The proliferation of recruitment agencies owned by foreigners is not something to be trifled with. We have crazily, under the notion of free market forces, to issue all kinds of licences to foreigners to compete against our own citizens. Insurance agencies, student recruitment agencies, housing agents, and recruitment agencies, all that can be run without much talent is given freely to foreigners.
In the case of recruitment agencies, there appears to be an unwritten modus operandi, where the employers choose to work with these foreign owned agencies, or new citizen owned agencies, and the target group of employees is foreigners, has led to a situation where jobs are given to foreigners instead of citizens.
Not only the citizens are losing out on jobs, the citizen owned agencies are having a tough time getting a share of the recruitment pie as their local data base with mainly local applicant CVs are not in demand by employers, local and foreign. The talk is that if one is thinking of getting a job, the chances of success are better with a foreign recruitment agency. The catch is that it is very rare that a foreign recruitment agency would want to job match a citizen. There seems to be a lot of under table practices that made it so lucrative to place foreigners than to place citizens and that made the latter not a worthwhile effort.
A free market system, a ‘meritocrazy’ policy that only naïve little boys and girls think will work, are working against the citizens in all areas and making them look like fools, hapless, unwanted, and with no one to turn to except to look for a taxi licence when all things failed. The failure of the govt to ignore the plight of its citizens for good jobs will be translated into negative votes for sure. The citizens may be daft but not daft to the extent that they did not know who they should vote to Parliament to look after their interests.
The nearly cooked citizens will feel the pain soon, other than those that are already cooked. When they start to jump out of the boiling water, things can be ugly. The lethargy, the lack of will to change the nature of things to their own advantage, the stupidity to believe that it is all their fault, that the foreigners are smarter and more deserving than them, have kept the daft Sinkies in a state of resignation and despair.
Either they wake up their ideas or they will be the new beggars in this super rich island of super opportunities that are going to the foreigners. Is there a conspiracy that jobs should go to foreigners, that employers rather work with foreign recruiters than the citizens to recruit foreigners? Or is it how the system has been designed and allowed to do the citizens in?
What price to pay for being daft and to be treated as daft even by foreigners? No one knows what is going on, really?
Chua Chin Leng aka redbean
* The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com