Raise non-PMET Salaries to attract Right Local Talent

I refer to the report “Singaporeans continue to shun non-PMET (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) jobs” (Jan 28). It is natural that low pay, long hours, physically taxing jobs or shift work would put off locals, except in societies where any job will do because of job scarcity.

That said, in some advanced economies, a successful approach to attracting locals to these jobs is to offer higher wages, as not everyone is inclined to or can afford to go the education route to get the better jobs.

The alternative is to resort to foreign labour to take up the slack. Otherwise, as we have seen recently, some restaurants would not have enough staff to man the tables, or there would be other unhealthy situations.

Singapore has been undergoing its planned labour restructuring for the past few years, and the withdrawal of foreign workers in jobs shunned by locals is inadvertently causing hardship to the service industry and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) generally.

While there are merits in trying to improve business automation and reduce reliance on foreign workers, this takes time. Our approach must be calibrated, and it seems to be not optimal yet, going by the pain felt by SMEs.