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PMETs do face uncertainty, PM Lee now (then?) admits

makapaaa

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http://www.fuckwarezone.com.sg/img/forums/hwz/statusicon/post_new.gif Today, 05:59 PM #1

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http://forums.fuckwarezone.com.sg/images/icons/icon13.gif PMETs do face uncertainty, PM Lee now admits

http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2015...ee-now-admits/

Quote:
Pampered, mediocre, expensive, timid”?

That was how the Government-controlled local press once asked of the professionals, managers, executives and technicians – or PMETs.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, however, seems to now admit that the problems faced by this group of Singaporeans are in fact real.

After insisting for years that “foreigners do not take jobs away from locals”, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has now tacitly admitted that perhaps they do, and this has affected the PMETs in particular.

The government’s position on foreign workers or foreign talents, however, was not always so.

“I hope Singaporeans will look at the contributions of foreign workers objectively – they are not here to steal our jobs, but to help us enlarge the economic pie,” Mr Lee said in his May Day Rally speech in 2008.

Now, he says such competition between locals and foreigners present him with a “problem”.

“[When] a PMET comes to compete with a PMET, I have a political problem,” Mr Lee said in an interview with Ambassador-at-Large Professor Chan Heng Chee on Sunday.

Prof Chan had asked Mr Lee how the government would address the concerns of PMETs “who worry that foreigners are prepared to come in to work for less pay and they are marginalised.”

“So, how do you stop PMETS from being passed over and lose out as a result?” she asked.

Mr Lee replied that the situation has changed somewhat from earlier days when “the PMETs were a very small portion of the population.”

“And so if you are a PMET, you are at the top 10 per cent,” he said. “You are presumed to know to how to look after yourself and the numbers are not big, but now PMETs are maybe half the workforce.”

Now, however, Mr Lee says the government “can’t quite take a let-things-be approach” anymore.

“I think that we have to make sure that the PMETs get a fair opportunity, that they fairly treated and that we are not overwhelmed by an inflow which is squeezing our own people,” he said, apparently admitting that the influx of cheaper foreigners is a danger to locals losing their jobs.

Mr Lee cited the government schemes which have been introduced to help PMETs.

Nonetheless, Mr Lee said that “there will always be frictions when you have a foreign worker population or immigrant population in the country” and that the government would have to “manage that”.

Mr Lee’s remarks in the interview is a somewhat different take on the issue of foreign workers or foreign talent.

In his May Day Rally speech in 2008, Mr Lee had insisted that “foreigners do not take jobs away from locals”, amidst complaints that Singaporeans were being passed over in jobs by employers who preferred foreigners.

And in 2011, Mr Lee was again adamant that “foreigners create good jobs for Singaporeans”.

In a 2011 Yahoo report, Mr Lee was reported thus, when defending the government’s open-door policy on foreigners:

“PM Lee cited statistics to rebut the notion that foreigners are competing with Singaporeans for jobs. He said that of the 1,200 workers at IM Flash Singapore, six in 10 employees are Singaporeans and permanent residents (PRs), and four in 10 are foreigners.

“Furthermore, two-thirds of the managerial and professional positions are taken up by Singaporeans and PRs, while two-thirds of the technician and manufacturing jobs are done by foreigners.

“Without the foreign workers, we would not have attracted this US$3 billion investment, and Intel and Micron would have built its wafer fab elsewhere,” said PM Lee.

“But by allowing in a controlled number of foreign workers, far from disadvantaging Singaporean workers, we have created more good jobs for Singaporeans. For every one foreign worker, we have created 1.5 local jobs in this project,” he added.

Indeed, Mr Lee’s position seems to waver from time to time, one moment telling Singaporeans that they should not be paranoid about the future, and in the next, saying that they should in fact be paranoid.

“I think that is what Singapore needs to do – to be aware, to be paranoid so you always know that somebody can take your lunch away,” he said last year, 2014.

But in 2015, in an interview with the Financial Times, when Mr Lee was asked “if Singaporeans still need to feel insecure” about their future, his response was:

“You don’t have to be paranoid but you do have to take risks very seriously.”

While the results of government support schemes are yet to be seen – whether they will indeed give locals a fair opportunity when it comes to jobs and wages – what is also disconcerting is how young these Singaporeans are who are finding it hard to find jobs and need help from the government.

A recent Ministry of Manpower (MOM) report showed “that close to three in four workers retrenched in the first quarter of this year were professionals, managers, executives and technicians, compared with one in two last year,” the TODAY newspaper reported.

“Over half did not find new jobs within six months.”

Workers aged 40 and above took a longer time to find jobs, compared to younger ones.

Older PMETs have got it worse, and needing more support in finding jobs after being retrenched.

Lee
Lee
This was why Career Activation Programme — a tie-up between the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and local social enterprise GioCareers – was recently introduced to provide support for older unemployed PMETs.

“Hopefully somebody ‘up there’ reads this and improves the predicament of many like myself,” said Mr Long, 58, in a recent Straits Times report.

Mr Long used to work as a general manager in the oil and gas industry, drawing some $15,000 a month.

Now, it takes him eight months to make that much – Mr Long now works as a taxi driver after having lost his job, and after having spent six years looking for another one.

