SINGAPORE — The new Fair Consideration Framework must strike a balance between ensuring local professionals are given an equal chance to progress and continuing to attract foreign talent to Singapore, said Labour chief Lim Swee Say yesterday.

The framework, which comes into effect from August next year, is expected to be discussed at length in Parliament today.

It requires employers making Employment Pass applications to first advertise the positions in a job bank administered by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency for at least two weeks. The job advertisement must be open to Singaporeans.

Speaking on the sidelines of a community event, Mr Lim said that, while there is a fair distribution of locals and foreigners in most sectors, there is a small number of firms that place a high dependency on foreign professionals.

“So, for these group of companies in the industry, we want to basically work closer with them. First, to get them to understand why fair consideration is important and, secondly, what are the factors that resulted in them, this over-dependency on foreign PMETs,” said Mr Lim, who is also Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.

The next step, he added, would be to work with the companies to put in place a programme to nurture local talent over the next few years.

Small firms with 25 or fewer employees and jobs which pay a fixed monthly salary of S$12,000 or more, will not be subject to the framework’s advertising requirement.

However, Mr Lim noted: “Even though this group of people will be exempted from this job advertisement in the national job bank, they are not excluded from the Fair Consideration Framework. So, in other words, this Fair Consideration Framework will and should apply to PMETs at all levels, to PMETs across all sizes of companies.

“So, I think it’s important we make a distinction between the administrative procedures versus the coverage of this Fair Consideration Framework,” he said, adding that a win-win outcome is possible with the framework if it is taken positively, and with the right spirit. SARA GROSSE