war chest, especially when there will be concerns that our current spending will now be to save jobs and businesses and use of reserves could lead to some level of tighter fiscal spending or \"consolidation\" the next few years or so. I am concerned if it will have the typical of short run effect of reducing incomes and raising unemployment, post COVID-19.
In conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker, research by the International Monetary Fund or IMF, indicates that the inequality gap widens after previous epidemics. COVID-19, I think, is no exception and we could potentially see it happen in Singapore. So, good pre-distribution policies must be enacted, ensuring extreme inequalities of income do not manifest themselves in the first place, with existing ones enhanced to ensure that extreme inequalities of income do not manifest themselves.
So, this should be done through the relentless pursuit of equal access for all, to digital devices and digital skills, education and the push by what Minister Iswaran highlighted earlier is fabulous, and also access to education and healthcare. While necessities like food and financial assistance are necessary short-term emergency solutions, the long-term solution is to ensure all are equipped with skills and knowledge to generate an income is key. Healthcare is crucial for a decent quality of life, which enables one to live their best each day at any age.
Meanwhile, I urge Singaporeans, regardless whether you are looking for a job, searching for one that is more aligned with your preferences, or even taking a break, to remain hopeful and see any opportunity that comes along as an avenue for self-exploration. Unemployment is distressing. We do not want many Singaporeans to be unemployed. And I think the efforts by the Government is tremendous in terms of the use of reserves and efforts in the four Budgets. But the current situation is distressing already for most of us. So, let us remember that it is not our circumstances, but what we do with them, that defines who we are. Sir, I support the Bill.
Mr Deputy Speaker: Leader of the House.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Adjournment of Debate","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OS","content":"The Leader of the House (Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien): Mr Deputy Speaker, I beg to move, \"The the debate be now adjourned.\"
[(proc text) Resolved, \"That the debate be now adjourned.\" – [Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien]. (proc text)]
Mr Deputy Speaker: Resumption of debate, what day?
Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien: Tomorrow, Sir.
Mr Deputy Speaker: So be it.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Adjournment","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"OS","content":"[(proc text) Resolved, \"That Parliament do stand adjourned to 10.00 am tomorrow.\" – [Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien]. (proc text)]
Adjourned accordingly at 7.35 pm.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Structure of Rental Contracts for Taxis, Private Hire Cars and Limousines","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"22 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Minister for Transport (a) whether the Ministry has studied the structure of rental contracts for taxis, private-hire cars and limousines, in particular (i) the duration of such contracts (ii) rental fees charged and (iii) penalties for early termination; (b) whether rental contracts expose hirers to excessive business risk in the event of sustained reductions in demand such as that from the COVID-19 situation; and (c) whether the industry can be restructured to ensure hirers have more flexible rental arrangements and risk is distributed more equitably.
Mr Khaw Boon Wan: There is a wide range of rental contracts among more than a thousand fleet owners in the point-to-point passenger transport (P2P) rental market. This provides drivers with a range of choices, with varying durations, rates and conditions that they can choose from based on their needs. Some prefer short-term contracts with higher rental rates so that they can exit the market quickly, others prefer longer-term contracts to enjoy lower rental rates and loyalty bonuses, but which come with penalties for early termination. Some drivers are employed by P2P operators.
The current situation caused by COVID-19 is unprecedented. Drivers face a sudden and significant reduction in their takings, and those who have committed to the P2P industry for the long term will be especially concerned about their livelihoods. That is why the Government has introduced the Special Relief Fund (SRF) and the Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS). Under the SRF, active drivers will receive the Government's contribution of $300 per month per vehicle for 7.5 months, on top of the additional contributions from taxi and PHC operators. Under the SIRS, eligible drivers will receive payouts of $1,000 per month for a period of 9 months.
The financial status of taxi operators and car rental companies have also been severely affected by the pandemic. Despite these challenges, the companies have initiated significant rental reductions to help defray drivers' costs and sustain their livelihoods. They have also exercised flexibility in addressing rental arrears or the premature return of vehicles.
Even as we address the immediate challenges, it is important that we continue to take a long-term view that allows the rental market for P2P vehicles to remain competitive and responsive to drivers' needs.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Safeguarding of Personal Data Collected by Contact-tracing Apps","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"24 Mr Murali Pillai asked the Prime Minister what steps has the Government taken to ensure that personal data of persons collated through apps such as TraceTogether for the purposes of contact tracing to contain the spread of COVID-19 will be protected and not used for any other purpose.
Mr Teo Chee Hean (for the Prime Minister): The close contacts data gathered by TraceTogether will be stored only on the user’s phone in the first instance, and accessed by MOH only if the individual tests positive for COVID-19. It will only be used for contact tracing. Safeguards, including encryption, are in place on the user’s phone to protect this data from malicious hackers. Data older than 25 days will be automatically deleted from the phone. If the close contact data on the person’s phone is required for contact tracing, only a small group of authorised individuals in MOH would be able to see the patient’s personal data. All public sector data protection rules will also apply to the data transferred from the user’s phone to MOH, including abiding by the recommendations of the Public Sector Data Security Review Committee.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Impact of COVID-19 Situation on Singapore’s Climate Change Commitments","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"26 Mr Kwek Hian Chuan Henry asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources whether Singapore will stay the course on fighting climate change and meet our climate change commitments despite the current upheavals in the energy market and the potential long-term economic impact arising from the COVID-19 situation.
Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: The Government's current priority is to manage the COVID-19 outbreak and ensure the lives and livelihoods of Singaporeans, as well as those of our migrant worker community, are well taken care of. We are all in this together and we will spare no effort to make sure that Singapore comes through this COVID-19 crisis much better than before.
Even as we continue with our efforts to suppress the outbreak and prepare our economy to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we must not lose sight of the other global challenge of climate change, which remains the biggest threat facing humanity over the long term. As a small island city-state, Singapore remains highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This is why we cannot let up our efforts to address climate change.
Recently in March, we released our long-term low-emissions development strategy and enhanced our 2030 climate pledge in support of the goals of the Paris Agreement. They contained bold aspirations and plans to guide our long-term development and ongoing work to effect a well-managed transition to a low-carbon economy. Despite the uncertainties presented by the COVID-19 situation, we decided to press ahead with these plans and submitted them early to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in March, as we wanted to send a strong signal to Singaporeans and the international community that Singapore remains fully committed to tackling climate change. They demonstrate our seriousness and commitment to support global climate action and move towards a low-carbon and climate resilient future. We hope that our early submission to the UNFCCC would encourage other Parties to do likewise and jump-start the process of early submissions, thereby strengthening the momentum of global climate action at this critical time.
We also remain committed to climate action and are making good progress on our climate plans. Just last month, Energy Market Authority (EMA) announced that we had achieved our 2020 solar deployment target of 350 megawatt-peak. We are now pressing ahead with our plans to reach our more ambitious solar target of at least two gigawatt-peak by 2030. MEWR will play our part. As earlier announced at the Committee of Supply (COS) 2020, Public Utilities Board (PUB) will be deploying floating solar photovoltaic systems at Bedok, Lower Seletar, and Tengeh Reservoirs by 2021. With this, Singapore will be one of the few countries in the world to have 100% green waterworks.
In the face of climate change challenges, Singapore cannot take food security for granted and we have made early moves to prepare ourselves. As early as 2019, my Ministry announced an ambitious \"30 by 30\" goal to produce 30 per cent of Singapore's nutritional needs locally by 2030. The COVID-19 situation has underscored the need to further enhance our food security and resilience. To this end, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) has just launched a $30 million \"30x30 Express\" grant call to accelerate the ramping up of local food production over the next six to 24 months.
