Sunday December 25, 10:17 PM
Ministerial panel on low wage workers to present report early next
year
The Manpower Ministry said the Ministerial Committee on low wage
workers was in the final stages of its deliberation on measures to
assist them and its report was expected early next year.
The panel, announced earlier this year by Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong, is looking into the challenges face by low wage
workers.
Touching the People: that is what Mr Lee's government has been
doing through various schemes in the past year.
And one challenge which Singapore is facing is the widening income
gap.
While this trend cannot be reversed, the government says what can
be done is to help lower income Singaporeans keep up and find new
opportunities.
PM Lee Hsien Loong said: "As the economy picks up people will feel
where is my share, so this is just to remind everybody that firstly
things are getting better and secondly we are seeing to
everybody."
Singapore has some 240,000 full-time workers who currently earn a
thousand dollars or less.
Many of them are older or less educated and their incomes have not
risen as fast as those of other Singaporeans in the past 5
years.
So the Prime Minister has emphasised that Singapore must prevent an
underclass from forming and growing as that would undermine and
fracture the country's social cohesion.
He said it was a multi-faceted problem with no quick and easy
solutions and would require a comprehensive effort.
Last June, Mr Lee launched the S$500 million ComCare Fund so that
the disadvantaged can help themselves through new programmes and by
enhancing existing ones.
And he also tossed up the idea of a special workfare bonus
targeted at the low income baby boomers in their 40s and
50s.
Lim Swee Say, NTUC Deputy Secretary General, said: "Low wage
workers are low wage workers for different reasons. What we can do
is come up with various options."
"For those who are already at the workplace and do not have the
skills and the jobs that are able to pay them to pay them higher
salaries, we find ways to upgrade the skills, redesign the job, so
that hopefully, more and more of the low wage workers of today can
be a higher wage worker of tomorrow."
But it's not only the government, employers and unionists who are
helping the needy level up in society.
President S R Nathan too has been playing his part through the
President's Challenge.
He was sworn in on September 1st for a second six-year term after
he was returned unopposed on Nomination Day.
Singaporeans also paid tribute to their country's past Presidents,
two of whom passed away this year.
The late Dr Wee Kim Wee, who was fondly called the People's
President, died in May while Dr Wee's predecessor, Mr C V Devan
Nair, who was instrumental in shaping today's NTUC and a founder of
the Peoples Action Party, passed away in Canada in December. -
CNA/ch
