Extract of  Parliament report - 20th July, 2009

Mdm Ho Geok Choo ( MP West Coast GRC) asked the Minister for Manpower with unemployment rate remaining high in the first quarter of 2009, what other measures can the Government undertake to help the unemployed.

The Minister for Manpower (Mr Gan Kim Yong):  Mr Speaker, Sir, as the economy contracted, the seasonally adjusted overall unemployment rate rose to 3.3% in March 2009, from 2.5% in December 2008.

 The Government acted quickly and decisively to roll out the $20.5 billion Resilience Package during the Budget this year.  Initiatives like the Jobs Credit, the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) and the Tripartite Guidelines on Managing Excess Manpower, have helped companies to cut costs and save jobs.  The Government has also brought forward some of the hirings for the public sector, making available some 18,000 jobs over these two years, in addition to the jobs in the private sector.

 To help unemployed Singaporeans find jobs, WDA, NTUC's e2i, the CDCs as well as the CET Centres have stepped up efforts to better reach out and assist jobseekers on their employment and training needs. In just six months since SPUR started, more than 19,000 jobseekers have been placed into jobs, significantly more than the 13,000 for the whole of 2008.  In addition, WDA had in May introduced SPUR-JOBS, a scheme to encourage recruitment and retention of trainees of SPUR and other WDA CET programmes. Within just one month, 50 companies have committed to hire 1,200 local workers in various industries such as retail, finance, infocomm, maritime and logistics.

 In this downturn, more PMETs have been affected compared to previous recessions.  This is why we have implemented the Professional Skills Programme, including the PSP Traineeships (PSPT), to help PMETs and fresh graduates enhance their skills and employment prospects. As of end-May 2009, about 36,000 PMETs have been trained or committed to training under PSP.

 This package of measures has been effective in reducing retrenchment and unemployment rate, as well as help unemployed find jobs. We will continue to focus on helping companies and workers tap on these measures.  While the Government and unions can do their best to help, a successful placement can only be achieved if both jobseeker and employer have realistic expectations.  WDA, the Career Centres and NTUC's e2i have a total of 25,000 job openings in their job bank presently, and are doing their best to try and match Singaporeans to these jobs.

My Ministry will continue to monitor the situation closely and, where necessary, introduce new programmes to help workers and job seekers.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo):  Sir, I have three supplementary questions for the Minister. According to the Straits Times dated 4th July, there were a total of 27,000 jobseekers registered with Career Centres but they could not fill the 20,000 immediate vacancies in their job bank.  There appears to be a mismatch of skills.  How can MOM help to resolve this issue?

 I would like to ask the Minister: how do we account for those PMETs who are undergoing training to set up their own businesses?  Do we include their businesses under the category of "employment"?  How many of these PMETs have indeed moved to that category of self-employment?

 My second supplementary question has got to do with Career Centres that are facilitating their outreach to offer better job-matching service to PMETs.  Feedback indicates that very qualified candidates are asked to consider vacancies such as butlers, waiters, security guards.  Though many of these PMETs are prepared to take up the lower-paying jobs, they balk at actually being given this kind of job offers.  How can we ensure a refinement in the job-matching service that we are providing?

 I would also like to ask the Minister this.  Apparently, there is feedback that when these PMETs do not go for job interviews referred by the Career Centres, they will be given warning that they will not be considered for future job vacancies.  This has resulted in a lot of fears and concerns.  I am just wondering how we can actually guide the Career Centres to do a better job.

Mr Gan Kim Yong:  Sir, Mdm Ho is correct that there are about 27,000 or 28,000 jobseekers in our databank.  But, today, we have 25,000 jobs available for them. The issue is how we can match them better.  Over the last few months, the CDCs and the Career Centres that we have set up have enhanced the job-matching capability by providing job counselling, training and upgrading.  It is important for us to remind our jobseekers and employers that they must have realistic expectations.  Some of the jobseekers are not job ready.  And when they are not job ready, our career counsellors will profile them, identify their needs, and some of them will need to go through some basic employability training to acquire the basic skills in employment, such as how to attend interviews, how to prepare their CVs, how to present themselves, and how to be more self-confident.

Through some of these programmes, we are gradually helping these workers find jobs. I mentioned earlier that we have placed close to 20,000 jobseekers over the last six to seven months.  I think we are making progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done and we will continue to press on with our efforts to reach out to these unemployed and help them adapt to the working environment and match them to jobs.