We are also pressing on with plans to protect Singapore from sea-level rise. PUB has taken on the role of the national Coastal Protection Agency from April 2020. With this new responsibility, one agency, PUB, will study both coastal and inland flooding holistically and develop models to guide our flood protection response.
To facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy, we are continuing our investment in low-emissions solutions and are partnering the industry and our research community to explore pilot projects to evaluate and improve the feasibility of technologies to drive the decarbonisation of our electricity grid and industrial processes. The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and EMA have launched energy efficiency incentives and schemes to help our companies to be best-in-class globally in energy and carbon efficiency, and are bringing companies within a sector together to achieve systems-level efficiency gains across the sector. We urge companies to use this period of lowered activities to consider implementing energy efficiency improvement projects where possible, so that companies can be more cost-competitive and emerge stronger when the economy picks up again.
As we work to prepare Singapore to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, members of this house can be assured that the Government will keep climate change high as a priority. We will work assiduously to build a more resilient Singapore to withstand the test of future challenges, notably climate change. We encourage all Singaporeans to join us and play their part to \"game change\" climate change.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Impact of Telecommuting by Employees at Water Plants on Singapore's Water Supply Adequacy","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"27 Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources (a) whether he can assure Singaporeans that our water supply is adequate and that the water plants are continuing to run at full capacity; and (b) what is the percentage of staff at these water plants who are on telecommuting and whether this compromises the quality of our water supply.
Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: Singapore enjoys a diversified and robust supply of water, due to years of continued planning and investments in our water infrastructure. Water from local catchment and imported water, together with weather-resilient sources namely NEWater and desalinated water, make up Singapore's \"Four National Taps\".
Under the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations 2020, the supply of water was amongst the essential services allowed to operate during the Circuit Breaker period. Since early February 2020, Public Utilities Board (PUB) has activated business continuity plans to ensure that all our water plants continue to operate as per normal.
PUB has implemented Safe Management Measures in accordance to the Ministry of Manpower's guidelines at the plants and work sites. These include regular temperature screenings, physical spacing of at least one metre between persons at all times and wearing of masks. PUB has also stepped up the cleaning of work sites to ensure that equipment shared between different employees across different shifts or teams are cleaned and disinfected at the end of each shift. In addition, PUB has staggered working and lunch hours, and implemented split team arrangements to reduce congregation of our employees.
As part of its comprehensive water sampling and monitoring programme, PUB has also continued to collect and test water samples from our reservoirs, waterworks distribution systems to customers' taps daily. The quality of our drinking water continues to comply with the Environmental Public Health (Water Suitable for Drinking) Regulations 2019 and are well within the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality.
Singaporeans can be assured that they will continue to enjoy good quality drinking water from the tap during this period. I thank PUB officers for their continued dedication especially during the Circuit Breaker period.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Possible Review of “30 by 30 Vision” to Produce 30% of Singapore's Food Needs Locally by 2030","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"28 Mr Seah Kian Peng asked the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources whether there are plans to review the \"30 by 30 vision\" to locally produce 30% of Singapore's nutritional needs by 2030.
Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: When we started working on our \"30 by 30\" goal in 2018, our primary intention was to adapt to the challenges posed by climate change and resource scarcity. Last year, my Ministry announced our \"30 by 30\" goal, to produce 30 per cent of our nutritional needs locally by 2030. It complements our other strategies of diversifying import sources, growing overseas and stockpiling, to ensure the resilience of Singapore's food supply. This goal is ambitious, considering that we currently produce less than 10 per cent of our requirements, and we must achieve this goal with less than one per cent of our land.
In February this year, my Ministry launched the 2020: Singapore Food Story, a year-long campaign to raise awareness on Singapore's food security. As events would have it, the COVID-19 outbreak escalated quickly, impacting countries, big and small, all over the world. This pandemic has disrupted global supply chains and affected global trade and commerce. COVID-19 has strongly reinforced the need for Singapore to secure our food supply and the importance, timeliness and relevance of our \"30 by 30\" goal.
For now, we are not planning to review the \"30 by 30\" goal, which is already an ambitious undertaking. Local food production forms one part of our basket of strategies to buffer against food supply shocks. We are mindful that local production will not allow us to be self-sufficient in all varieties of food types that we are importing from more than 170 countries and regions today.
However, we are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by accelerating our ramp up in local food production. In April, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) launched a \"30 by 30 Express\" grant call to ramp up local production in eggs, leafy vegetables and fish over the next six to 24 months. Through this call, SFA will crowdsource and support innovative proposals to grow food productively and sustainably. I am also chairing a multi-agency ministerial taskforce to guide agencies in this effort, including addressing any hurdles related to the setting up or expansion of farms.
Even as we ramp up local food production, we need the support of all consumers, corporations and supermarkets to support local produce. Local produce is grown close to our homes, and is therefore fresher, lasts longer and is more sustainable as it incurs lower carbon miles. We encourage Singaporeans to eat local, so as to spur our farmers to increase their production, and in turn reap the benefits of economies of scale and generate exciting jobs for our people.
To make it easier for everyone to identify and support local produce, SFA is working with our farmers and retailers to include a new local produce logo, to be incorporated into their packaging which will be rolled out soon. The new label is a result of SFA's consultation with industry stakeholders and members of the public. SFA will also continue to collaborate with retailers like NTUC FairPrice, Cold Storage and Prime Supermarket to organise joint promotions and display in-store branding collaterals with key messages to promote awareness of local produce. As part of Singapore Together, we will be convening a Citizens' Workgroup this year to co-create ideas to increase demand for local produce.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Enhancements to NEU PC Plus Programme","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"30 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Minister for Communications and Information with reference to the NEU-PC Plus Programme (a) before COVID-19, what was the rationale for the limit of one digital device per low-income household notwithstanding the number of children; (b) whether the Ministry will retain the COVID-19 enhancements to the Programme permanently; (c) whether the Ministry will enhance the Programme to (i) give every low-income household student a digital device and (ii) provide digital devices to low-income household students in pre-school or university; and (d) whether the Ministry will allow students on the MOE Financial Assistance Scheme to automatically benefit from the Programme without having to submit a separate application.
Mr S Iswaran: Our approach to digital inclusion strikes a balance between providing help and using public funds prudently, in a manner that is fit for purpose. Hence the Infocomm Media Development Authority's (IMDA) Home Access and NEU PC Plus focus on enabling access to digital devices and connectivity. This is done by providing one device to a qualifying household, which can be shared among household members, rather than providing one device to every individual in the household. This approach applies to students as well. IMDA's NEU PC Plus scheme complements MOE's existing provisions through the schools for students to access computing services.
However, the Government is also prepared to be flexible, especially when needs change. The COVID-19 pandemic and the adoption of system-wide Full Home-Based Learning for the Circuit Breaker period translated into a greater need for digital devices among families with school-going children. MOE and IMDA's support schemes have therefore been modified and enhanced to broaden the criteria and to speed up delivery. For instance, students were given the option of borrowing devices through their schools. IMDA also began subsidising a second computer for large families with three or more children.
In addition, to extend more help to needy households, IMDA adjusted the criteria for the iNSPIRE fund, which helps families with the co-payment component, to include all students under MOE's FAS Programme. IMDA and MOE have also streamlined and expedited the NEU PC Plus application process for students on MOE's Financial Assistance Scheme.
The enhancements have helped many students and families. Since the start of the circuit breaker, school have loaned out more than 20,000 computing devices and 1,600 Internet-enabling devices to students. IMDA has also supported around 3,000 households with subsidised computers or Internet connectivity, more than five times the demand during this same period last year. As a result, the majority of students have been able to participate in full Home-Based Learning, with participation averaging 96% across the levels.
