By Gerald
Giam
Workers’ Party chief Low Thia
Khiang has slammed the PAP government for seemingly suggesting that
Singaporean workers have only themselves to blame for their low
incomes, because of their low productivity and skills. He said it
was easy to blame our local workforce for low productivity
when it was the Government which opened the floodgates to foreign
workers.
Low was speaking Parliament on
Tuesday in response to the Finance Minister’s Budget 2010 speech
last week.
The Opposition leader pointed out
that manual workers like cleaners and garbage collectors in
developed economies are paid so much more than their counterparts
in Singapore, attributing this to those countries’ more
compassionate and effective policies to ensure that workers at the
bottom of the economic ladder enjoy a decent and dignified
life. Referring to the Government’s latest productivity drive,
which is to grow productivity by 2 to 3 per cent each year over the
next decade, Low wondered if low wage workers had to wait
another 10 years for the wage increases which they had not seen in
the last 10 years.
Low lamented that Singaporean
workers are constantly told by the Government to “up-skill,
re-skill, multi-skill, be cheaper, better, and faster”. He accused
the Government of “squeezing every drop of effort and energy from
our workers to achieve its desired GDP numbers”. He felt that the
‘growth at all costs’ strategy initiated since the late nineties
resulted in the present state of our economy where low wage earners
are growing dependent on state-funded handouts to subsist. He
charged that for Budget 2010, the Government is using their
same conventional wisdom to address the fundamental problems caused
its policies of the last decade.
Abolish the foreign worker
levy
Low called the Government to take a
bold step to remove the foreign workers levy completely, and
instead use the Dependency Ratio to control the growth of foreign
workers in Singapore. (The Dependency Ratio sets how many foreign
workers a company is allowed to hire for each Singaporean worker.
The current ratio ranges from 1 Singaporean for every 7 foreign
workers in the construction sector, to 1 is to 5 in the marine
sector.) He reasoned that employers will save on the foreign
worker levy they currently pay, and this could be used to benefit
their local workers, including providing more training for them to
improve their skills to become more productive.
Low also questioned whether the
proposal to increase foreign worker levies was a revenue-enhancing
exercise. He calculated that the Government collects about $1.6
billion in foreign worker levies each year.
Continuing education for
older workers
In order to provide more adult
continuing education programmes to cater to the needs of older
Singaporeans, Low suggested starting a community college for
citizens of all ages, especially older Singaporeans. He said
the college should have no or minimum entry requirements, offering
courses that are totally modular. This would allow senior citizens
to earn credits towards a degree or simply for self-enrichment
purposes.
The PAP’s
response
Responding to Low, PAP MP Josephine
Teo criticised his suggestion to remove the foreign worker levy.
She said: “To try and introduce an alternative system to a pricing
mechanism is a very dangerous suggestion to make. It opens up a
whole pandora box (sic) of the difficulties we have to
overcome.”
Teo was dutifully following the
PAP’s modus operandi of labelling any bold idea suggested by an
Opposition MP as “dangerous”. She said that without the levy,
foreign workers will be cheaper and more attractive to businesses,
and some will find loopholes to get round the quotas, to get
cheaper workers, “affecting jobs for Singaporeans”.
She did not explain what loopholes
businesses would find to get around a higher dependency ratio, in a
country which is renown for very strict enforcement of laws. She
also seemed oblivious to the fact that it was the PAP government
which opened Pandora’s box of troubles by allowing in so many
unskilled foreign labourers over the past decade, and in the
process depressing Singaporean workers’ wages and our nation’s
productivity.
In a flash
of presumptuousness, Teo declared: “I can speak on behalf of
the union leaders that we totally and firmly reject Mr Low’s
disastrous suggestion that we remove the foreign worker levy as it
will harm our workers’ interest.”
