Is it as straight forward as it has been made out to be by the
resident Bar "Manager" in this Speaker's Corner ?
The following is taken from selected details of
the Budget 2009 – ‘Re-skilling: SPUR for workers and
professionals’.
In this 2009 economic downturn, the Singapore Government has
shown signs of desperation not shown in the previous downturns of
1987, 1997 and 2002 - and the "Aid Programs" offered has never been
given before.
(C) JOBS FOR SINGAPOREANS
C.1. We
will introduce a Jobs Credit scheme to help employers to keep their
workers. We will also strengthen our subsidies for training and
provide additional support for lower-income workers who face a
reduction in pay during the downturn. Finally, the Government will
also expand recruitment across ministries and statutory boards, for
all levels of employees, and including mid-career
professionals.
C.4.
But wages are only part of the total cost of doing business. We
expect businesses to find every way to cut unnecessary costs in
their operations, improve efficiency so as to reduce overheads
without having to retrench workers. As NTUC Secretary-General Lim
Swee Say has urged, businesses should cut costs to save
jobs, not cut jobs to save costs.
C.5.
The Government will however, provide a significant incentive for
companies to retain existing workers, and where their business
warrants, to employ new ones. The
Jobs Credit will provide every employer with a cash grant to reduce
their costs of employing Singaporean workers during the
crisis.
Jobs Credit will have broadest impact
C.6.
The Jobs Credit that an employer
receives will comprise 12% of the first $2,500
of the wages of each employee who is on the CPF
payroll. It will be given
in four quarterly payments, with each payment being
based on the workers who are with the employer at the time. This
will therefore provide incentive for employers to retain their
local workers. For example, for a worker whose wage is $2,500, an
employer will get $900 a quarter, or $300 a month.
Re-skilling: SPUR for workers and professionals
C.12.
The second component of our Jobs programme is to help Singaporeans
upgrade their skills so that they can stay employed or seek
re-employment. This is the reason why the Government launched the
Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) last December
which provided higher course fee support for companies and
individuals and absentee payrolls for companies that send their
workers for training.
C.15.
We will make two more enhancements to SPUR to help PMETs re-train.
SPUR currently provides course fee
subsidies of 80% for PMET-level courses. We will be increasing the subsidy rate for PMET
courses that are eligible for SPUR to 90%, the same
subsidy level as rank-and-file level courses. This includes all
Specialist and Advanced Diplomas offered by our
polytechnics.
C.16.
Further, WDA will bring under SPUR, selected tertiary courses at
UniSIM and our three publicly funded universities.
C.22.
The Government will also be expanding recruitment.
C.23.
In all, we expect a total of 18,000 public sector jobs to be made
available over the next two years4. (This includes
government-supported jobs outside of the Government in areas such
as childcare, tertiary education, and restructured
hospitals.)
4 This includes
close to 7,500 in teaching positions and teaching support staff for
our schools and tertiary institutions, 4,500 healthcare
professionals and administrative staff for our hospitals and 1,400
for our Home Team and over 2,000 for MINDEF, which has been
announced earlier by the respective ministries. In addition, the
rest of the public service have plans to recruit an additional
2,600 jobs over the next 2 years. These jobs comprise policy,
operational and administrative positions in various government
agencies, as well as positions in more specialised areas such as
Project Management, IT, Accounting and Urban Planning.
Click on the given link if more detailed and accurate reading is
required.