Even with these measures, we recognise that some families have faced challenges in participating in Home-Based Learning during this period, due to either digital access constraints or other difficult circumstances. Looking ahead, MCI and IMDA are considering maintaining some of the enhancements to the schemes we introduced during the Circuit Breaker period.
As we enter Phase One and look ahead to Phase Two of reopening, MCI and MOE are working together to review students' experience with digital access. We stand ready to help plug any gaps identified by the schools, which have not been addressed by existing measures.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Help for Residents who Cannot Afford Mobile Phones to Access Online Programmes","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"31 Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng asked the Minister for Communications and Information whether the Ministry can list the kinds of help made available for residents, especially seniors, who cannot afford mobile phones to access the numerous online programmes that are useful to them.
Mr S Iswaran: Digital inclusion has always been a Government priority, and is doubly important during this COVID-19 period. This applies to our seniors, although we recognise that we need to continue to engage seniors using multiple channels, including digital and many non-digital means like TV and radio programmes, as well as ground engagements. Even as we continue keeping these non-digital channels available, we must continue forging ahead on our efforts to equip every Singaporean with access to digital devices, as well as the skills to use them.
To support low-income households to afford digital devices and Internet connection, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) has been running the Home Access programme since 2014, which provides two years of subsidised broadband and the option for a subsidised smartphone or tablet. More than 16,000 households have benefited since the start of the programme. IMDA also runs the NEU PC Plus Programme, which provides a subsidised PC and free broadband to low-income households with school-going children or with persons with disabilities. Together, these programmes support our residents, including seniors, with digital connectivity.
For more vulnerable seniors, the CareLine programme by Changi General Hospital provides 24/7 emergency response, as well as care and social support, such as medication reminders and tele-befriending. Changi General Hospital has partnered with Temasek Foundation and the Agency for Integrated Care to provide mobile phones and mobile plans to needy seniors with little or no family support, so that they can access CareLine. Even as seniors stay home to reduce the risk of COVID-19 infections, they will have peace of mind knowing that care is just a call away. Service providers can also use digital technology to monitor their wellbeing and convey important messages on COVID-19.
Beyond digital access, individuals need to be equipped with relevant digital skills. To address skill gaps, including amongst seniors, there are various ongoing digital upskilling initiatives in the community. For instance, IMDA's Digital Clinics and the Tech Connect service at various Community Centres provide one-to-one support to address seniors' questions over smartphone usage. Various community partners and social service agencies also run Silver Infocomm Junctions to help seniors upskill themselves digitally. With the support of corporate volunteers from companies like Cognizant, Grab, and Microsoft, IMDA and National Library Board (NLB) have also recently launched online learning platforms, such as Virtual Digital Clinics, where seniors can have their digital questions answered remotely during the circuit breaker.
We recognise the importance of bringing more seniors on board this digital journey, especially during this COVID-19 situation where digital solutions can help safeguard our seniors' health and improve their quality of lives substantially. For example, seniors can remain digitally connected through video-calls with their friends and family, even as they stay home. We will thus be embarking on a nation-wide \"Seniors Go Digital\" movement, as mentioned by the Deputy Prime Minister in his Ministerial Statement last week, to inspire seniors to widen their horizons through digital adoption, and equip them with the digital skills to do so. As part of \"Seniors Go Digital\", we will provide needy seniors who aspire to go digital but lack the financial means to do so, with financial support to have phones. Minister Iswaran will announce more details shortly.
Everyone has a part to play. For those of us who have seniors at home, we can encourage them to come on board this digital journey and guide them in picking up digital skills. Businesses and community players can also contribute; many have come forward during this challenging period to support donation efforts that provide digital devices to those in need. Together, we can help our seniors go digital in meaningful and sustainable ways.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Guidelines on Purpose, Duration, Process and Substance of Public Consultations by Government Agencies","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"32 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (a) in each of the last five years, how many public consultations launched by the Government were (i) two weeks or shorter (ii) more than two weeks and less than one month and (iii) more than one month; (b) how does the agency decide the duration of the public consultation; (c) whether the Government will ensure that all public consultations run for no shorter than one month to allow sufficient time for organisations and individuals to consult adequately and provide higher-quality responses; and (d) whether the Government will issue a Code of Practice for all agencies to adopt regarding the purpose, duration, process and substance of public consultations.
Ms Grace Fu Hai Yien: The Government uses the REACH website to seek views from members of the public across a range of issues. From 2016 to 2020, the REACH website hosted a total of 113 public consultations for new policies and draft legislation. Fifty-eight of these consultations lasted from between two weeks to one month, and 53 lasted more than one month.
However, these consultations published on REACH's website represent only a slice of our overall engagement efforts. The Government engages and partners the public and stakeholders in many other ways, such as through dialogues, people-private-public (3P) committees, and focus group discussions. Recent major efforts include SGFuture (2015 -2016), which provided a platform for Singaporeans to discuss their hopes and dreams for the nation and to embark on their own projects, the Committee on the Future Economy (2017) that convened industry leaders to make recommendations for Singapore's economic growth, and public consultation on the Land Transport Master Plan 2040 (2018). The engagement mode must be fit-for-purpose, and so its design, duration, and target audience will vary according to the policy issue at hand.
Ms Ong asked if there will be a Code of Practice for public consultations. I agree with Ms Ong that we need to continually improve in how we engage the public. I am pleased to inform Ms Ong that the Public Service has many on-going efforts to level up agencies' and officers' engagement capabilities. We offer a suite of training programmes and resources that distill the principles and best practices of public engagement, and we constantly enhance these as we learn from experience and external experts. There are also field guides and digital tools to help agencies carry out engagements that best meet their objectives, and ensure a meaningful experience for their stakeholders.
Over the years, the Government has moved beyond just consulting, to partnering Singaporeans to co-create and co-deliver solutions for a better Singapore. This was reinforced when Deputy Prime Minister launched the Singapore Together movement in June 2019. Today, we have even more avenues for citizens to be involved in designing policies and innovating new solutions. In the past year, the Recycle Right Citizens' Workgroup (2019), and the SG Youth Action Plan (2019) have demonstrated the power of citizens and Government working together for a common cause. Our COVID-19 experience has also seen many examples of citizen and community groups stepping forward to partner the Government, to strengthen our healthcare system by volunteering, care for migrant workers, and rally Singaporeans' spirits in these challenging times.
Singapore Together is a new model of governance where Government, community and businesses partner each other, to build our future Singapore, together. This is especially important now. Only by working together, united in purpose, will we emerge from this COVID-19 situation stronger as a nation. I invite all my Parliamentary colleagues to join us in this Singapore Together movement.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Availability of Tertiary-Level Courses Related to E-sports","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"33 Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye asked the Minister for Education (a) how many tertiary institutions currently offer e-sports related courses; and (b) whether there are plans to increase the number of e-sports related diploma and undergraduate courses to match the demand for a skilled workforce.
Mr Ong Ye Kung: The Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) currently do not offer any specific e-sports-related courses. At a young age, students will benefit from a broader set of competencies and skills, which can be relevant to the e-sports industry. These include courses in Game Design and Development, Infocomm Technology, Sports Management, Graphics and Sounds Design, Events Management and Data Science.
Notwithstanding, some IHLs have worked with industry partners to incorporate aspects of e-sports into their curricula. For example, Republic Polytechnic has infused e-sports content into their Diploma in Business for students who have selected the Sport Management specialisation. These students can also take up internships or final-year projects in the e-sports industry, during which they are exposed to skills such as marketing, event management and logistics management.
