Chitchat Why Jamus Lim join Workers' Party ?

Jamus invites you to pose questions.

Jamus Lim​

1d ·
A final call for anyone who may not be doing something this Sunday afternoon: join us for The Workers' Party Youth Wing (WPYW) Post-Budget Debate, and watch how teams take on key issues emerging from #Budget2025. In addition to seeing how the debates unfold, you’ll also get to engage in thought-provoking discussions of your own, and get the chance to pose your own questions!
Sunday, 16 March
1:00 PM
701 Geylang Rd, #04-02, Singapore 389687
Sign up here: https://forms.gle/k31EFqCsLyBsFBZs5

Jamus is concerned.

Jamus Lim​

4d ·
Singapore has a skilled worker gap. Reports indicate that as many as 4 in 5 companies face workforce talent shortages. The solution by the government has been to import such human capital from abroad. This, in and of itself, isn’t a big deal. If those skills cannot be met by the local workforce, then allowing companies to hire foreign talent helps keep them economically viable. To the extent that this then creates new jobs that locals take on, it becomes a win-win. The problem, then, is when these jobs that are filled by foreigners can actually be performed by our own graduates, or if we’re not doing a good enough job (no pun intended) of preparing our students for what employers want.
One reason for the latter is not so much that we don’t have a good enough educational system—we still routinely rank among the best globally, even if one may quibble about methodology—it is that we seem to be in an educational arms race. Most of us are familiar with how our performance is frequently determined relative to our peers, when we are “graded on a curve.” This is appreciated when one faces a very difficult course, when everyone is struggling to cope. But the opposite happens when it is an easier subject: if scaling were to be applied, then those who actually know their stuff—and who would otherwise score an “A”—get unfairly penalized, with a marked-down grade.
This is problematic if we believe that the purpose of education is to transfer knowledge, rather than to sort between the wheat and the chaff. After all, we don’t say to someone who can drive properly that they also need to drive better than others, too. If so, then we need to adopt a different mindset about who should get into our institutes of higher education. In particular, entry criteria should care less about relative entrance criteria, but absolute ones. In other words: make the cut based on whether you have what it takes to pass the required courses and obtain the diploma or degree, and you should get into the program.
As long as the criteria are set realistically, this won’t dilute quality at all. In exchange, we ensure that all students that possess what it takes to be able to graduate aren’t denied the opportunity to study what they wish. Some may argue that this could saddle weaker students with an unbearable debt burden, should they end up dropping out. One way to minimize this risk is to ensure that resources are expanded to ensure that nobody is left behind. And truth be told, I’ve never been convinced that performance in one high-stakes test, like the “O”/“N”/“A”-levels, is indicative of future success. Indeed, many successful people (including CEOs, politicians, and academics) have shared how they did poorly in a given exam.
Others claim that this would result in the overproduction of graduates. But in reality, what we have is a shortfall in skills training. We then try to fill these with foreign graduates, who may not have been good enough to success in our present system to begin with. I would much prefer us to take our local students, and channel them toward the courses where there are industry needs. This is especially the case with applied degrees, like those from SIT, SUSS, and SUTD. Our top students can still be channeled into our flagship research universities, like NUS and NTU, via relative standing, to ensure that these schools attract and retain the best minds worldwide.
Such an approach is tried and tested. The French public Université system is generally open to all who have passed the baccalauréat, their high school diploma equivalent, while top students tend to try for the private Grande Écoles instead. In Germany, certain universities go as far as to practice free admission (just meet basic university entrance criteria), with standards for tougher courses maintained by having students who cannot handle the material to voluntarily drop out. And while the prestigious University of California system maintains tough standards, the next-tier California State University system has much more liberal entry policies, with underrepresented college students even assured entry into certain courses.
Education Minister Chan, in his response, objected to the idea. He explained that the goal isn’t to increase the number of graduates, per se, but to ensure that we match graduates to the actual needs of employers. I can’t agree more, but the fact is that making tertiary education entry dependent on meeting minimum entry criteria isn’t mutually exclusive with making sure matches are optimized.
In fact, my point is that we are neglecting the huge pool of potential students at home, who are interested in and able to pursue programs of study that is needed by industry, but who are overlooked because they are shut out of programs due to their high-performing peers. We then crow about how we need better matching and more imported talent, when the human capital is already there, waiting to be trained and deployed. That is real failure that I see, and one that can be addressed by minimum-entry-criteria universities. #makingyourvotecount

Jamus chatted with residents.