The second question refers to PMETs who have established new businesses.  When we look at unemployment data, we are basically asking the surveyed candidates whether they are looking for a job and whether they already have a job.  If a PMET has started a new business, he will be concentrating on his business and will not be looking for a job.  Therefore, when we do the survey, he is unlikely to reply that he is looking for a job.  In that case, he will not be in the unemployed data when we do our survey.  That is how the survey is done.  In a nutshell, for PMETs who already started on a new business, generally, they will not be included in the unemployment statistics.

Mdm Ho also asked how we can refine our job-matching services, especially for those PMETs who refuse to go for job interviews and whether we threaten them.  Sir, the truth is that there are quite a lot of workers that we need to help, and we want to focus on workers who are prepared to be helped.  We try our best to match them to jobs and arrange interviews for them.  But if jobseekers are unwilling to go for interviews, it will take up a lot of our resources and it is better for us to focus on those who are willing to be helped.  Therefore, we would like to remind jobseekers to cooperate with our career counsellors.  When we arrange interviews for our jobseekers, we encourage them to go for these interviews.  If they have problems managing the interviews, like the timing is not suitable because they have other commitments, we try our best to reschedule our interviews to suit their needs.  Sometimes, we even organise interviews and job fairs within the training centres so that the potential employers can come to the training centres to meet up with our trainees while they are undergoing training, and they do not have to make separate arrangement for interview.  So, there and then, in situ, right where they are trained, they have an opportunity to meet up with potential employers. This is how we facilitate job-matching at our Career Centres.  We have tried very hard and we would appeal to our jobseekers to cooperate with us and help us to help themselves too.

We will continue to look at ways to refine and improve our career counselling and career matching services at our Career Centres.  Of course, there is room for us to continue to improve, and we would certainly welcome feedback and suggestions from Members as well as the jobseekers.

Mrs Josephine Teo (MP Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC):  Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to ask the Minister if he is aware of a recent survey that reported more companies indicating their intention to increase hiring.  I would like to ask if the Minister could comment on this and whether he expected the unemployment rate to be reduced anytime soon.

Mr Gan Kim Yong:  Sir, some of the companies are increasing their hiring.  In fact, even during the last three months, during the depth of the recession, there were companies still hiring.  But I would caution against premature optimism.  It is important for us to continue to be vigilant and continue to work hard at creating jobs and preparing our workers, upgrading them, so that they are more employable.  When these job opportunities are created and companies are beginning to hire, workers will then be ready to tap on these new job opportunities.

The outlook remains uncertain, particularly this quarter as well as the next quarter.  Whether the hiring will be sustained will depend a lot on their order books over the next two quarters.  Although some sectors may be hiring, it is still not broad based.  When I talked to the companies, anecdotally, most of them are unable to see far beyond the third or fourth quarter.  So I think it is important for us to continue to press on with our various measures to upgrade our workers, prepare them and enhance their skills as well as employability.  This will benefit us in the long term.  And when the economy really recovers, when there are more job opportunities, these workers will then be ready to tap on these opportunities.

Mr Speaker:  Mr Zaqy, last question.

 Mr Zaqy Mohamad (MP Hong Kah GRC):  At the Meet-the-People Session, I still do come across residents who have gone to the CDC asking for jobs.  They have also done what the CDC has asked, like they have gone for the SPUR and WDA-sponsored training.  Yet after three or six months, they are unable to get jobs even after going for interviews.  So this is a group of people that have been cooperative and gone through the process and yet somehow we are not able to help them. I am just wondering whether MOM has done a study of the profiles in its database to see whether we need a different measure to tackle this problem.  Because I suspect they are the bottom of the barrel and we probably need a different strategy for them.

Mr Gan Kim Yong:  Mr Speaker, yes, indeed, within our Career Centres, we do study the profiles of our jobseekers.  There will be some jobseekers who find it more difficult to find jobs for a variety of reasons.  Skills mismatch is one; familiarity with a new sector is another.  Some of them may have to switch to a new sector or industry that they are not familiar with.  Our Career Centres are quite mindful of this and they have made the extra effort to identify those who are facing greater difficulty.  We provide them with intensive counselling and we also make special efforts to work with the employers to help match them to their jobs.  But for some of them, they may need a bit longer in order for them to find jobs which are suitable to themselves as well as matching the employers' needs.

The answer to the Member's question is "yes", we are mindful of them and we have put in additional efforts to focus on helping this particular group.  But we also want to caution against labelling them, because it is important for us not to give them the impression that they are the difficult group and therefore one might entrench the mindset that it is difficult for them to find jobs.  So we would rather treat them more or less the same but we pay special attention and put in additional effort to help them find jobs.  This way, employers will not have the stigma on this group of workers who may find it more difficult to find jobs. I think we want to treat them as equally as possible but put in additional efforts to help those who may have more difficulty in looking for jobs.