There are also opportunities beyond the formal curriculum. Students can join clubs such as NUS' E-Gaming Society (NUSEG) and SMU's eSports. SUTD also runs a gaming research centre called the Game Lab.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Extension of Wage Subsidies under Jobs Support Scheme to Shareholder-directors with Assessable Incomes not Exceeding $150,000","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"34 Mr Lim Biow Chuan asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance whether the Ministry will extend the wage subsidies under the Jobs Support Scheme to shareholder-directors whose assessable incomes do not exceed $150,000 for the Year of Assessment 2019.
Mr Heng Swee Keat: We set an assessable income (AI) criterion of $100,000 or below to better target the Jobs Support Scheme at shareholder-directors who need more support. The AI criterion of $100,000 already corresponds to approximately the 80th percentile of personal income tax payers.
With the current criterion, the JSS already benefits about 50,000 shareholder-directors. Shareholder-directors who have marginally missed the AI criterion, or have suffered a significant drop in income, can submit an appeal to IRAS. We will assess each appeal on its merits on a case-by-case basis.
I would also like to add that all shareholder-directors continue to receive JSS payouts based on the wages paid to their local employees. They also benefit from other forms of business support, such as corporate income tax rebates and rental rebates.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Updated Budget Deficit Forecast for FY 2020/2021 after Budget and Supplementary Budget Announcements","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"35 Mr Leon Perera asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance (a) whether he can provide an updated budget deficit forecast for FY 2020/2021, after the main Budget and supplementary Budget statements up to and including 26 May 2020; (b) how much of this is financed via a reserves drawdown, by utilising the accumulated surplus from the current term of Government and by other means, respectively; and (c) what is the nature of the other means of financing, if any.
Mr Heng Swee Keat: The four Budgets in 2020 have deployed a total of $92.9 billion to support our economy and society in fighting COVID-19, and to position ourselves to emerge stronger. The Overall Budget Deficit for FY2020 is $74.3 billion or 15.4% of GDP.
The Government will draw $31 billion from past reserves to fund the measures announced in the Fortitude Budget. Taken together with the earlier $21 billion draw from past reserves for the Resilience and Solidarity packages, we are drawing a total of up to $52 billion from past reserves to fund Singapore's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Loan capital, which we expect to be repaid in the future and is hence fiscally neutral, makes up $22 billion of the total COVID-19 package. The remainder will be funded by the Government using current reserves. This comprises the accumulated surplus in this term of Government, including expected fiscal upside from FY2019 revenue and expenditure updated after the close of the financial year.
Singapore's fiscal response to COVID-19 is significant and we are able to do so as we have been prudent and have accumulated surpluses over the years. Our reserves are our strategic asset, built up through the discipline and prudence of our people and political leaders, across generations. Because we have prepared ourselves well, Singapore has the resources to meet this crisis with confidence.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Assessment of Overseas Reports of Children with Multi-system Inflammatory Syndromes Linked to COVID-19 and Steps taken Locally","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"36 Mr Murali Pillai asked the Minister for Health what is the Ministry's assessment of overseas reports regarding children who may be affected by paediatric multi-system inflammatory syndromes linked to COVID-19 and what steps is the Ministry taking in Singapore to deal with this development.
Mr Gan Kim Yong: Since end April 2020, countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain and the United States of America have been reporting cases of children requiring intensive care due to a rare paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome. A possible link with COVID-19 infection was suggested because some of these children had tested positive for COVID-19 infection. However, no strong evidence of such a link has been seen so far in Asian countries, such as Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore.
In Singapore, as of 28 May, 61 patients below the age of 16 years have tested positive for COVID-19. These patients were either asymptomatic, or had only mild symptoms such as fever, cough, sore throat, and diarrhoea. None of these patients had the symptoms suggestive of the multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or required intensive care or high dependency care.
The Ministry of Health notes that this paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome remains very rare, and information is still emerging. Nevertheless, MOH is monitoring the situation closely, and had issued an advisory to all medical practitioners on 11 May 2020 to refer potential cases that present with clinical features suggestive of this condition to the Children's Emergency at the KK Women's and Children's Hospital and the National University Hospital. MOH has also advised paediatricians managing COVID-19 cases to be watchful for this condition.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Help for Home Team Officers in Light of Additional Roles during COVID-19 Pandemic","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"38 Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Home Affairs what has been done, and what will continue to be done, to care for our home team officers as they take on additional roles to enforce law and order issues surrounding the fight against COVID-19.
Mr K Shanmugam: The Home Team officers are deeply involved in the COVID-19 crisis, from coordinating the whole-of-Government response at the Public Service level and supporting the Multi-Ministry Task Force, to implementing COVID-19 border policies and measures, supporting MOH in contact tracing, and enforcing Stay-Home Notices and egregious breaches of safe distancing. The Home Team has put in place various measures to protect and support the officers.
Home Team Departments have implemented split teams and safe distancing at workplaces. Officers who can work from home will do so. Temperature checks are conducted twice daily to ensure that our officers are well before they perform their duties. We are delivering more services using automation or through digital means to reduce physical contact.
For officers who may have to come into contact with potential COVID-19 cases, for example SCDF's Emergency Medical Services personnel, and Home Team officers helping manage the situation at Government quarantine facilities and foreign worker dormitories, they will don the necessary personal protection equipment (PPE), such as mask, face shield, gloves, cap and goggles. Alternative accommodation is arranged upon request for officers deployed for COVID-19 related operations, to minimise contact with their family members during the period of deployment.
We are also mindful about the mental well-being of our officers during this period. Supervisors and commanders engage the officers to gather feedback, motivate and raise morale. Self-care materials and guides are disseminated to officers on a regular basis. We have also distributed \"care packs\" which include personal items, such as reusable masks, Vitamin C supplements, and hand sanitisers.
Home Team psychologists and in-house para-counsellors look out for distressed officers. Home Team Departments have also intensified the manning of counselling helplines.
The Ministry will support and care for our officers working on Singapore's response to COVID-19.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Addressing Workplace Grievances of Trainees Hired under SGUnited Trainship Programme","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"39 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Manpower as the trainees under the SGUnited Traineeships Programme are not in an employment relationship and are not covered by the employment laws, how can these trainees obtain assistance and support in the event of workplace grievances and issues including work injury and harassment.
Mrs Josephine Teo: Mrs Josephine Teo: Under the Workplace Safety and Health Act (WSHA), the host company is responsible to ensure that workplaces are safe and without any health risks to every person on its premises, including the SGUnited trainees.
In the event of any harassment, TAFEP will assist and support trainees who encounter such incidents. TAFEP will advise the trainees on the actions they can take, such as reporting the incident to the HR or, if the conduct constitutes criminal conduct, to make a Police report.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Complaints by Foreign Domestic Workers during COVID-19 Pandemic","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"40 Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye asked the Minister for Manpower (a) what is the number of complaints lodged by foreign domestic workers (FDWs) since the COVID-19 pandemic started; and (b) what kinds of assistance, in particular mental health support, are available to FDWs facing conflict with their employers.
Mrs Josephine Teo: Over the past three months, the Ministry received an average of about eight complaints per 10,000 FDWs each month. This is comparable to the average number of complaints we received in the same period last year. While some FDWs had concerns about not having suitable or enough food, others had issues with their workload. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) investigates all complaints seriously and will take the party responsible to task in accordance with our laws. We will also provide whatever assistance and support we can to the aggrieved party.
Apart from raising their concerns to MOM, FDWs who face stress at work or require advice have access to various avenues of support. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like the Centre for Domestic Employees (CDE) and the Foreign Domestic Worker Association for Social Support and Training (FAST) each maintain a 24-hour helpline for FDWs. In addition, CDE partners mental health advocacy organisations, such as the Silver Ribbon to provide counselling services for FDWs who need someone to talk to. FAST has also developed various meaningful e-activities for FDWs to participate in, such as online mental resilience talks and exercise programmes, like Zumba, Pilates and yoga sessions, to help FDWs recharge and keep healthy.
