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More foreign workers needed: Reclassify businesses in services sector to tackle manpower crunch, industry leader says

A worker at Keng Eng Kee Seafood handing takeaway food and disposable utensils to a customer.

A worker at Keng Eng Kee Seafood handing takeaway food and disposable utensils to a customer.

The Singapore Business Federation (SBF) wants the Government and related stakeholders to review the classifications within the services sector, so that businesses reliant on foreign manpower can hire more of these workers or redeploy workers who were in pandemic-related roles to join the sector.

These were among the suggestions on how to fight the manpower crunch within the sector, published in a report SBF released on Thursday (May 12).

Retailers who responded to the report told TODAY that they supported the proposal to review classifications within the sector. This is because the services sector has many different areas such as food and beverage (F&B), waste management and finance, each with different needs and levels of reliance on foreign manpower

However, some of them disagreed that workers who were in pandemic-related roles such as safe distancing ambassadors can be easily redeployed to the services sector, because there are too few of them to fill the manpower gaps and their skills may not be suitable for the sector. 

Other suggestions among the nine raised in the report include having better "cross-sector collaboration" to achieve greater operational efficiency, such as by hiring logistics firms to make last-mile deliveries, rather than depend on in-house delivery services. 

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