That is total nonsense. There are more than enough foreign
workers in Singapore.
1 in 3 people in Singapore
is a foreigner and you can’t get workers? As they say in the finance sector;
it’s not a matter of whether you can buy or sell, it’s a matter of whether you
can buy or sell at the price you want!
Singapore
employers don’t want just foreign workers; they want cheap foreign workers! They
want foreign workers who are willing to work for long hours and low wages. I
can understand that because that’s what foreign workers are here for; to
suppress wages. It’s not unusual for foreign workers to earn just $4-$5
an hour but times are changing.
Things have been pushed too far. Foreign workers now no
longer want to come to Singapore
and almost all of them would rather go to Taiwan,
Hongkong or even Malaysia!
A few weeks ago, the Strait Times newspaper even ran a story on a Chinese
national named Zhang Mingpu. The 23 year-old is returning to China after working for a stint in Singapore and
he said that he will not be returning. Mr. Zhang said that he could get a pay
similar to what he is getting in Singapore
when working in China so he
would be working in China
from now on.
He was talking about China!
You know wages are a problem
here when wages in Singapore
is only on par with wages from China!
I think that was why Members of Parliament (MP) from the ruling People’s Action
Party (PAP) recently said that Singapore
may need to go “cold-turkey” on foreign workers and asked if immigrants create
jobs.
They have finally realized that wages are truly too low here in Singapore and even though they will not say it
in public, they understand that wages in Singapore need to increase. Since the PAP have always refused to impose a minimum wage (and they would lose too much face if they reverse the policy publicly), slowing down the number of cheap foreign workers is the only way to go.
2 comments:
everyone (except you) knows that, in recent years, S'pore's main economic competitior is malaysia.
so, as long as the wages in malaysia is in dirt cheap malaysian ringgit, this means S'pore cannot raise its salary levels for its low-level employees.
That is right. Our main competitor is Malaysia but our wages are NOT on par with Malaysia; they are on par with CHINA! I mean this guy mentioned in the Strait Times actually says his salary in China is the same as in Singapore!
Oh, and our wages are NOT above Malaysia right now. You may argue that Singapore cannot raise its salary levels due to Malaysia but if you count in the cost of living, wages in Malaysia is better than in Singapore! What's worse is that the cost of living in Singapore is rising; private home prices are rising again. Malaysian wages are exactly more competitive than Singapore’s because their lower cost of living means that people working there can send more money home if they work in Malaysia. That’s why more foreign workers now rather go to Malaysia than come to Singapore.
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