As we all adjust to the disruptions in our households due to COVID-19, we encourage employers and FDWs to maintain open communication with each other and exercise extra understanding and sensitivity to each other's needs. FDWs are an important part of our households and we will continue to work with our partners to safeguard their well-being in Singapore.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Average Duration between Grant Application and Notification of Decision for Government’s Business Grant Schemes","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"43 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Minister for Trade and Industry (a) over the past three years, what is the average duration between grant application and notification of decision for each of the major business grant schemes administered by Enterprise Singapore (ESG) targeted at local enterprises; (b) what is the average duration between successful conclusion of a grant-funded business project and reimbursement of grant funding from ESG; and (c) what has been done to improve application and reimbursement procedures to help businesses innovate while maintaining cashflow.
Mr Chan Chun Sing: Enterprise Singapore (ESG) and our economic agencies adopt an enterprise-centric approach to support our companies to transform their business models, improve productivity and access new markets. This includes grants tailored to meet the needs of enterprises through the different stages of their growth.
In processing the applications and claims, ESG’s aim is to do so as efficiently and expeditiously as possible, while ensuring accountability and safeguarding the integrity of the system. Broadly, the time taken to process grant applications and claims depends on two main factors – how complex is the project and whether the company has provided the required information in a complete and timely manner.
We can expect processing time to be longer for grants that support projects that are more complex or require more customisation. For example, the Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) covers a wide range of supportable areas, from business strategy to automation. Each grant is tailored to meet the company’s needs. This means that each grant application will have its unique set of objectives, scope and cost components.
Not surprisingly, it takes longer to approve EDG applications compared to more standard applications under schemes like Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) and Market Readiness and Assistance (MRA). The average duration for EDG is seven weeks versus four weeks for PSG and MRA. For around 10% of applications which are more straightforward, the company will receive approval in about a week. This includes the time taken for applicants to respond to clarifications and to submit a complete set of documentation to ESG.
That brings me to the second factor, which is the completeness of information submitted by companies. Some companies readily provide the required information, which makes it quicker to process their applications and claims. However, when the documentation provided is not complete, ESG has a duty to clarify and check before approving the applications or disbursing public funds for the claims. This will inevitably slow down the process.
The average duration between submission of final claims and grant disbursement is between seven to 10 weeks across the three schemes. Where the documentation provided is clear and complete, disbursements can be made within two weeks.
To help businesses better manage their cashflow, ESG will exercise flexibility in the grant disbursement schedule while ensuring that the final grant amounts are accurately disbursed. For EDG projects with high upfront costs, ESG may disburse the grant in stages according to project implementation milestones. In addition, government agencies have started using PayNow Corporate to speed up payments to businesses. ESG is planning to do likewise for EDG, MRA and PSG so that companies can receive the disbursements more quickly. We are also open to other suggestions on how ESG can further improve its application and claims process, to help companies during these difficult times.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Incidence of Blood Clots and Heart Diseases in COVID-19 Patients in Singapore","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WANA","content":"47 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Health to what extent are patients with COVID-19 experiencing above-average rates of blood clots and heart disease, as some research suggest is being seen amongst COVID-19 patients globally.
Mr Gan Kim Yong: The Ministry of Health has been monitoring the emerging data globally on the increased risks of blood clots and heart disease in COVID-19 patients. MOH issued an advisory to all doctors on 20 May 2020 to highlight the emerging data on these risks, to advise them to be watchful for cardiovascular symptoms in COVID-19 patients, and to provide guidance on the evaluation and management of such patients.
Among our local cases so far, about one in 1000 experienced cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks and blood clots. Due to the small numbers, we are unable to definitively conclude whether this is higher than average compared to non-COVID patients here in Singapore. This is an ongoing area of research and MOH will continue to support studies on this issue.
From international data, we know that patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit are at higher risk, as they are immobile for prolonged periods and may have multiple co-morbidities. For such cases, our doctors take extra precautions, such as monitoring their coagulation status or the propensity for the blood to clot closely. In some cases, anti-coagulants are used to prevent blood clot formation. However, use of anti-coagulants must be weighed against the risk of bleeding, and our doctors will decide on a case by case basis.
In the dormitories, community care facilities and community recovery facilities, we have been educating workers and patients on preventive measures for cardiovascular complications, such as good hydration, staying active, smoking cessation, and early recognition of symptoms. They are advised to seek medical attention immediately if they feel unwell.
As COVID-19 is a new disease, we are learning more about it as we go along. MOH will continue to monitor the emerging evidence, and work with our clinical experts to ensure the best possible care and outcomes for our COVID-19 patients.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Update on COVID-19 Cases among Prison Inmates and Staff and Anti-COVID Measures Planned","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"1 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) whether he can provide an update on COVID-19 cases among prison inmates and Singapore Prison Service staff, if any; and (b) what anti-COVID measures are currently planned for the prisons after 2 June 2020.
Mr K Shanmugam: As part of the Singapore Prison Service's (SPS) precautionary measures, all newly admitted inmates in the Changi Prison Complex are segregated for 14 days away from the general inmate population. All newly admitted inmates undergo swab tests for COVID-19 upon admission and at the end of the segregation period, before they are allowed to join the general inmate population.
As at 3 June 2020, three inmates and one staff nurse from SPS's medical service provider had tested positive for COVID-19. These cases are not linked to one another. The inmates were admitted from the community to prison on different days and had tested positive for COVID-19 during their segregation period. The first inmate tested positive on 21 April 2020, the second inmate on 22 April 2020 and the third inmate on 9 May 2020. They were immediately isolated from the rest of the newly admitted inmates under segregation, and housed in a separate prison facility. Two of the inmates have since been discharged from the facility, while the other remains clinically well. The staff nurse tested positive for COVID-19 on 24 April 2020. He has since recovered and is back to work. There were no cases of further infection of COVID-19 arising from these cases.
SPS will only very cautiously and gradually de-escalate circuit breaker measures, given that the prison is a very high risk setting for the spread of COVID-19. Family visits and programmes for inmates will not resume immediately at the end of the circuit breaker period, but only in a slow, step-by-step manner, over a few phases depending on the general situation in the community. SPS will retain the precautionary measures it had implemented since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. These include measures to ensure early detection, infection control and safe distancing. Following the cases detected in late April and early May, there have been no new cases in prison.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Total Number of Scam Cases Reported and Accumulated Financial Losses since COVID-19 Pandemic Started and Preventive Action Taken to Protect Senior Citizens from Such Scams","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"2 Mr Melvin Yong Yik Chye asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) what is the total number of scam cases reported since the COVID-19 pandemic started; (b) what is the accumulated financial losses arising from such scams; and (c) what action is the police taking to prevent such scams especially among senior citizens.
Mr K Shanmugam: From January to April 2020, a total of 5,425 scam cases were reported with at least $60.4 million cheated. Of these, 394 were COVID-19 related scams, with at least $1.4 million cheated.
There are three scam types of concern that are related to COVID-19. First, e-commerce scams relating to the sale of face masks and hand sanitisers. Second, scams where scammers impersonate officials from the Ministry of Health (MOH) to obtain from victims their personal data and information. Third, phishing scams involving fraudulent emails and text messages containing fake offers or fake information on COVID-19 payouts, to trick victims into divulging their credit or debit card details and One-Time Passwords (OTP).
The Police have been taking action against such scammers. Between 3 February and 8 April 2020, they mounted island-wide operations leading to the arrest of 27 persons who were involved in scams amounting to more than $484,000. In these cases, the scammers had exploited the use of e-commerce platforms and online channels such as Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace, Carousell, WhatsApp and Telegram. Of the 27 subjects, 16 have been charged in Court.