Jamus Lim​

2d ·
Over the past week, #TeamSengkang went by 259B #Compassvale as well as part of 351A #Anchorvale. We also made our way to chat with residents at the 303 coffeeshop. Many residents, as before, shared about how costs of living remain a major challenge for many. This is not just the case for households, but also businesses. One small business owner, whom I had met several times before, shared about how her industry (IT retail) was being killed by high rental costs.
As I had shared before, I believe that our land pricing model bears a good part of the blame for escalating costs of living. High rents and real estate prices don’t just get passed on to consumers through higher sticker prices for goods and services. The government’s position on this, based on their responses in parliament, has been that rental and real estate prices are only a small part of the total costs of running a business, which is dominated by the wage bill. Ergo, their argument goes, it cannot possibly drive inflation.
I believe that this misses the bigger picture. That’s because rental and land costs are unavoidable, compared to labor costs. For anyone who has taken a course in economics, they would see why: land is what we call a fixed cost. Once a contract is signed, rent has to be paid, regardless of whether the business is profitable. So even if one is not making enough, bosses will tend to keep things running, so that this fixed cost can at least be recovered (in technical terms, this occurs so long as the average variable cost is less than the price). And if the firm has some pricing power, it will raise prices to make sure this happens.
In contrast, labor is what’s known as a variable cost. Companies will keep hiring workers until the additional benefit of taking on the next worker is offset by the additional revenue that the worker is able to bring in (technically, this occurs when marginal costs are equal to marginal revenue). Put another way, businesses can—and will—shed employees if keeping those workers on payroll doesn’t justify the additional profits they might generate. All this means that there’s less likely to be pressure to raise prices, since firms can just scale back on hiring instead. Of course, companies can’t go on like this forever, but they’ll do so until they figure out how to make the business model work.
It’s also for this reason that I suspect that land could have a multiplier effect, which will show up in overall prices. If firms are forced to pay more for rent, they’re likely to raise the prices of their own goods and services. But this just means that consumers—who are also workers—will now demand a higher wage, to make ends meet. This could have a cascading effect, and add fuel (the word du jour these days is “turbocharge”) to inflation. I believe that keeping a lid on land costs is essential to keeping our economy healthy and competitive. #SengkangGRC

Jamus wants us to listen to one another.

Jamus Lim​

13h ·
A few months back, a representative from Protect-Singapore reached out to me, asking if I would be willing to join a dinner with various folks associated with the organization. Over several hours, we had a wide-ranging discussion over many aspects of family, relationships, and local politics.
After the dinner, I was invited to another event, Healthy Family Day, a carnival organized by various church-affiliated groups. I accepted the invite, and so this past weekend, I showed up at Marina Barrage to check out the festivities.
I believe that progress in society depends heavily on all of us listening to each other. This will only happen when there is genuine conversation, and an effort to try to understand, empathize, and respect the points of view of others, even if we may continue to disagree with them, rather than shout them down.
That’s an important motivation for me in choosing to attend the festival, together with the simple courtesy of accepting an invitation to an event by a resident of #SengkangGRC. I truly believe that this is the way we move forward as a democratic society.

Jamus finds a tricky balance.

Jamus Lim​

2d ·
It’s often tricky to find the right balance between environmental sustainability and cost saving. Many of us have an instinctive belief that making green choices must necessarily mean paying more, since brown choices are often cheaper. Admittedly, this is true in some instances. Organic food, for instance, usually costs more than non-organic, not least because of greater spoilage when herbicides and pesticides are used much more sparingly. For a long time, this was also the case with energy. Nonrenewable fuel sources were often cheaper to produce than their renewable counterparts. But increasingly, fossil fuels are becoming less competitive than solar and wind.
This can also be seen in transport. Electric vehicles (EVs), if run on electricity generated from renewable sources, promise to be both green and, over the full lifespan of a car, cheaper to run. If there is one area here where we could do more to promote reductions in waste and reuse of existing resources, it would probably be in batteries. Battery packs are the most expensive single component of an EV. Warranties for the battery tend to be around 8 years (these differ by manufacturer), but the potential lifespan of the battery is much longer; usually closer to 16 years. So these two offer reasonable lower and upper bounds for when we might wish to change them out.
Singapore is winding its way toward an all-EV fleet (the government’s target is 2040). Yet there is an inconsistency between the current COE regime—where the standard duration is 10 years, with the possibility of 10 or 5-year renewals—and this anticipated battery lifespan. But the 10-year duration that was chosen is actually arbitrary; it was chosen, in 1980, to align with the expiration of a registration fee rebate (called PARF). There’s no technical reason why we need to hew closely to this, going forward. We can reset these durations to better align them with battery lives. Making them be 16 years (with 8 or 16-year renewals) makes more sense for an EV fleet, than the current 5/10 year system.
Imagine changing out your battery after 8 years, and then getting to drive it for only another 2 years. And if you renew your COE, you’ll again be misaligned, because your battery will need to be changed midway through your 2nd COE. It just seems silly. This has obvious consequences for sustainability, too. The last thing we want is to decommission a car that has just changed out its battery, just because its COE has expired. So it’s not just silly, but wasteful.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that COE prices won’t adjust upward to reflect the longer durations (although it won’t be one-for-one, given the way discount rates work). And the 16/8-year durations aren’t set in stone; they could evolve as battery tech advances. But the general approach strikes me as a sensible way to ensure that we balance the dual goals of affordability and sustainability, better than we do today under the existing COE regime. #makingyourvotecount

Jamus wishes all who celebrate: Selamat Hari Raya and Eid Mubarak!

