According to PAP–anointed "labour" MP Zainal Sapari, this was "not surprising because in the past our productivity was actually driven by manpower supply. As the Government has tightened the foreign labour supply, we do expect that firms in their transitional stage in adjusting to the reduced manpower will experience a decline in productivity."
This is a strange argument. Even when there was a surfeit of manpower in the past five years, our productivity shrank 0.4% per annum.
Zainal Sapari should face up to the fact that the problem is in part directly related to the PAP's liberal foreign labour policy under which businesses became addicted to cheap labour and eschewed innovations or raising the pay of local Singaporeans which led to a demoralized workforce.
From a business standpoint, the analogy of cheap domestic help is helpful: if you have a cheap foreign domestic help at your beck and call at home, would you bother to spend money on sophisticated automatic vacuum cleaners or buy the best washing machines to save on time and labour?
Of course not.
Then again, since when have we heard PAP politicians sincerely admitting to being in the wrong?
The Alternative View