The Police are also ramping up public education and awareness efforts. They and the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) are working with the Ministry of Communications and Information to issue scam advisories via WhatsApp on the Gov.sg platform.
Prior to the COVID-19 situation, the Police were already working with Residents’ Committees and grassroots volunteers to spread scam alerts to residents, including senior citizens, via WhatsApp and community events like block parties, roadshows, festive events and Community Safety & Security Programmes (CSSPs). One such CSSP focusing on the elderly is the Silver Watch Group. Launched in 2013, the initiative aims to impart elderly residents with crime prevention knowledge by keeping them informed of the latest crime situation and encouraging them to share relevant advice with their peers. These activities will resume gradually with the easing of safe distancing measures.
The key to the fight against scams is a discerning public. We should be sceptical of promises of incredulous inducements, transact only on reliable platforms, and always check with the relevant authorities when approached by dubious entities purporting to be their officials.
Everyone has a part to play in the fight against scams. Members of the public are urged to stay vigilant and report possible scams promptly to the Police.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Dedicated Line and Help Provided for Home Team Officers Facing Mental and Physical Stress when Conducting Spot Checks on Persons under Stay-Home Notice","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"3 Ms Joan Pereira asked the Minister for Home Affairs (a) whether there is a dedicated line for Home Team officers to call if they face mental and physical stress when conducting spot checks on persons under Stay-Home Notice; and (b) what help is being provided to ensure that these essential officers' well-being are met.
Mr K Shanmugam: Counselling helplines, manned by Home Team psychologists, are available to all Home Team officers, including those who are involved in COVID-19 operations. During this period, we have stepped up the manning of these helplines.
Home Team Departments have also put in place other measures to ensure the well-being of our officers working on Singapore's response to COVID-19. Our in-house psychologists and para-counsellors look out for distressed officers. Supervisors and commanders engage officers frequently to gather feedback, motivate and raise morale. Self-care materials and guides are disseminated to officers on a regular basis. We have also distributed \"care packs\" which include personal items such as reusable masks, Vitamin C supplements, and hand sanitisers.
Home Team Departments have also implemented various physical measures to protect our officers and these measures are elaborated in the reply to Q*38 on today’s Order Paper by Mr Christopher de Souza, as published in the Circular for Written Answers to Questions for Oral Answer Not Reached by End of Question Time on 4 June 2020.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Extending Relief under Part 2 of COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act 2020 to Cover Rental Agreements between Vehicle Hire Companies and Private Hire Car Drivers","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"4 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Law whether relief under Part 2 of the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act 2020 can be extended to cover rental agreements between vehicle hire companies and private hire car drivers.
Mr K Shanmugam: The COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act 2020 (the \"Act\") provides temporary relief from legal action for those who are unable to perform certain contracts as a result of COVID-19.
The Government has studied the possibility of extending temporary relief under Part 2 of the Act to rental agreements between vehicle hire companies and Private Hire Car (PHC) drivers, but has assessed that this is not necessary for the time being.
Part 2 of the Act imposes a moratorium on legal action, so that parties have time to negotiate and work out their differences. However, this does not, in itself, address the substantive decline in earnings faced by drivers during this period. To this end, the Government has been working closely with the taxi and PHC operators, the National Taxi Association (NTA), and the National Private Hire Vehicles Association (NPHVA), to provide targeted relief for drivers. The current package of relief measures includes cash grants, initiatives by operators, creating supplementary sources of income for drivers, and providing upskilling opportunities for drivers to move into adjacent sectors.
For instance, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) has worked with tripartite partners to launch the Point-to-Point Support Package (PPSP) to support drivers who have seen their livelihoods badly affected. Through the PPSP's Special Relief Fund (SRF), active PHC drivers can receive up to $10 per vehicle per day (or $300 per month), until 12 October 2020.
Apart from the SRF, PHC drivers can also draw on the Self-Employed Person Income Relief Scheme (SIRS) which provides eligible persons with $1,000 per month for nine months (or $9,000 in total).
All in all, under the SRF and SIRS, drivers can receive up to $1,300 of Government support per month in support to tide them over this challenging period. This is in addition to the Solidarity Payment, and other cash payouts announced under the enhanced Care and Support Package.
The Government also notes that some PHC operators and rental companies have stepped forward to offer rental waivers and discounts on commission fees.
To enable drivers to supplement their income, LTA has also temporarily allowed drivers to deliver food and groceries. To date, more than 10,000 drivers have taken on deliveries, and this has helped to cushion the fall in ridership earnings. LTA will continue working with tripartite partners to help drivers.
Support is also available for drivers who are looking to upskill and move laterally into adjacent sectors, or into new sectors. Under the Self-Employed Persons (SEP) Training Support Scheme, SEPs can receive up to $10 per hour when they attend approved courses.
To sum up, the Government has been working closely with tripartite partners in the PHC ecosystem to come together and share the burden in an equitable manner. For now, the Government has assessed that legislative intervention is not necessary. We will however continue to monitor the situation, and make changes if necessary.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Number of Tenants who Submitted Notifications for Relief under COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act and Number of Landlords who Filed for Applications for Assessor’s Determination","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"5 Mr Chong Kee Hiong asked the Minister for Law (a) to date, how many tenants have submitted Notifications for Relief under the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act; (b) of these Notifications, how many landlords have filed for Applications for Assessor's Determination; and (c) whether the assessors have a long backlog of cases.
Mr K Shanmugam: Between 20 April 2020 and 29 May 2020, 1,254 Notifications for Relief relating to leases or licences of non-residential property have been served using the online system.
We have always encouraged parties to first discuss, understand each other's positions, and try to reach a mutual agreement. It appears that many of those who submitted NFRs may be negotiating or have reached a mutual agreement with the counter parties, without requiring an Assessor's determination. In the same period, 125 applications (excluding rejected or withdrawn applications) for an Assessor's determination relating to leases or licences of non-residential property were filed with the Registry. Slightly more than half of the applications are filed by landlords or master tenants in the role of landlords.
The Minister for Law has appointed 266 assessors to hear applications for determination under the Act. There are enough assessors to ensure that applications for determination are disposed of in a timely manner. The process is also designed to be simple and efficient, so that applications can be dealt with quickly.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Collaboration with Global Scientific Community to Create a COVID-19 Vaccine","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"6 Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Health how is Singapore collaborating with the global scientific community to create a COVID-19 vaccine.
Mr Gan Kim Yong: The global scientific community is focusing efforts on research and development of an effective vaccine against the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Singapore has been contributing to these efforts.
The Duke-NUS Medical School has partnered with the US-based Arcturus Therapeutics in the development of a vaccine. The school supports the pre-clinical studies by conducting rapid screening of vaccine candidates for effectiveness and safety, as well as by conducting animal trials.
Local doctors and researchers have also engaged academic groups and vaccine companies from Europe, North America, Australia and China, on participation in clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccine. For example, the Duke-NUS Medical School has partnered with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) on a clinical trial which involves monitoring of side effects and immune response of trial vaccines among healthy individuals. Singapore has also registered as a trial site for the World Health Organisation's multi-country Solidarity Vaccine Trials.
Apart from vaccine development, Singapore has also been involved in the research and development of therapeutics to improve the treatment of COVID-19 patients. For example, the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) and public hospitals are participating in multi-national clinical trials involving the experimental drug, Remdesivir, which has shown to improve the recovery of COVID-19 patients in some studies.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Number of COVID-19 Tests Conducted and Expected Rate of Testing for Community Population","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"7 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Health (a) what is the total number of COVID-19 tests conducted to date for the community population, ie excluding foreign workers living in dormitories; (b) what is the number of tests conducted per million persons for this community population to date; and (c) what is the Government's expected rate of testing for this community population going forward.
