Singapore, unsettled by its first
riot in more than four decades that involved 400 foreign
workers, will continue to tighten the influx of overseas
laborers, said Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin.
While foreign labor has contributed to the growth of the
economy, there has been a cost, including a strain on
infrastructure, Tan, 44, said in an interview with Haslinda Amin
on Bloomberg Television on Dec. 13. The government is also keen
to boost the productivity of local companies, he said.
“We are continuing to tighten our manpower policies
because we do want to move to a leaner approach,” Tan said.
Asked whether poor living conditions contributed to the riot and
if the government would step up measures to ensure foreign
workers’ well-being and safety after the incident, he said
“it’s premature to conclude that actually it’s because of all
these other deep-seated reasons and therefore the riot
happened.”
Discontent over the number of foreign workers, who make up
about a third of the workforce, has risen after years of open
immigration and led to the worst election result for the ruling
party since independence. The riot that broke out on the night
of Dec. 8 in the city’s Little India district after a bus ran
over and killed an Indian national has reignited the debate
about Singapore’s dependence on overseas manpower.
A survey conducted in 2011 by the government among work-permit holders showed 90 percent were “relatively happy” to be
in Singapore, 80 percent wanted to stay and about 70 percent
were happy to recommend their friends and family to come to
Singapore, Tan said.
Dispute Cases
“It was a fairly large sample size and that has pretty
much been echoed by the feedback we’ve been getting,” he said.
“In the aftermath of the riot, again we’ve pushed out to find
out the sentiments and it’s quite consistent.”
Singapore authorities prosecuted five Chinese nationals and
deported 29 others over their involvement in an illegal strike
in November last year, an unusual public display of labor
discord. The striking workers, all from China, were unhappy with
their salary increments and raised concerns about living
conditions, according to their employer SMRT Corp. (MRT)
The manpower ministry has had about 3,700 dispute cases
over issues including salary and work conditions brought to them
this year, Tan said. There are around 1.1 million lower-skilled
foreign workers in Singapore, according to the Ministry of
Manpower.
Worker Curbs
In September, the city widened measures to contain foreign-worker inflows to include professional jobs, responding to
complaints that companies were hiring overseas talent at the
expense of locals. In February, the government said that
companies must pay higher levies for lower-skilled foreign
employees over the next two years and cut the proportion of
overseas workers in some industries.
“We’re beginning to see it take effect, the pain is being
felt by companies,” Tan said. “You do not know when exactly,
at which point it will bite and you don’t want to overdo it, but
a series of measures have been unfolding over the last few
years.”
Singapore added 33,100 jobs in the third quarter and the
unemployment rate was 1.8 percent in the same period, the
Ministry of Manpower said in a report on Dec. 13. The labor
market will remain tight next year and the government expects
some upward wage pressure in 2014, Ministry of Manpower
Divisional Director Adrian Chua said last month.
“If the government tries to implement ways to raise living
conditions of work permit holders, this will indirectly add
costs to producers,” said Joey Chew, a Singapore-based
economist at Barclays Plc. It “might actually make them more
wary about increasing, bringing in more workers.”
Reasonable Treatment
The island’s population has jumped by more than 1.1 million
since mid-2004 to around 5.4 million, driven by immigration,
leading to congestion and competition for housing, jobs and
education at a time of widening income inequality. A proposal to
boost the population to 6.9 million by 2030 prompted thousands
to protest in February.
Thirty-three people have been charged in relation to the
Dec. 8 riot, according to the police. The government banned the
sale and consumption of alcohol this past weekend in Little
India, which draws thousands of foreign workers on their Sunday
day off.
Tan said the nature of the rioters and where they are from
doesn’t indicate that labor relations contributed to the riot.
“I’m not denying that there are egregious cases, there
are, I see them myself,” Tan said. “But I wouldn’t therefore
paint that picture of the entire landscape. I think by and
large, workers here are reasonably looked after and we will go
after employers that mistreat their workers.”
To contact the reporters on this story:
Sharon Chen in Singapore at
schen462@bloomberg.net;
Jasmine Ng in Singapore at
jng299@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stephanie Phang at
sphang@bloomberg.net
Singapore Will Stick to Foreign-Labor Policies After Riot
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