WP says its flexi-work plan is aimed at benefiting adult learners

SINGAPORE — The Workers’ Party has elaborated on its proposed mandatory flexi-work arrangement as part of its continuing efforts to focus on policy issues.

After raising the issue in his rally speech on Sunday, WP candidate for East Coast GRC Mohamed Fairoz Shariff said yesterday this would be for workers in companies with more than 20 employees and who have worked there for more than six months.

While it is something that would benefit workers at large in terms of work-life harmony — and a happy worker would be a more productive worker, said Mr Fairoz — a key group the policy is aimed to benefit would be adult learners.

Having been an adult learner while raising a family, Mr Fairoz said he was “most passionate” about the issue of supporting the dreams of this group.

“When I lectured at UniSIM, this was something my students always shared with me. (It) was very difficult for them to juggle. Some of my students, unfortunately, didn’t even have the time to finish their assignments and ... failed that particular module,” he added.

Mr Gerald Giam, the WP’s team leader in East Coast, acknowledged that the party is trying to give voters bite-sized explanations of different aspects of its manifesto because these are the proposals its members will push for in Parliament if they are elected.

At their morning walkabout in Bedok North, WP candidate Daniel Goh was also asked to elaborate on his point during his rally speech about helping Singaporeans to develop “deep skills”.

In reply, Dr Goh said it was a question of ensuring that the educational curriculum, from secondary schools to universities, is more well-rounded, and he suggested communication programmes as something that could help workers.

“SkillsFuture should be able to cater to people taking courses in these programmes, and not just thinking in terms of technical skills,” he said.

“We kind of have to expand our notion of skills and think in a much broader fashion what we really mean by skills ... Don’t call them ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ but think in terms of deep skills. How do we deepen the skills of our people?”

On whether the Education Ministry should push harder for Literature or other humanities subjects in schools, Dr Goh said it has been the WP’s position to push for a more holistic education.

“Our proposals are all based on general principles, and they’re broad enough to allow the government of the day — if we push, and they take up the idea — to be able to implement and adapt to the system,” he said.

“We’ll work with them to implement it if they want our views, and if not, they can work with the Civil Service to implement it.”

One issue Dr Goh did not take up yesterday was People’s Action Party organising secretary Ng Eng Hen’s comments in response to his criticism about the Population White Paper.

Dr Ng, who is also Defence Minister, said population policy was complex, involving a balance of trade-offs and not only an overall number, and took issue with Opposition parties for trying to “rile up anger” on specific issues.

Asked by TODAY if he would like to respond, Dr Goh said no.