Serious Ex GIC Economist says it all

[steffychun]

Singaporeans lamenting about how they are losing IT and engineering jobs to their lower-paid overseas counterparts have long been a feature on forums such as fuckwarezone and Sammyboy.

However, these “complaints” were usually swept aside as unsubstantiated rants from keyboard warriors.

Well, Yeoh Lam Keong is not your everyday keyboard warrior.

The ex-GIC chief economist and adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy wrote a post on Facebook (Jul 18), explaining why Singapore has a dearth in good Singapore engineers and IT professionals and said that this “will take a decade of properly stringent professional immigration policy combined with the right industrial and education policy to fix.”

Here’s his post in full:

A Singapore Engineering Lament

Want to know the real underlying economic reason why we face a shortage of good Singaporean engineers and IT professionals?

Because we have been far too liberal in importing cheaper regional engineers and IT staff for over 2 decades. This has bid down the real wages and working conditions of such professions such that the return on investing in such a tertiary education and career is unattractive to locals.

20-30 years ago, some of the the best and brightest sought to study engineering. Now it’s become one of the last choices. You can’t blame our locals. It’s simple labour market economics and rational human capital formation choice.

But it’s had a huge negative long term impact on local industrial capability compared to other economies like Germany, Switzerland or Japan where good engineers still command a labour market premium and engineering continues to be a highly respected profession. They continue to lead the world in precision engineering and innovation.

This is also reflected in declining local engineering standards in the public sector for eg the SMRT and public housing lift maintenance as well as in the lack of private sector development of specialist engineering products and services. Why upgrade to these activities when we can do quicker operations based on cheap engineering labour and products?

It’s also created a vicious circle where high end engineering firms now find it difficult to locate In Singapore unless they can hire foreign engineers.

And our leaders bemoan the shortage of good local engineers ? Sigh**

It will take a decade of properly stringent professional immigration policy combined with the right industrial and education policy to fix.

But fix it we must.

 

[lifeafter41]

The choice of studies to date is still business/accountancy, law, and of course medicine.
Everybody wants to be a banker, accountant, lawyer, Doctor, but not engineers.......

I recall talking to one NTU prof.....mentioning engineering is the creator of wealth......not bankers, accountant or even lawyers......but alas, it has fallen on deaf ears......

 

[virus]

The farker could just b direct n blame this on pinkies watch n his flatulent wife obsession with gambling tat bring singapore from 3rd world to fishing village

 

[mojito]

The choice of studies to date is still business/accountancy, law, and of course medicine.
Everybody wants to be a banker, accountant, lawyer, Doctor, but not engineers.......

I recall talking to one NTU prof.....mentioning engineering is the creator of wealth......not bankers, accountant or even lawyers......but alas, it has fallen on deaf ears......

Yes it is true engineering is wealth and value creator. But engineering in singapore is certainly not of that sort, mostly here it is simply get things done keep things steady sort of work in abundance. Or sales. In private sector no money no connections that is how it is, you get paid what you deserve which is not very much. Cannot blame people cannot blame government lah. It is what it is.

 

[yellowarse]

I was speaking to an engineer friend of mine a couple of years ago. His firm had just retrenched 2 Singaporean engineers, each earning $3k/mth, and hired 2 Filipino and 1 Chinese engineer for $1.8k/mth each.

Do the maths. Three foreign engineers ($5.4k) costing less than two locals ($6k). What a deal.

 

[Bigfuck]

By now, most of you who have been suspecting many things are amiss would have figured out.
The Lees and their goons took the shortcut out all along and now we are at end game.

The dead one never wanted smart and skilled citizens. He was always worried people would migrate (because he always had a quitter's mindset), had contempt of smarter people and was miserly. The late 70s proved that a place with people not having higher level qualifications in technical fields would prove disastrous to his wealth accumulation.

And thus started the bitter poly-uni controversy. Later with time, when the paper mills churned out the numbers, Lees were thinking scamming investors with speaker english bureacrauts with paper technical toilet paper. When the powers that be started bamboozling the world with fake MNC jobs which were a cover for tax avoidance, the Lees gobbled it up and use the expat factor in hopes of sucking up free monies in terms of expat packages through exorbitant rentals.

Nothing wrong with such a quid pro quo. But by being too greedy and taking all the shortcuts with the belief you can hire another ma jie from overseas than train one, with reference to engineers, things got really bad. We are reaching the stage whereby you want something repaired or done, you need a foreigner to do it. The local guy - whatever you call it as engineer or consultant - is just a facilitator and cannot even turn a bulb, these days. Worse is with the finance sector. Chaps that do not do much sales and are proud of a their back office skills armed only with rudimentary knowledge of a vlookup, not realizing it does not take much to replace you with some codes to do you copy paste work and is actually cheaper, had it not be for tax avoidance reasons.

