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Don’t stop at having a job bank

The authorities should not stop at the new job bank next year. Before approving an Employment Pass (EP), the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) should extract statistics from the job bank to see how many Singaporeans applied for that job.

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Adeline Tiang

The authorities should not stop at the new job bank next year. Before approving an Employment Pass (EP), the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) should extract statistics from the job bank to see how many Singaporeans applied for that job.

The system should provide such data easily, and the company should have to justify why it decided to give the job to an EP holder instead.

Collecting such information would enable the MOM to better analyse the root cause, be it a skills mismatch, pay expectations or an errant firm at work.

This would make companies think and act more responsibly before they hire EP holders. And if it is due to a skills mismatch, then it may indicate a skills gap in Singapore, and the authorities could do something to develop the needed skills locally.

If firms are hiring EP holders just because they are cheaper, the ministry would need to further tighten the tap. Setting up a job bank without follow-up actions would enable companies to just “go through the motions”.

This was posted as a comment on tdy.sg/voicestoday

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