Mr Gan Kim Yong: As of 1 June 2020, we have conducted over 408,000 tests1 for COVID-19, or 71,700 tests per million population.
Among these, over 202,000 tests were for the community population, which includes Singapore Citizens, Permanent Residents, and all long-term pass holders living in the community, but excluding migrant workers living in dormitories. This translates to more than 37,500 tests per million population in the community. These tests are used for community diagnostics, active case finding to prevent further transmissions, and surveillance testing, in particular for vulnerable populations such as our seniors in nursing homes and other residential care facilities.
We are ramping up our capacity to be able to conduct as many as 40,000 tests a day in the later part of the year. With this, we will continue to expand testing in the community to detect cases early and reduce the risk of large clusters from developing.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":["1 : Some of the tests are pooled across multiple individuals. In addition, this does not represent unique individuals, as each person may undergo multiple tests at different times."],"footNoteQuestions":["7"],"questionNo":"7"},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Plans to Reopen Economy in Stages after Circuit Breaker Ends","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"8 Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Trade and Industry how will the economy be reopened in stages after the circuit breaker ends.
Mr Chan Chun Sing: Singapore will exit our Circuit Breaker from 2 June 2020. We will ramp up our economic activity safely, in order to protect lives and livelihoods.
Currently, even during the Circuit Breaker period, we have allowed key companies in our global manufacturing, biomedical, and petrochemical sectors to continue functioning and supporting global supply chains.
From 2 June 2020, we will resume additional economic activities that do not pose a high risk of transmission. Sectors that will be allowed to reopen or ramp up their operations in Phase One include those that are closely intertwined with global supply chains, and those in settings with lower transmission risks. These include most manufacturing and production facilities, as well as office-based businesses and those that do not require interactions with large groups of people.
Businesses that reopen must comply with the requirements on safe management practices set out by the Ministry of Manpower and respective government agencies. These include enforcing safe distancing and mask wearing amongst their employees at the workplace, staggering working hours and break times, ensuring no cross-deployment of staff across teams or worksites, reducing physical interaction or mixing amongst workers, and cancelling or deferring social gatherings. In addition, businesses must allow their employees to Work From Home (WFH) to the maximum extent. Employees should only go into the office when demonstrably needed (e.g. to access systems or equipment that cannot be accessed from home, or to fulfil legal requirements such as completing contracts or transactions). The Government will conduct checks, and close businesses that do not provide a safe workplace, or fail to comply with safe management measures.
If community transmission rates remain low and stable in Phase One, more firms will gradually be allowed to reopen in subsequent phases. These include more consumer services (e.g. retail shops), and fewer restrictions on existing services (e.g. dining-in will be allowed at F&B establishments). Employers should, however, still ensure that those who can WFH continue to do so.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Current and Projected 2030 Energy Composition for Electricity Generation and Plans to Phase out Fossil Fuels","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"9 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Minister for Trade and Industry with regard to the target of generating 90% of Singapore's electricity through natural gas (a) what is the current energy composition for electricity generation; (b) what is the expected composition in 2030; and (c) whether there are plans to phase out the most carbon intensive fossil fuels like coal and oil from electricity generation by 2030.
Mr Chan Chun Sing: About 95% of Singapore's electricity is generated using natural gas. Non-fossil fuel sources (e.g. municipal waste, biomass and solar) accounts for 3%. The rest comes from a mixture of coal, diesel and fuel oil.
Natural gas, the cleanest form of fossil fuel, will continue to be Singapore's dominant energy source in 2030. We are working with power generation companies and industries to reduce their usage of high carbon fuels. In addition, we aim to increase our solar capacity by six-fold, achieving at least two Gigawatt-peak (GWp) by 2030. This will contribute to about 3% of our energy demand in 2030. We are also exploring opportunities to import clean energy from our neighbouring countries.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Data on Number of Dogs Euthanised and Their Causes in Past Five Years","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"10 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for National Development (a) in each of the past five years, how many dogs have been euthanised for (i) medical reasons (ii) aggression-related reasons and (iii) non-medical and non-aggression-related reasons; and (b) whether the Ministry will start collecting this data if it is not already doing so.
Mr Lawrence Wong: Currently, NParks does not collect data on the cause of death of dogs, including from euthanasia. NParks will look into this as part of its ongoing efforts to ensure that establishments uphold standards of good practice in animal welfare.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Actual and Expected Conversion of Natural Spaces to Urban Development and Carbon Sequestered under URA Concept Plan","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"11 Ms Anthea Ong asked the Minister for National Development (a) in the past 20 years, how much land has been converted from natural spaces to urban developments; (b) how much land is expected to be converted from natural spaces to urban developments under the URA Concept Plan; (c) what is the area of primary and mature secondary forests expected to be affected under the URA Concept Plan; and (d) what is the amount of carbon that is currently sequestered by the area expected to be affected under the URA Concept Plan.
Mr Lawrence Wong: The question by Ms Ong presumes that we are reducing the green and natural spaces in Singapore. But in fact, our urban plans seek to expand such spaces. In 2000, we had about 5,500 hectares of land in nature reserves, nature areas, nature parks, parks and gardens. We have increased this to 7,800 hectares today.
Under the Master Plan 2019, which guides development over the next 10 to 15 years, we will add another 1,000 hectares of parks, gardens, and park connectors. We announced plans to transform Singapore from a City in a Garden into a City in Nature during the Committee of Supply debate in March 2020, including plans for a new nature park at Sungei Khatib Bongsu, and planting one million trees by 2030. We will also continue implementing innovative and practical solutions to intensify greenery and restore nature in our urban areas, to further enhance liveability for our residents. In addition, where there are any new developments close to sensitive nature areas, robust assessments are undertaken in consultation with stakeholders, to ensure that the development works are done in an environmentally sensitive manner.
These efforts, together with other efforts to enhance our natural ecosystem and marine environment that provide carbon storage and sequestration, will strengthen our climate resilience. Singapore is committed to tackling climate change and meeting our pledge to peak emissions at 65 MtCO2e around 2030 in support of the transition towards a low-carbon and climate-resilient future.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Data on Work Permit Holders not Employed as Foreign Domestic Workers and not Eligible for Work Injury Compensation for Death and Permanent Disability in Past Five Years","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"12 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Manpower in each of the past five years (a) how many work permit holders not employed as foreign domestic workers (FDWs) died from injuries or diseases for which the individual was not eligible for compensation under the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA); (b) how many work permit holders not employed as FDWs suffered permanent disability from injuries or diseases for which the individual was not eligible for compensation under WICA; and (c) whether the Ministry will start collecting this data if it is not already doing so.
Mrs Josephine Teo: Every year, around 0.3% of foreign work pass holders file claims under the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA). Around 70 claims for fatal injuries and 2800 claims for permanent disability by foreign workers of all pass types are successfully resolved. They constitute the overwhelming majority of claims. Inadmissible claims were mostly because the injuries were attributed to non-work reasons. On average, around 1% of fatal injury claims and 5% of claims for permanent disability were inadmissible.
Regardless of whether the WICA claims were admissible, employers are required to maintain medical insurance for their foreign workers and pay for all medical expenses incurred in Singapore. The Migrant Workers' Centre (MWC) also provides additional emergency assistance to migrant workers who are in need.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Payout Conditions on Employers Regarding Leave under Jobs Support Scheme","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"13 Mr Murali Pillai asked the Minister for Manpower whether employers who have received payouts under Jobs Support Scheme are required to adhere to any stipulation in relation to consumption of vacation leave by their employees or requiring employees to go on no-pay leave.
