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Foreign service staff should be trained to speak English, in order to prevent disputes

Letter from Paul Wee Kian Nghee

I REFER to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's May Day Rally speech in which he spoke of the rationale and importance of hiring foreigners in Singapore.

Indeed, foreigners can be good as well as bad for Singapore's progress.

But since the value of having foreigners have been so often proclaimed, may I humbly cite only the warts which are equally important, if not critical too, for Singapore's continuous unblemished development.

Take, for example, the hiring of foreigners who are linguistically-challenged, especially in a multi-racial country such as ours.

Being untrained is a problem but to be unable to speak or understand simple English, which is the common working language here, is a serious setback.

I had not realised the severity of the situation until two recent incidents.

The first happened at the Great World City food court where a Caucasian couple had a confrontation with a PRC worker due to language barriers.

It took my civic-conscious wife, who happened to witness the incident, to muster all her wit and charm to help diffuse the dispute.

The other incident happened on May Day. We had ordered our food at a restaurant in Siglap. Again, the PRC service staff, while friendly, were untrained and had problems speaking and understanding English.

We had to repeat our orders several times, both in English and Mandarin, before we were understood — but only after the restaurant's Singaporean staff intervened.

Incidents such as these can be resolved easily by ensuring that service staff with certain language difficulties wear a badge to say so. This can prevent misunderstanding between customers and staff.

But given Singapore's developed status and its English proficiency, it will be a setback if our competitive advantage is eroded by quick fixes by employers, who, as NTUC chief Mr Lim Swee Say has said, hire foreigners because they are cheap, and not because they are good.