Jamus Lim

is with Chua Kheng Wee 蔡庆威 and He Ting Ru 何廷儒.​

4h ·
Today is Hari Raya Puasa, which also marks the official end of the holy month of Ramadan. As is our custom, #TeamSengkang spent the morning at Al-Mawaddah, our local #SengkangGRC mosque, to greet the faithful as they made their way to mark the beginning of Hari Raya Puasa/Eid al-Fitr.
Over the past month, we also participated in many Iftar dinners. In addition to fellowshipping with those who were breaking fast, it was also a time of contemplation, sacrifice, and reflection. I won’t pretend to have done as much of this over the past month as my Muslim friends, but I did try to spend some additional time with family, to remind myself of the things that really matter in life.
To all who celebrate: Selamat Hari Raya and Eid Mubarak!

Jamus chatted about his experience as an opposition politician.

Jamus Lim​

3d ·
Recently, I joined my #TeamSengkang teammates He Ting Ru 何廷儒 and Chua Kheng Wee 蔡庆威 in the studios of The Daily Ketchup, to chat about our experience as opposition politicians.
I think we were candid about our challenges, but also—as Ru explained—how it simply won’t do to spend our time ranting about how unfair it all is, instead of simply buckling down and being as constructive as we can, whether it be in our interventions in Parley, or for our constituency work in #SengkangGRC.
You may watch the whole thing here:


YOUTUBE.COM
The HARSH Reality of Being an Opposition MP in Singapore | #DailyKetchup EP410
How did Workers’ Party react to winning Sengkang GRC from PAP? Why do we still need to increase GST? Why is a one-party system no longer ideal in 2025?In tod...

Jamus unveils a plan.

Jamus Lim

is with Chua Kheng Wee 蔡庆威 and He Ting Ru 何廷儒.​

1d ·
Over the weekend, #TeamSengkang unveiled the five-year plan for #SengkangGRC town. The plan sets the stage for the next lap. We had had formed the town council five years ago, as an amalgamation of parts of Ang Mo Kio and Pasir Ris-Punggol. The focus of the prior years had been to ensure as smooth a transition as possible for our residents, and to be as responsive as possible to feedback that had not been adequately addressed by the previous administration.
Some of the concerns that residents had raised may seem minor, especially to those who aren’t directly affected: cracks in walls that lead to water leakages, damaged flooring in the common areas, slippery ramps, or a lack of fans in the multipurpose halls. But these issues make a huge difference to the day-to-day life of residents, and we take each instance of feedback we receive seriously.
For matters that we were able to address expeditiously, we did so as soon as we could. But certain matters required us to either raise cofunding from national sources, or to wait for the natural life cycle for repairs, which would then avail sinking funds that could be used. In many of these cases, we were able to do so during the repair and redecoration (R&R) period, which were completed for about half the blocks in the estate (the remainder will come to pass in the next year or two).
For the years ahead, the goal is to continue to ramp up improvement projects across the town. Many of these are those you’ll see across the island: planting new community gardens, upgrades of playgrounds and fitness corners, and setting up resident and senior citizen corners. The numbers speak for themselves; submissions by the town council for new projects to be funded by CIPC have consistently been high—averaging 100+ annually—but last year, we had the highest number among all town councils in Singapore.
But as He Ting Ru 何廷儒 shared, each division will also be anchored by a flagship project. In #Anchorvale, this will be a butterfly sanctuary and hydroponic garden, where kids from nearby schools can get in touch with nature. In #Buangkok, an edible rooftop garden will serve as a green community hub. #Compassvale will see a major revamp of the Sculpture Park, while #Rivervale‘s dog run will give animal lovers a space for their furkids to roam. These were inspired by resident feedback, and, as Chua Kheng Wee 蔡庆威 stressed, we hope that these “hard” infrastructure projects will also be the basis for us to continue to build the “soft” infrastructure of the town: the neighborly relations, the kampong spirit, and a sustainable; empathetic community.
You may look up a summary of the five-year plan on the SKTC website, which is also linked here:
SKTC.SG
sktc.sg

Jamus Lim​

2d ·
https://www.facebook.com/workerspar...hyPF6m19lFlSGu23shcj-vkhVHV-w&__tn__=<<,P-y-R