Mrs Josephine Teo: Given the varied financial positions of employers, the tripartite partners agreed not to take a prescriptive approach on the type and degree of cost-saving measures (e.g. consumption of annual leave, no-pay leave) in issuing advisories1 to guide employers.
With the Jobs Support Scheme (JSS) payout, employers should provide some wage support to employees even if their employees are not working. To manage cost pressures and conserve manpower for when they are most needed, employers may request employees to clear some of their paid annual leave when business activity has been sharply reduced. Employers should be allowed to do so, and encouraged to seek their employees’ support and understanding to help the business get ready for business resumption. Where employers have genuine cashflow issues, they may not even be able to afford placing employees on paid annual leave and may have to request employees to go on no-pay leave, in order to avoid the worse alternative of retrenchment. In such instances, tripartite partners have made it clear that employers should allow their employees to seek additional temporary employment to boost their incomes.
The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is closely monitoring such cost-saving measures to ensure that they are implemented responsibly and fairly with reasonable support to employees. We will investigate employees' concerns that are brought to our attention. Irresponsible employers may see a withdrawal of Government-paid employment support including future JSS payouts, and suspension of their work pass privileges.
The tripartite partners urge both employers and employees to be open, transparent and understanding in their discussions on cost-saving measures and take a long-term view on saving jobs and emerging stronger together from the crisis.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":["1 : Tripartite Advisory on Managing Excess Manpower and Responsible Retrenchment and the Advisory on Salary and Leave Arrangements during the circuit breaker."],"footNoteQuestions":["13"],"questionNo":"13"},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Measures to Strengthen Singaporean Core in Workforce in Light of Deteriorating Economic Conditions","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"14 Mr Murali Pillai asked the Minister for Manpower in light of the deteriorating economic conditions that may lead to job losses, whether any steps will be taken to strengthen the Singaporean core in the workforce.
Mrs Josephine Teo: In the Unity, Resilience and Solidarity Budgets, the Government introduced measures to provide greater assurance and support to workers and businesses. Budget support measures, including the Jobs Support Scheme, have helped businesses to retain and retrain local workers. These measures have provided some cushion for the labour market. While the number of retrenchments rose in 1Q 2020, it was significantly lower than the quarterly peak during the Global Financial Crisis (1Q 2020: 3,000 (preliminary) versus 1Q 2009: 12,760).
However, I expect labour market conditions to weaken in the second quarter given the sharp fall in demand globally, as well as the implementation of circuit breaker measures in Singapore. We have therefore stepped up efforts to help displaced workers reskill and find new employment opportunities.
The recently-announced SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package under the Fortitude Budget aims to create a total of 100,000 jobs, traineeships, and training opportunities.
We will be expanding the SGUnited Jobs initiative to provide more than 40,000 jobs for locals in 2020. There is a wide range of job opportunities under the SGUnited Jobs initiative, which has been running since end-March. This includes short-term jobs to handle COVID-19 related operations, as well as longer-term jobs created in the Public Service and publicly-funded sectors, such as healthcare and early childhood education. We will also scale up career conversion programmes under the Adapt and Grow and TechSkills Accelerator initiatives to help locals join sectors with strong growth potential.
We are providing our recent and new graduates, as well as mid-career jobseekers, with more opportunities to gain valuable industry-relevant experience through the SGUnited Traineeships and SGUnited Mid-Career Traineeships programmes. These will increase their employability and prepare them to seize new opportunities when the economy recovers.
In the Unity Budget, we introduced a hiring incentive under the SkillsFuture Mid-Career Support Package. We are now enhancing the hiring incentive to cover all local workers, with higher support for mature workers.
We are keeping our foreign workforce policy tight to ensure that our foreign workforce complements rather than substitutes our local workforce. We are maintaining the increases to the minimum qualifying salary at the Employment Pass and S Pass level which I announced this year, and are continuing with previously announced plans to cut the S Pass quota in various sectors. The quota system ensures companies retain a core of Singaporeans if they wish to continue hiring work permit and S Pass holders; a smaller base of locals will also mean a smaller quota. We also strengthened the Fair Consideration Framework earlier this year by requiring more jobs to be advertised and raising the penalties for all forms of discriminatory hiring practices.
Strengthening the Singaporean core in the workforce remains our objective and we will continue to pursue this, even as we take into account current economic conditions.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Number of Claims Reported for Work Injury Sustained at Home While on Remote Working Arrangement from 1 January to 31 May 2020","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"15 Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan asked the Minister for Manpower what is the annual number of work injury claims reported to the Ministry from 1 January 2010 to 31 May 2020 where the work injury occurred at home while on a remote working arrangement.
Mrs Josephine Teo: MOM started tracking work injuries at home since the start of the Circuit Breaker period from 7 April 2020.
Since then, two work injuries were reported to have occurred at home while on remote working arrangements. The claims are currently being examined. As in all work injury claims, it is necessary to determine if the injuries arose out of and in the course of work. Employees with work injuries, including injury sustained while working from home, are eligible for compensation under the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA).
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null},{"startPgNo":0,"endPgNo":0,"title":"Number of Deaths and Breakdown by Causes of Work Permit and Special Pass Holders in Each of Past 10 Years","subTitle":null,"sectionType":"WA","content":"16 Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Manpower (a) how many persons on work permits and special passes have died each year in the past 10 years; and (b) what is the breakdown of the cases by cause of death.
Mrs Josephine Teo: Between 2009 and 2019, an average of 230 work permit holders died each year. This translates into a death rate of about 0.02%. The main causes of death were from natural causes, suicides, traffic accidents and workplace accidents. MOM does not have the corresponding data for special pass holders.
","clarificationText":null,"clarificationTitle":null,"clarificationSubTitle":null,"reportType":null,"questionCount":null,"footNotes":null,"footNoteQuestions":null,"questionNo":null}],"writtenAnswersVOList":[],"writtenAnsNAVOList":[],"annexureList":[],"vernacularList":[{"vernacularID":3961,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Mr Ng Chee Meng","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200604/vernacular-Ng Chee Meng Fortitude 4June2020 -Chinese.pdf","fileName":"Ng Chee Meng Fortitude 4June2020 -Chinese.pdf"},{"vernacularID":3962,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Mr Zainal Sapari","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200604/vernacular-4 June 2020 - Mr Zainal Sapari - Debate on DPM Statement.pdf","fileName":"4 June 2020 - Mr Zainal Sapari - Debate on DPM Statement.pdf"},{"vernacularID":3963,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Er Dr Lee Bee Wah","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200604/vernacular-Lee Bee Wah Min Fortitude 4June2020-Chinese.pdf","fileName":"Lee Bee Wah Min Fortitude 4June2020-Chinese.pdf"},{"vernacularID":3964,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Mr Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200604/vernacular-4 June 2020 - Mr Faisal Manap - Debate on DPM Statement.pdf","fileName":"4 June 2020 - Mr Faisal Manap - Debate on DPM Statement.pdf"},{"vernacularID":3965,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Ms Tin Pei Ling","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200604/vernacular-Tin Pei Ling Fortitude 4June2020 -Chinese.pdf","fileName":"Tin Pei Ling Fortitude 4June2020 -Chinese.pdf"},{"vernacularID":3966,"sittingDate":null,"vernacularTitle":"Vernacular Speech by Mr Saktiandi Supaat","filePath":"d:/apps/reports/solr_files/20200604/vernacular-4 June 2020 - Mr Saktiandi Supaat - Debate on DPM Statement.pdf","fileName":"4 June 2020 - Mr Saktiandi Supaat - Debate on DPM Statement.pdf"}],"onlinePDFFileName":""}