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2. Employers:
- All employers who have not breached any legislation
- in the listed job types under Temporary Job Scheme
Temporary Job Scheme: How?
- While all foreign workers can work in all sectors, NTS workers are
not allowed to work in Manufacturing and Services sector
Temporary Job Scheme: Relevance
- Foreign workers who are holding the Special Pass can stay legally
in Singapore
- The Temporary Job Scheme offers them a channel to seek
employment opportunities
- Based on the system, foreign workers would be safe from
unscrupulous agents or employers since all job matches are
carefully screened through Ministry of Manpower to ensure
legitimacy
- Compared to Hong Kong and Taiwan: Singapore has a government
system which provides a central channel to help foreign workers in
need seek jobs
- Temporary Job Scheme represents a state effort and ‘helping hand’
in attending to migrant workers’ welfare
Temporary Job Scheme: Problems!!!
- unequal opportunity for NTS workers to seek jobs through the
Temporary Job Scheme, but…
they constitute a large group of the Special Pass holders present at
the Job-Placement Exercises (based on site observations)
- Without money for food and shelter, these foreign workers do not
even receive the most basic needs, much less decent welfare
The Reality: Experiences of Foreign
Workers
3. Jobs Non-Suitability:
- the jobs matched to them are often not the jobs they prefer
- wages are low and they do not find interest in the jobs, they are
most likely to give up on the match
- Foreign workers, like any other workers, seek a balance between
wage and appeal of a particular job
- a reasonable requirement for any workers seeking employment
opportunities in the labour market
The Reality: Experiences of Foreign
Workers
4. Alternative Choices:
- enjoyment of ‘freedom’ as a Special Pass holder; not under the
surveillance and control of any employer
- however, this does not preclude them from experiencing realistic
issues such as lack of money, food and shelter
- reality is that foreign workers face more than two choices when it
comes to finding jobs in Singapore
- between a higher and lower paying job, they go for the higher
paying, and often illegal, job
- compounded by the fact that they need to earn the most in the
shortest time to return home
The Reality: Experiences of Employers
1. Inaccessibility to Information:
- largely lack information on the Temporary Job Scheme’s terms of
employment
- ‘not sure; not bothered to find out more’ attitude
- if they do not know more details of the Scheme…
no incentives to employ foreign workers under the Temporary Job
Scheme
- seems to be more of a hassle to them
The Reality: Experiences of Employers
3. Over-Reliance on Philanthropy:
- attribute their willingness to employ foreign workers through the
Temporary Job Scheme as an act of compassion
- justified their offering of lower wages as a form of incentive to
employ foreign workers through the Scheme
- inflected through the politics of difference; misconstrued as
philanthropy
So?
- low wages offered by employers cannot be conceived solely as a
kind motivation nor bargaining labour costs of employers…
but possible discrimination based on nationality and differences
Focusing Control, Lacking Commitment
1. Temporary Job Scheme has its relevance… But:
- focus is on management of foreign workers
- the arrangement of a foreign worker to be employed shifts the
responsibility of management and surveillance from the state to the
employer
2. Permit all job offers available to foreign workers under the TJS,
regardless of their source countries
4. system which foreign workers can indicate their job and wage
preferences
Recommendations
On wage Security
1. include information on the TJS and relevant details such as the
terms and conditions on MOM website