Today, at 3:30PM, one of our family friends invited my husband over for an interview. My husband was told to be there by 4:30PM.
I accompanied my husband to the interview, since I'm a freelancer and I can work from anywhere as long as I have my laptop or iPad with me. We rushed over to the company - took taxi and all - and managed to reach there exactly at 4:30PM.
He went in for the interview. I waited for him.
After about an hour, he came out of the interview room, and said it wasn't successful because they didn't have the quota for hiring foreigners.
This is a very real predicament that many foreigners are facing in Singapore right now. I am a Singapore citizen. Even then, it is difficult for my husband who is a foreigner to get some kind of benefit.
Why? Because in Singapore, if you do not contribute to your provident fund (PF) maintained by the government, then you are a nobody, and nobody related to a "nobody" gets any benefit of any sort. It's like the government decides that you have no money, and no savings, and are incapable of supporting yourself or your family or anyone at all, if you do not contribute to the provident fund.
Then there is, of course, the crunching of foreign workers in Singapore. New policies actually work against foreigners who are looking for jobs here, unless you are rich and you can contribute a whole chunk of money to the economy.
It's because of this crunching that companies are having problems with quotas. Companies need to hire a certain number of Singaporean workers in order to be eligible to hire ONE foreigner. There are different types of work passes for foreigners with different qualifications. From the way I see it (because I went to the different ministries here to try and get help for my husband), there are too many different types of passes. Companies are unsure of who is eligible for which pass. Some HR personnel do not even know about the existence of some passes. It has become more difficult to find information online as well. It has just become very confusing to hire foreigners.
After the interview, on our way back, we met a couple of family friends. We were having coffee together at a coffee shop, when one of them shared his experience with us. He owns a logistics company which was doing pretty well, until recently.
The business consisted of freight forwarding and door to door delivery, etc. These kind of companies mostly hire foreign workers - Indians, Bangladeshi, Thai, Filipino, etc - to do the hard labour, like packing and moving heavy boxes and furniture.
With the restrictions on hiring foreign workers now, the company was unable to hire foreigners and was forced to hire local people, whom he said was very lazy to do hard labour.
He said he's finding it very difficult to maintain local people, because the pay is high and the work is bad. BUT, the irony is that he can hire foreigners to do office work. This is the same office work that locals here are dying for, because they claim all the decent-paying office jobs are going to foreigners. Well, the current restrictions don't seem to be helping with that.
The priorities just seem to be all lopsided. SMEs and foreign business entities are having difficulties coping with the new restrictions on foreign labour. The government is trying hard to help the people, and help companies as well, but I think the new policies are just making things very complicated.
I know this is a very vague post, but I would like to hear from others what they think of the current situation in Singapore, or even other countries, so please feel free to drop a comment or even suggest a possible solution for this problem.
I accompanied my husband to the interview, since I'm a freelancer and I can work from anywhere as long as I have my laptop or iPad with me. We rushed over to the company - took taxi and all - and managed to reach there exactly at 4:30PM.
He went in for the interview. I waited for him.
After about an hour, he came out of the interview room, and said it wasn't successful because they didn't have the quota for hiring foreigners.
This is a very real predicament that many foreigners are facing in Singapore right now. I am a Singapore citizen. Even then, it is difficult for my husband who is a foreigner to get some kind of benefit.
Why? Because in Singapore, if you do not contribute to your provident fund (PF) maintained by the government, then you are a nobody, and nobody related to a "nobody" gets any benefit of any sort. It's like the government decides that you have no money, and no savings, and are incapable of supporting yourself or your family or anyone at all, if you do not contribute to the provident fund.
Then there is, of course, the crunching of foreign workers in Singapore. New policies actually work against foreigners who are looking for jobs here, unless you are rich and you can contribute a whole chunk of money to the economy.
It's because of this crunching that companies are having problems with quotas. Companies need to hire a certain number of Singaporean workers in order to be eligible to hire ONE foreigner. There are different types of work passes for foreigners with different qualifications. From the way I see it (because I went to the different ministries here to try and get help for my husband), there are too many different types of passes. Companies are unsure of who is eligible for which pass. Some HR personnel do not even know about the existence of some passes. It has become more difficult to find information online as well. It has just become very confusing to hire foreigners.
After the interview, on our way back, we met a couple of family friends. We were having coffee together at a coffee shop, when one of them shared his experience with us. He owns a logistics company which was doing pretty well, until recently.
The business consisted of freight forwarding and door to door delivery, etc. These kind of companies mostly hire foreign workers - Indians, Bangladeshi, Thai, Filipino, etc - to do the hard labour, like packing and moving heavy boxes and furniture.
With the restrictions on hiring foreign workers now, the company was unable to hire foreigners and was forced to hire local people, whom he said was very lazy to do hard labour.
He said he's finding it very difficult to maintain local people, because the pay is high and the work is bad. BUT, the irony is that he can hire foreigners to do office work. This is the same office work that locals here are dying for, because they claim all the decent-paying office jobs are going to foreigners. Well, the current restrictions don't seem to be helping with that.
The priorities just seem to be all lopsided. SMEs and foreign business entities are having difficulties coping with the new restrictions on foreign labour. The government is trying hard to help the people, and help companies as well, but I think the new policies are just making things very complicated.
I know this is a very vague post, but I would like to hear from others what they think of the current situation in Singapore, or even other countries, so please feel free to drop a comment or even suggest a possible solution for this problem.
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