Foreigners compete with locals for dealers’ job at Marina Bay Sands
August 2nd, 2009 | 
Author: From Our Correspondent
Over 6,000 people turned up yesterday at the integrated resort’s (IR) two-day job fair, which ends today, at Suntec City Convention Centre.
Up for grabs are over 1,000 positions as dealers for the resort’s casino. Over 3,500 applications were received yesterday. It is not known how many of these are applicants are foreigners.
Previous job fairs organized by the IRs attracted applicants from as far away as Taiwan and the Philipines. There is no cap imposed on the number of foreigners they can employ.
The resort had said its earlier efforts to fill 4,500 gaming vacancies had seen only 2,000 of these jobs taken up.
For its position of dealer, candidates need to be above 21 years old, have manual dexterity, customer service and simple arithmetic skills, and not be colour-blind.
In Singapore’s other integrated resort, Resorts World at Sentosa, about 30 per cent of the Sentosa IR’s hires for the dealer post so far are foreigners.
The two IRs are supposed to create more than 10,000 jobs. However it appears now that foreigners may be the real beneficiaries rather than local Singaporeans.
Being an open economy, Singaporeans are finding themselves increasing squeeze out of the labor market by an uncontrolled influx of cheaper foreign workers over the years.
The competition for limited vacancies also helps to depress the wages of unskilled blue collar workers. The median salary for the low-income group has remained stagnant for the last decade.
The government has always defended the need to import more foreign workers in order to sustain the economy.
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16 Responses to “Foreigners compete with locals for dealers’ job at Marina Bay Sands”
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Will we be able to find out how many of the jobs go to Singaporeans versus foreigners. One main issue is their wonderful classification of Singaporeans & PRs as one category. So lumping them together means that the state treats Singaporeans the same as PRs. We do NS, they get the jobs. Just great!
If what is written is true, then it is crazy to solve other countries’ unemployment problem while Singaporeans got to take all the hits i.e. social problems.
Few years back, when the IR issue was being debated, the creation of jobs was the main reason for IRs to be built. However, there was no estimate of how many percent of the estimated jobs created will be for Singaporeans. Also, 2 NTU professors were in the news for suggesting that most of the new jobs created were taken by foreigners.
Now, years later, the issues raised previously had once again come to the fore. This time, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the assertions of the 2 NTU lecturers were correct and even reported by Ministry of Manpower. Just wait until the IRs open, we will see how many of the jobs are actually filled by Singaporeans.
second generation PR male also do NS
isn’t it already reported that not all locals are willing to grab the dealer job and thus they have difficulty to attract the local.
this whole charade must be exposed! News leaked that Marina Sands had intended to recruit thousands from the Philippines – cheap labour mah! The huge outcry forced them to come out with this wayang kulit about Sporeans anemic to casino jobs causing thousands of dealer jobs unfilled. Then this weekend job fair with great fanfare to `try’ to give it to Sporeans. But at the end of the day, will Sands then say those Sporeans who applied are unsuitable for the jobs and they are `forced’ to hire foreigners albeit much cheaper?
The only way is for MOM to ask them to be transparent and show how many jobs go to Sporeans, PRs, foreigners, etc
I suspect they still want to employ those filipinos and this huge PR exercise saying Sporeans do not want the jobs is a just smokescreen to prevent an outcry later when foreigners land the jobs.
lindo)
You are a joker you. How many 2nd generation PRs do NS? Do you have the official figures? NO figures no talk. The reality is that by the time they are eligible for NS, their parents are already settled overseas. Singapore is just a stepping stone.
Yah right no singaporeans want the jobs, just like how nobody wants the temasek job so that they have to reappoint ho ching
Singaporeans should ship their family to low cost countries like China and Malaysia. They alone stay and work, then they can take home $1k per month and compete with the foreign workers. Forget about the crap about building a country, survival of the fittest comes first.
Terence Goh on Sun, 2nd Aug 2009 2:39 pm, is right and PRs themselves have been reported to say that they do not want their sons to serve NS. What is the % of 2nd generation PRs that do NS versus the numbers that leave? Remember, these PRs have the guts to leave their homeland for another. What is there to stop them for leaving for Australia or Canada or USA as most of them are using SG as a stepping stone. Since these PRs love SG soooo much and want to be part of our society, they can serve this wonderful city state by performing part-time NS such Police NS. We had such things in Singapore before you know.
national day our nation’s birthday is only 7 days away. does belonging to this country mean anything patriotic to you? Or do we always have to remind ourselves not to ask how much the country can do for us but how much we can do for the country? – a country who does not blink an eye when losing billions in failing american banks but so stingy that welfare is a dirty word – such patriotism is meant to feed the peasants’ ears and brains only.
