EP application from foreign workers

[luule.tati]

Hi,

We are an outsourcing software company. Employees from Head Office in Vietnam will come to support in the coding project with our customers in Singapore. So, please help me with some concerns:

1. Could we apply for all 4 employees at the same time?
2. Our office in Singapore is not eligible to sponsor our 4 employees from Vietnam, so which local company we should contact as a sponsor?

Thank you.

[Strong Eagle]

You need a legal business entity in Singapore in order to make application for an EP for an employee. Period. End. Or, the company you are contracting to must be willing to hire them as employees into their own company.

No local company will touch this as you are attempting to violate the whole EP process. The government wants locals to be hired. You want to bring in Vietnamese on contract, and without creating your own legal entity. It aint going to happen, at least not legally.

You can enter into a contract with a local firm to provide programming services but those programmers will need to be working in Vietnam, not in Singapore.

[luule.tati]

I think the sponsor does not need to hire our employees. They are just a local company and authorized by us to apply manually.
Please see at MOM's website: https://www.mom.gov.sg/passes-and-permi ... ligibility
scroll down, you will see:
"An employer or authorised third party has to apply for a candidate’s Employment Pass.
If you are an overseas employer that does not have a registered office in Singapore:
You need to get a Singapore-registered company to act as a local sponsor and apply on your behalf.
The local sponsor must apply manually."

As I know, the third party is the agency on the list licensed by MOM here: https://www.mom.gov.sg/eservices/servic ... nel-search

And we need to find an agency to authorize to apply, is that correct?

[Strong Eagle]

Like I said, good luck in finding a local company who will do what you want, which is to sponsor your employees. The employment agency will not do that. They can process the EP application for you but there must still be a Singapore registered company that actually applies for the EP. Again, you won't be able to do what you want.

[luule.tati]

Thank you for your suggestion. I still hope it succeed because I read the personal case by Siv in this forum. He apply by himself although the company does not have any registered office in Singapore.

[Strong Eagle]

"Hope" isn't going to do you much good. You need to understand the rules. And the rules are essentially this.

1. If you want to bring people into Singapore to program you must have your own Singapore registered company.
2. Your Singapore registered company must apply for the EP's for the people you want to bring into Singapore.
3. You must be able to prove that you could not find similar talent in the Singapore population before your request for EP is granted.

Do you realize that if it were so simple as finding a sponsor company and applying for an EP, there would be tens of thousands of people from you country and hundreds of thousands of people from the sub-continent all applying for EP's to get into Singapore?

You must know how extremely difficult it is for a foreigner to find work and live in Vietnam legally. It is very difficult. It's the same in Singapore.