Once MNCs pull out in force for numbers reasons or geopolically-motivated ones we could lose more than half our GDP which in by in large is heavily propped up throgh govt. intervention. The fact that MNCs will leave some day inevitable as there is so much MNCs can earn or scam and costs will rise here. Problem is when we have to do everything ourselves, we have no policies of national security security to make sure you can help your neighbour fix the sink. Reason why? More worried that the sinkie would migrate with technical skills to another place. So good. Super screwed.

 

[frenchbriefs]

The choice of studies to date is still business/accountancy, law, and of course medicine.
Everybody wants to be a banker, accountant, lawyer, Doctor, but not engineers.......

I recall talking to one NTU prof.....mentioning engineering is the creator of wealth......not bankers, accountant or even lawyers......but alas, it has fallen on deaf ears......

singapore is not a creator of wealth,we are a parasitic economy,we leech on others,we are a tax haven money laundering hub,a "banking finance" hub,i dunno what kind of finance hub we are when our stock exchange is full of worthless penny stocks and a couple of local blue chips.even hong kong has 3 trillion market cap and australia 1.2 trillion and london close to 7 trillion,SG is not even in the top 20 stock exchanges,we deal with importing/exporting,transporting,logistics,trading,refining,but mostly it has to do with the tax haven,money laundering thing.i mean how much engineering do u want us to do?we dont manufacture anything,we dont make anything,cars,planes,boats,trains,household appliances,we dont even make our own mrt trains,all we do is simple maintenance.china for example make their mega port container loading and unloading cranes,some of the biggest in the world,they are a huge manufacturing country and have hundreds of ports,theres demand for it,we dont even grow our own food for christsake,everything in singapore is imported even the manpower.naturally we have to conform to what our environment and surrounding is,if our economy is vineyards and making cheese,most singaporeans would be wine makers and cheese makers,if we are a fishing village,most of us would be fishermen.

http://money.visualcapitalist.com/all-of-the-worlds-stock-exchanges-by-size/

 

[ckmpd]

I was speaking to an engineer friend of mine a couple of years ago. His firm had just retrenched 2 Singaporean engineers, each earning $3k/mth, and hired 2 Filipino and 1 Chinese engineer for $1.8k/mth each.

Do the maths. Three foreign engineers ($5.4k) costing less than two locals ($6k). What a deal.

PAP thought that by importing cheap foreigners, they are helping businesses. Does the pap also realise that by so doing, they are creating many other problems for Singapore??

 

[Hans168]

Yes it is true engineering is wealth and value creator. But engineering in singapore is certainly not of that sort, mostly here it is simply get things done keep things steady sort of work in abundance. Or sales. In private sector no money no connections that is how it is, you get paid what you deserve which is not very much. Cannot blame people cannot blame government lah. It is what it is.

who say so?
look at LEE Bee Wah........... made a lot of money by being a engineer n CB

 

[borom]

For a small country with shortage of resources, the emphasis should be on quality.

But for a govt to go the way of quantity by employing or allowing the employment of hordes of low quality foreigners and giving them PR's and citizenship liberally is really irresponsible.
How long can this be sustained and ultimately what will be the price our children have to pay ?.

Will the "70%" wake up before its too late? Do husband and wife enjoy working long hours for low wages ,paying through their nose for overpriced public housing ,wait hours at polyclinics, endure constant train breakdowns and retiring(if they can) with no savings?( CPF/cash wiped out by mortgage loans)

 

[iluvgst]

The PAP and their cronies benefit from the influx of cheap FTrash in the IT and engineering sector. They don't give a damn about the low quality of the FTrash or the long term social and economic ramifications of such short term capitalistic profit-centred hiring policies. Anyway i given up on the dumb sinkies who deserve their lot when the ship goes down.

 

[scroobal]

Well said - quality is the key and it is indeed our small size that makes it more important.

For a small country with shortage of resources, the emphasis should be on quality.

But for a govt to go the way of quantity by employing or allowing the employment of hordes of low quality foreigners and giving them PR's and citizenship liberally is really irresponsible.
How long can this be sustained and ultimately what will be the price our children have to pay ?.

Will the "70%" wake up before its too late? Do husband and wife enjoy working long hours for low wages ,paying through their nose for overpriced public housing ,wait hours at polyclinics, endure constant train breakdowns and retiring(if they can) with no savings?( CPF/cash wiped out by mortgage loans)

 

[mojito]

Well said - quality is the key and it is indeed our small size that makes it more important.

Ridiculous. Our tech skills and knowhow is at least 20 years behind the West and 10 behind the East Asia. Quality is impossible. Go big or go home!

 

[frenchbriefs]

Ridiculous. Our tech skills and knowhow is at least 20 years behind the West and 10 behind the East Asia. Quality is impossible. Go big or go home!

China is proof u dont need quality to suceed,cheaper better faster all the way.

 

[JohnTan]

I seriously don't see the importance of engineers to our society. If they were that indispensable, we would be paying them like we pay doctors and lawyers and accountants. But now, we pay them and see engineers as expensive technicians.

My kids will study either law or medicine at the top UK or US colleges. The money and respect is still in law, medicine and banking.