“I’m not asking to become a GM again, I just want to be somewhere I can contribute with my experience,” he said.

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makapaaa

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Today 7:12 PM http://sgfuck.org/mybb/images/mobile/posted_0.gif Post: #13
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how to make sure he don't anyhow talk again
Simple: vote this clown out.

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makapaaa

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Today 7:54 PM http://sgfuck.org/mybb/images/mobile/posted_0.gif Post: #31
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Today 7:51 PMsogo Wrote:of course. so many people i know who are working in pmet jobs told me that they are stressed up everyday. worrying about 500k mortgage, worried about company replacing them with cheaper spu grads. http://sgfuck.org/mybb/images/smileys_yahoo/rolling%20on%20the%20flor%20laughing.gif​
There's NO more hope if SPU master degree holder with basic degree from Mumbai university affiliated college can get IDA consultancy job ... earning $7k (??) a month ... how can NUS NTU compete with such talents?
 

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Today 3:52 PM http://sgfuck.org/mybb/images/mobile/posted_0.gif Post: #131
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Pamela Lim's Facabook post

Singaporean PMETs
================
All eyes were on me when I asked the Provost if the university had considered employing Singaporeans in their search to fill the academic positions.

I was curious why we were told a world-wide search was on in America, Europe and Asia, and there was no mention of a search for local talents. Don't we have Singaporeans who are capable of filling the positions of professors and lecturers?

Of course, in a room filled with Ang Mos and where I, a Singaporean, was a minority, I knew I sounded callous and xenophobic. This was four years ago when I was still a full-time faculty member. I wonder if things have changed.

Now, don't get me wrong. My colleagues were top notch in what they do, they were a great bunch and they brought knowledge and diversity to the system. But as a concerned Singaporean, I saw a different side of things and I was and am still very concerned.

Not only for the professors' jobs, but for all PMET jobs. You see, I saw first hand how hard it is for youngsters to get their degrees to become PMETs. It is a road many Singaporean parents believe will lead their children to success and are therefore willing to pay a high price for.

The price of education is deceptively high in Singapore. As a country with one of the highest tuition rates in the world at 97% (according the ST report 7 Feb 2009) overshadowing even countries like China, Hong Kong and Korea.

If the invoices readers sent to me were indications, some parents pay more than overseas private schools per subject. Does that then mean a whopping 97% of us are paying private school education prices though the kids are attending public or government schools?

Comparatively, an estimate of 24% in the US and 13% in Australia attend private schools.

Even with all the money spent to prepare for universities, there are limited places in local universities and not everyone will make it. And even if one makes it to a local university, not everyone can afford it. As a result, many Singaporean PMETs end up with a study loan at the end of the academic journey.

Now here is something I don't even get. Even with the hard earned PMET qualification, most won't even earn enough to retire.
Here's why.

Assuming people work from 24 to 65 years old and have an increment of 4.5% (as reported by Asia Pacific Salary Budget Planning Report) throughout their working lives, Singapore's risk-free interest rate of 0.9%, assuming all of us diligently save 20%* of our salaries, no lapse of employment, then a fresh graduate needs to earn $4,791 per month to achieve that desired $1.38m to retire as reported by ST.

According to MOE's graduate employment survey, it means no graduate will earn enough this lifetime to retire... either because his starting salary is too low, or he starts work as PMETs too late. Unless... he/she is an anomaly.

Does this mean there will be more and more elderly carton collectors and tissue aunties/uncles going into the future, more young PMET-qualified taxi drivers, hawkers, plumbers, electricians and construction workers?

I do not know the future, but I do know that it was Singaporeans' parents and grandparents who toiled to build a nation, it is our Singaporean boys who spend up to 2 years in national service followed by another 10 years or so of reservist to keep this country safe and sound, to protect our assets, and for economic stability, presumably.

Is it then right, that we should ensure the best jobs are for reserved for our Singaporean PMETs, and not for those who find this place a tax refuge, a quaint East-meet-West hotchpotch, or a beginner's gateway to the exotic Asia.

It is so fun and beautiful here, we not only attract the topnotch foreign PMETs, as they move up the corporate ladders, they are bringing in their mediocre friends to fill in positions that Singaporeans can do better as well. Friends whose own economies could not find good jobs for them, and who make this place home until their children are due for National Service, friends who have friends at the top which Singaporeans do not have.

While we should always embrace foreigners into our midst and acknowledge the values they bring, we should never forget who will be holding on sentimentally to their Singapore properties and who will be returning home to their free healthcare and cheap housing once their skills are deemed feckless.

Surely, these must be of some value to some of us.
 

makapaaa

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Today 4:26 PM http://sgfuck.org/mybb/images/mobile/posted_0.gif Post: #135
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makapaaa

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If Singapore grow by leaps and bounce, there wouldn't be any need to manage foreign PMET. They will be queuing to get in. There would always enough people to keep the GDP going.

If Singapore sink into the depths of abyss, every foreigner will flee. Even you offer them citizenship, they won't want.

If they are coming here to work and goes back home after, where is the issue?

It is only when they come in and REPLACES locals where the locals wants those jobs.

They, subsequently, REPLACE more locals with their pals and they sponsor their pals for PRs and citizenship.

Why is it that our brightest people cannot see the issue?

 
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