Foreign worker who needs help in spoken English working as “accounts executive” in Singapore

January 14th, 2010 |

Written by Our Correspondent

The Straits Times reported today of a 26 year old Myanmar national Yin Yin Oo signed up for free English classes at a Community Club because she needed “help” in spoken English.

She has been working in Singapore as an “accounts executive” for over a year.

While it is not revealed what she does exactly, it is highly unlikely that she is a professional accountant by training when she admits that “she was at the ‘intermediate’ level in reading and writing”.

In all likelihood, Ms Yin is probably doing some simple book-keeping at a local SME which employed her due to lower wage demands.

With due respect to Ms Yin, her job can be easily taken over by any Singaporean with a ITE or “O” level certificate.

The ruling party has been defending its “foreign talent” policy on the ground that foreigners are needed to fill vacancies in certain sectors shunned by locals such as construction, nursing and IT support services.

However, in the past few years, we have seen an increasing number of foreigners on S-passes (S for semi-skilled) flocking to work in Singapore.

These semi-skilled foreign workers compete directly with Singaporeans for jobs which otherwise belong to them such as nursery school teachers, administrators, clinic assistants, IT engineers and “accounts executives”.

They are in high demand due to their lower wages which help to raise the profit margins of small businesses.

A PRC nursery school teacher commands a monthly salary of only $1,200 to $1,400 compared to Singaporean who fetches more than $2,000.

Given a choice, any employer will hire the cheaper PRC and save $800 – $1,000 in wages monthly.

It is impossible for local workers to compete with these so-called “foreign talents.” A PRC living alone in Singapore can survive with that kind of salary, but what about a Singaporean with a family to feed?

The question is: why are these PRCs allowed to work in Singapore at all when their qualifications are a suspect in the first place? (like the infamous Zhang Yuanyuan who came to Singapore armed with a diploma from an unknown institution in China; she got her PR within 2 months of application)

The Manpower Ministry should release more information on the number of foreign workers in Singapore on S-passes, their occupations as well as the percentage who are granted Singapore PRs to enable Singaporeans to better assess if these foreigners are indeed “talents” or “thrash”.

A recent article by Wall Street Journal suggested that the influx of foreigners into Singapore in the last few years has led directly to the stagnation of wages of blue-collar workers, widening of the income gap between the rich and the poor, overall decrease in labor productivity and standards of living. (read article here)

Singapore companies must start thinking of ways to boost their productivity and reduce their over-dependence on foreign workers.

Ms Yin will probably not be able to find work in any other first world country with the exception of Singapore.

More stringent criteria should be put in place so that we only recruit foreigners in selected sectors which genuinely face manpower shortage due to difficulties in employing locals.

DISCLAIMER:

Mingalaba! We are not against any race or nationality. The gist of the article is simply to highlight the ruling party’s lax immigration guidelines in allowing too many foreigners on S-passes to work in Singapore when their jobs can easily be taken over by locals. To be fair, Burmese are generally quite hardworking, honest and genial by nature compared to some others. For those of us who have been to Burma, you will agree that Burmese are among the most hospitable people in the world. We apologize if you we have hurt the feelings of our fellow Burmese friends in anyway. Khay-zu-din-ba-leh!