The Workers' Party​

3d ·
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The Workers’ Party is disappointed with the imposition of the baseline tariff rate of 10 per cent that the United States (US) President Donald Trump has imposed on Singapore, scheduled to take effect on 9 April. The Workers’ Party is particularly concerned over the effects of the tariffs on Singapore businesses and employment.
This unilateral act adversely affects the bilateral ties that Singapore currently enjoys with the US. Our nations have shared a long-standing, reliable, and steadfast relationship, with substantive cooperation across multiple fronts, on both economic and security fronts. The US is one of Singapore’s major trading partners, and its largest foreign direct investor.
Even though Singapore only faces the lowest-tier increase in tariffs (of 10 percent), the latest act has undeniably upended the global trade compact that was first established at the conclusion of the Second World War, with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and, thereafter, the World Trade Organization. Retaliation efforts are also unfolding, sparking fears of an escalating global trade war. There is a sense of increasing uncertainty over the international economic landscape.
Experts largely agree that these tariffs will lead to broad disruptions in the global economy. Even so, it is useful to recognise that American trade policies are still evolving. Moreover, global trade is also driven by other regions, such as China, the European Union, and Southeast Asia.
As a small, open economy that is heavily dependent on international linkages, Singapore’s economy will inevitably be affected. This is especially the case for workers in our outward-facing sectors of the economy: trade, finance, and tourism. Our internationalised businesses—especially those based in countries that are facing a potentially higher rate of US tariffs than here—would be more adversely affected, too.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry has indicated that it will be reassessing the nation's 2025 growth forecast, which is currently between two and three per cent. A worsening economic outlook—or even a recession—will adversely affect employment. Tariffs may reignite inflationary pressures, which could exacerbate the already high costs of living.
The Workers’ Party believes that a rational and pragmatic approach is required to deal with the unfolding situation, at both the international and domestic level.
First, while the government exercises restraint in reacting to US tariffs, it should immediately commence bilateral negotiations, and we believe that no response should be ruled out, given the unprecedented nature of the act. Singapore must reserve its right to turn to relevant dispute settlement mechanisms, such as those outlined in the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement or the World Trade Organization. We should also tap on our existing ties with other branches of the US government and business associations, such as the Congressional Singapore Caucus and the American Chamber of Commerce, to argue our case.
Second, we must take advantage of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)’s combined economy—the fifth-largest in the world—to negotiate collectively with the US to increase our relevance and leverage. While this will undoubtedly require additional effort and resources, Singapore—with its history of trade openness—can advance the bloc’s strategic economic interactions with the Trump administration.
Third, we must further strengthen our regional trade relationships, both within ASEAN, as well as larger trade blocs of which we are part, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) or Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). This will provide the necessary ballast to forgone trade with the US, while also signaling our continued commitment to an open global trading regime.
Fourth, since the 10% tariffs imposed on Singapore are lower than regional competitors like Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia, which face tariffs ranging from 24% to 32%, this could present a near-term cost advantage for Singapore firms exporting semiconductors, telecoms equipment and electronics to the US, relative to exports from these higher-tariff countries. Our economic agencies should step up efforts to help Singapore firms seize these opportunities as they arise.
Domestically, the Workers’ Party has long called for stronger social safety nets and better protections for our workers. Since our workers are also consumers, strengthening the position of the household will also provide a much-needed boost to domestic demand, which in turn will support a softening economy. We believe that redundancy insurance, as well as mandatory retrenchment benefits, should be put in place, so displaced workers will receive the support they need, should they become involuntarily unemployed, especially as a result of trade-related displacement. Our Members of Parliament have also offered various proposals to strengthen the circumstances of our workers. These include refining and better targeting our retraining and reskilling programmes, increasing accountability for skills transfer from foreign professionals to Singaporeans, banning noncompetes in employment contracts for low- and mid-level employees, protecting workers’ from predatory employment contracts, and uplifting our lowest-income workers with a statutory, universal minimum wage. These policies are even more pressing today, in a time of heightened uncertainty.
In addition, we also believe in the need to bolster the economic resilience of our domestic industries, to ensure they remain viable and can employ workers. Establishing an export-import bank can provide crucial trade financing to exporters and importers, at a time when a regionalisation strategy is becoming less an option and more an imperative. Our small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that experience trade shocks will also benefit from transition support, akin to what was provided during the COVID-19 pandemic. And setting up a secretariat, catering specifically for SMEs, will ensure that any assistance rendered is tailored, targeted, and coordinated.
Singapore will have to remain nimble and fleet-footed as it navigates this turbulent period, and Singaporeans must remain united and row in the same direction. The strength of our nation has always been unity in diversity, and this must include an openness to rational and responsible policy, proposed along all political quarters. It is only through welcoming such diversity of ideas that we will emerge stronger through the storm.
The Workers’ Party
8 April 2025
#wpsg #StepUp