Singapore’s tendency to rely on the continual acceptance of
cheap foreign labour has made it a “one-trick pony”, said
Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) director
Corinna Lim.
Speaking as a panellist at a forum on the country’s population
issues on Saturday afternoon, Lim noted that its excessive
dependence on foreign workers over the years is a short-term one
that needs to end sooner or later, and that there are other ways to
promote economic growth that we somehow stopped working on.
“The problem with Singapore is that suddenly, we became a one-trick
pony,” she said, addressing about 50 members of the public in
attendance. “Our one trick was bring in more cheap foreign labour;
we will increase GDP every year. And that is true, but it’s not the
only trick in the book — (yet) it became so convenient for us that
we used it all the time.”
Lim added that Singapore’s reliance on foreign workers extends
beyond short-term economic goals to caring for the sick, the aged
and the young.
“This one trick is very short-term. How many more people can we
have?” she asked. “I’m sure we can take 6 million (people), we
might even be able to take 6.5 million. But how many more
beyond there? There must be an end to this... we can’t keep adding
more and more people.”
In another point on Singapore’s population, the government’s
repeated statements relating fertility rates to the need for
foreign workers to support economic growth over the years are
“illogical”, said Lim.
Quoting the then-Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng in 2010, who
said Singapore’s low fertility rates mean that it “must keep
bringing in foreign workers to support economic growth as the
population ages”, Lim said, “If you think about it, (it’s)
completely illogical.”
“Having one extra foreign worker today is not going to make any
difference at all to the number of people that we have 20 years
from now, which is what this fertility issue is about,” she
continued. “This (the mass admission of foreign workers) has
nothing to do with fertility; this has everything to do with the
short-term economic needs that exist today — it’s not to do with
fertility, so stop trying to confuse us with this.”
Profit versus cost approach ‘forces us to ground
zero’
Adding to the discussion was fellow panellist Vincent
Wijeysingha, treasurer of the opposition Singapore Democratic
Party, who said Singapore’s economic climate of seeking the highest
profit from the lowest cost will eventually “force us to ground
zero”.
He said going along the line of our “one trick” of continually
bringing in more and more foreign workers would still not enable us
to compete with countries that have much larger populations, such
as Indonesia, South Africa and Papua New Guinea.
“(The three countries have) huge populations where you pay far
lower than you would pay in Singapore,” he said. “So the idea that
we can somehow compete — cheaper and cheaper and cheaper labour —
eventually you bottom out, you flat-line.”
Wijeysingha added that Singapore could go in the way of Liverpool
and Detroit in the 1970s and 80s, where in the case of Liverpool,
its docks and traditional manufacturing industries entered a sharp
decline when containerisation replaced its labour strategy, and for
Detroit, its automobile industry took a hit when foreign vehicles
entered the fray.
While these cities and their parent countries — the UK and the U.S.
— sought refuge in their primary industries, Wijeysingha said
Singapore “cannot take shelter in a primary industry to stabilise
us”.
“An economy that seems fixated on the low-wage model is heading for
crisis,” he added. “We don’t have to be economists to say this,
(and) the inability of the government to comprehend this is not
something we, the people, should have to put up with any
longer.”
Data shows impact on low-wage workers: Leong
Lim and Wijeysingha were among a panel that also included The
Online Citizen chief editor Kumaran Pillai and statistician Leong
Sze Hian, who tackled issues relating to the question of whether or
not Singapore can support and sustain a 6 million-sized
population.
Speaking on the issue of the influx of S-pass and work permit
holders who depress the wages of Singaporean workers, Leong pointed
out that the impact of this phenomenon has been telling through
available statistics.
Even though unemployment rates on the whole may stand officially
below 2 per cent, Leong noted that the rates for cleaners,
labourers and related services are higher, at more than 5 per
cent.
Aggravating the situation is the fact that the net pay for these
workers is falling over the years instead of rising with inflation,
with Leong adding that in the past decade, real wages for this
category of workers fell by more than 30 per cent when adjusted for
inflation.
He also observed that there appears to be discrimination by age in
the workplace, where at the median level for male workers in
Singapore, real wages start to fall by age 38. By the time he
reaches 55, a man at the median income level earns the same as what
he did when he was 33, said Leong.
“We can sustain a 6 or even 6.5 million population,” said Leong.
“The more important question I would ask, though, is what kinds of
people are we bringing in?”
-- Yahoo!
