Managing the foreign workforce

The ministry of manpower has to manage the local and foreign workforce to meet the goals of ensuring that locals have jobs and that the business has access to the foreign workforce to meet their needs (where the locals are not available). They tried different methods in the past years and have not found a good solution. They tried the "Fair employment Framework" which requires the employer to look for locals first, before asking for approval from MOM to employ foreign workers. They created two portals for the employers to look for locals. Both portals do not appear to provide the solution. I like to suggest a new approach to achieve these two goals. a) MOM should provide in its portal, the types of job, the required qualifications and the minimum salary. b) Interested local and foreign workers can submit their interest in this portal. They have to provide evidence that they have the suitable qualifications. MOM should be satisfied that the qualifications are genuine. The workers can pay the employment agents to make the submission. c) The employer can view the available workers in the portal and invite them for an interview and hire the suitable workers. d) The employer has to pay a levy to recruit a foreign worker. This system can continue. It should be extended to cover employment pass holders as well. e) The govt can provide a wage subsidy to the employer to employ a local worker. It can be 20% to 30% of the wages for one year. This will cover the employer CPF contribution. The above measures will give the employers a financial incentive to employ local workers. There is still the risk that the foreign worker may be willing to accept a lower salary than specified or allow the employer to recoup the levy from the wages. This risk can be managed separately, if it is serious. However, this risk is not likely to be serious, as the employers have the financial incentive to employ locals. The new approach also reduces the incidence of false declaration on qualification and experience, as the checking will be done by MOM or its appointed agency. I hope that the above approach will make an impact and give better job opportunities for locals, and still allow access to a foreign workforce to supplement the local supply. https://tklcloud.com/Feedback/feedback.aspx?id=3189​​​​​​​