Dear Mr Inderjit Singh,
In your Budget 2014 Speech, you highlighted the shortage of workers as one of the triple whammy faced by businesses today. At the same time, I believe Singapore is near the breaking point with regard to the foreign influx. Once the point is breached, anti-foreign sentiment will rise exponentially, worsened by the accompanying Singapore-bashing from foreigners residing here.
However, there's still a little time left to avert a social meltdown. As your primary concern for the availability of foreign workers is the foreign workforce excluding construction and Foreign Domestic Workers (FDW), we can pursue a win-win and more sustainable solution for both Singaporeans and businesses.
The existing stock of dwelling units and those in the pipeline should be sufficient to accomodate the upper end of the 5.8 to 6 million population planning parameter for 2020. If the same parameter is postponed to 2030 instead of 2020 (already a grave compromise with regard to social harmony) , there is no further need to add more dwelling units to the pipeline. Likewise, the projected supply of hotel rooms is more than enough for STB's target of 17 million tourists. If a moratorium for new dwelling units, hotels and retail malls is implemented now, the foreign construction workforce will be reduced drastically within the next 5 years.
Due to our high foreign penetration rate, which is exceeded only by the smaller Gulf states with absolute monarchies, FDWs should be seen as finite as Certificate of Entitlement (COE). Since citizenship has its privileges (to do otherwise is political suicide), the burden of reducing FDWs will fall on non-citizen households which will be barred from hiring foreign maids. However, such households with young (13 years old & below), elderly (70 years old & above) and/or handicapped members will be exempted from the ban.
There is more room to cut down on non-essential foreigners, especially the economically inactive, but I shall not dwell on them for the purpose of this open letter.
Potentially over the next 5 years, a reduction of a quarter million foreign workers can be achieved by curtailing the construction and FDW sectors. In this regard, there is room for the foreign workforce ex construction, ex FDW, to expand slightly (but not to the fullest extent of the reduction) while we wait for productivity gains and Iskandar to render further increases unnecessary.
Sir, as a Singapore citizen who is not a member of any political party, I seek your support to bring some sanity back to our system.
David Ching
TRS Contributor
PS: Sometimes, as an elected MP, it may be easier to bring about change if one leaves an organisation rather than remains in it. Just my two cents' worth, Sir.