A couple of times over the past few months I've had a guy in to the office to talk about what's on offer, from the likes of SPRING and government bodies dishing out the PIC, DTD and other incentives.Strong Eagle wrote: So... Singapore is hemorrhaging decent paying blue collar skilled jobs. The gahmen sees there are not other blue collar jobs these employees can move to. So it implements a policy "up the food chain"... trying to become competitive higher up an industrial vertical... design, finance, marketing, distribution... and hopes by squeezing the nuts of the MNC's doing the hiring by increasing minimum salaries and qualifications, and decreasing the number of permits allowed, that the companies will hire locals for these positions.
The amount of money available is staggering!
The government pay to employ older workers, graduates, the low paid etc. and also to train them, put in a training program if one doesn't exist, pay the trainer. There's multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars available when added to PIC, DTD and the humble Tax Rebate.
The one word that comes to my own mind? Panic.
Bear in mind I'm talking from an Mechanical/Electrical engineering background and not banking, IT etc. then...........
There is a feeling that "up the food chain" with all this incentivised training, "high value manufacturing" (whatever the heck that is, and yes, there are only so many companies like Rolls Royce that can set up jet engine manufacturing) will solve all problems. Coaxing companies in or simply to stay, training up an ever increasing number people that don't want to be trained because they don't want to make anything. It's all very well having and training management but unfortunately all the incentives won't keep in place the workload for them to manage anything.
With the downturn in Manufacturing, O&G, Marine and other sectors here during this difficult time what also some need to twig is......once these jobs move to cheaper Vietnam, Philippines, China etc. they don't ever come back. The government does understand this, hence the hundreds on millions of dollars available in incentives (you notice I didn't ask who pays for this?).