Marina Sands/Sentosa was trumpeted to provide ten of thousands of jobs – but to who?
So now only the tourists and the very rich will fill the gambling halls while the $100 per entry or $2000 annaul season `ERP’ ensures the coffers are filled.
My China PR sneered at me – he enjoys all the privileges of Spore, no NS for him and best of all he can get into casino free as he holds a PRC passport. We sporeans are still second class peasants in our own country thanks to official policies. Majulah Singapura Aug 9th!!
Somewhere in a few lines in TODAY, Sentosa IR was mentioned that they had no recruitment problem as they had “employed 70% SIngaporeans for croupiers and dealers”.
WP, you have lobang to dig deep why Employment Permits or “S Pass” were issued to these 30% foreigners working as “dealers and croupiers”?
terence goh. i do not have the figures because MINDEF never publish that. but the rules exist and if they try to play around with the rules by giving up the PR to avoid NS, they are guaranteed to have problem for applying for jobs or education here. in what other countries in the world will you find PR that have to serve in NS or contribute for CPF? have some respect for PR.
the IR jobs issues has already been reported by straits times. and if you have no faith for MSM, go and see yourself the job recuritment 1-2 days ago at suntec.
you really sound like a sore loser to me. so much so for bragging of “meritocracy” when you bitch about malaysia
To Lindo,
“i do not have the figures because MINDEF never publish that. but the rules exist and if they try to play around with the rules by giving up the PR to avoid NS, they are guaranteed to have problem for applying for jobs or education here.”
Guaranteed??? Without any transparency in the civil sector you expect what sort of a guarantee? Your guarantee is it? You are simply too naive to be still believing in the 154th at this moment.
You are a even worse loser trying to bash someone who is smarter than you.
“i do not have the figures because MINDEF never publish that. but the rules exist and if they try to play around with the rules by giving up the PR to avoid NS, they are guaranteed to have problem for applying for jobs or education here.”
Let me give you a good example here. Because I have a few friends that’re exactly like that.
Studied till Secondary/Poly/JC, Parents were PR.
Renounced their PR status and moved to Australia, Malaysia, USA, UK, Canada. (To study, AND avoid NS)
Goes back to their own country every now and then to visit relatives and friends, also to renew their Visa or whatsoever from which ever country they’re from.
Most don’t even intend to find a job in Singapore currently anyways, reasons being living costs is too high.
But those from Singapore would think studying overseas incurs a higher cost of living. Which is not entirely wrong, IF you’re alone and need little or no securities. But to have a family, buy a CAR, pay COE, LEASE a HOUSE…you’re better off getting a nice home in another country, which many of my PR friends is doing now.
So exactly what difficulties are they facing? Not able to draw out their CPF when they’ve contributed none yet? Edusave taken back by the government? Come on, who cares about such small stuffs when there’re bigger pastures to walk on with much lesser stress and bigger profits?
As long as our government continues to justify their policy of sustaining our need for population renewal by importing foreigners with barely any mimimal requirements, we’ll have this problem. It’s a quick and easy solution which merely serves to brush a level of sealant on cracks which will later threaten the very foundation of our society. They see these cracks as surface problems. Instead of looking at policy changes which will serve to address internal problems and internal needs, they took the easy way out. Instead of cracking their heads on how they can better serve the people, and looking deep & hard about why the local talents in our country would rather leave than stay when they have a choice, they simply say… well, if Singapore isn’t good enough for our own people, there are other people from other countries who will find Singapore more than good enough (albeit for the short term). What is love for the country? Nothing perhaps. Maybe the people in government holds no love for our country either. Perhaps the pragmatic approach has lead to convenient and materialistic governance. Perhaps it’s the fact that politics has deteriorated to the people serving the government rather than the government serving the people. Thus we have no country to serve. We serve the elites.
i was at the jobfair on saturday and almost every1 there i saw was a foreigner(just dont ask me how i know). i am personally not very convinced that they are going to put all of the foreigners on hold untill they’ve reviewed each and every singaporean.
with the way that things are now, i’m beginning to think that singapore is contradicting herself in what she practices and what she preaches.
c’mon people.. it is a common FACT. that singaporeans are fickle, fuzzy employees. your customer service IQ leaves much to be desired. you want this annual leave, and that bonus, and so on and so forth.. blah… blah.. blah.. and yeah, you demand higher pay. the bottomline is, THE CASINO IS A MONEY MAKING ENTERPRISE. MONEEEEY. so they get these impoverished, sweat-shop salaried, proto-slaves form the third world to do your economy’s bidding. and voila! you’ve got singapore! =)