Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say faked a weeping session on televised video footage during his Parliament speech yesterday (Mar 6). The Minister was talking about unemployment of Singaporeans and then stopped to weep and wiped his tears.
Blaming only 50 employers, Minister Lim Swee Say said Singaporeans should not blame foreigners when they are unemployed. The Minister push the fault of foreigners taking away the jobs to “pockets of” employers for prioritizing foreigners first:
“What these companies have done is wrong and the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) has taken action against them. However, the vast majority of employers (here) are treating our locals fairly. The persistent view of foreigners taking away the jobs of locals is due to pockets of employers who have not given fair consideration to the development of Singapore’s manpower.”
The PAP Minister refused to take responsibility for the job losses that started from loose immigration policies beginning as early as 2004. Jobs of Singaporeans were taken away by foreigners largely due to locals’ disadvantage like having employers put up with paying 20% CPF taxes and National Service reservist training obligations. In the last decade, foreigners do not need qualifications accreditation or relevant local experience to apply for employment passes. Even Permanent Residency visas and citizenship were given loosely to foreigners just so the ruling party can keep themselves in power.
Singaporeans bear the brunt of the loose immigration policies with all ages losing jobs to foreigners. Young Singaporean fresh graduates were unable to find a job because employers preferred workers with “working experience”, which is aplenty given the number of foreigners from third world countries like Philippines, India and China. Middle aged Singaporeans were retrenched or forced to take pay cuts, which employers circumvent government regulations by using “poor performance” as an excuse, with the high profile mass retrenchment at Surbana earlier in 2017 as a prime example. The low income Singaporean workers have their salaries depressed for over a decade due to the ease of access to cheap foreign labour.
In 2005, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong signed the CECA trade pact with India, allowing Indian professionals to work in Singapore and latter flooding the market with IT workers.