INTEGRATED RESORTS JOBS FOR SINGAPOREANS

Column: 529

INTEGRATED RESORTS JOBS FOR SINGAPOREANS: 12.

Mr Christopher de Souza asked the Minister for Manpower how many jobs have been created by Resorts World Sentosa to date and, of these jobs, what percentage has been given to Singapore citizens.

The Minister of State for Manpower (Mr Lee Yi Shyan) (for the Minister for Manpower): Sir, the two Integrated Resorts (IRs) currently employ over 16,000 workers directly, in rank-and-file and professional, managerial, executive and technician (PMET) positions. MOM, WDA, MTI, STB and other agencies have provided strong support to the IRs in the recruitment and training of local hires which currently account for about 70% of the workforce in the IRs.

Mr Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah): Thank you, Minister of State, for the statistics – 70% are local hires. How many more jobs does MOM envision Resort World Sentosa (RWS) and Marina Bay Sands (MBS) creating when fully operational? What is MOM's plan to ensure that the additional jobs created from now till the operational time are prioritised for Singaporeans?

Mr Lee Yi Shyan: Sir, the two IRs have projected that they require 20,000 direct workers. As you can see, and also mentioned by my colleague, Senior Minister of State Iswaran, yesterday, 80% of these jobs have been realised so far. The run up to the employment already saw the cooperation between the two IRs as well as the number of Government agencies. There is a work group that meets very regularly to look at just the manpower situation. We are pleased to note that the two IRs have committed to the localisation plan. Under this plan, when the IRs do the recruitment, of course, given the large numbers, they would recruit openly as Members can see

Column: 530

in their recruitment advertisements. They also have been going to the unions, to the schools, to ITEs, to polytechnics, to SHATEC, for the specific skill sets they need. I think they also make a special effort, in terms of reaching out, to various small groups but available employment pools such as the Back to Work women's group as well as the Yellow Ribbon. All in all, we see good progress being made. Out of the 16,000 workers that they have hired, about half of them have gone through the Workforce Skills Qualification (WSQ) certifiable training courses, especially for MBS, the recruitment is ongoing and we are working with them closely to make sure that they reach out more to the local pool and, at the same time, train them through the various WSQ courses at the Continuing Education and Training (CET) Centres.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo (West Coast): I would like to ask the Minister of State three questions. First question is with regard to the service staff at the IR. It is very heartening to note that Singaporeans are moving forward to take up service jobs. I would like to check of these service staff, what is their power of retention or rather staying with the IR, especially those frontline people, how long do they stay in these jobs?

Second question has got to do with the ancillary service providers. We understand that supporting the IR industry are many ancillary service providers such as those who are in the laundry service, and so on. What plans are there to help these service providers to solve their manpower problems because I understand that many of them face great challenges of recruiting Singaporeans to take up these jobs but, at the same time, they are not getting the necessary quota to admit more foreign workers. We understand the need for these people to take the productivity route where they should mechanise, but there is a time-lag issue. To what extent is MOM prepared to allow

Column: 531

these service providers some time to plan better and, in the meantime, allow more of these foreigners to come in for a period of time?

The third question has got to do the 10,000 jobs that are supposed to be promised at the Marina Bay Sands. How many of these jobs have been taken up by Singaporeans?

Mr Lee Yi Shyan: I thank the Member for these further questions. On the service staff, if she is talking about F&B and the hotel frontline staff, both the IRs will have to compete in the market – they recruit against competition, they also have to retain against competition. It is still in a very early phase of being operational. So it will take a while to see what the turnover rate is. I hope the turnover will not be high because they have spent so much time in training and make a lot of effort to create a conducive environment for these people to develop their careers.

On the ancilliary service providers, what we know is that with the two IRs setting up, there were about 100 new companies, tourism-related companies formed, in support of the IRs. Some of them may fall into this category defined as ancilliary services, but whether they are ancilliary services or part of the supplier or part of the supply chain, all the companies within Singapore will have to find ways to raise productivity and find ways to automate. In fact, with more outsourced jobs that they can acquire, there should be economies of scale to justify automation. We work very closely with the two IRs so as to understand and preempt their operational problems. We do not see this is an area of concern yet.

The third question about the 10,000 jobs. As I said earlier, the local hires are accounting for about 70%. With our joint

Column: 532

efforts to localise the workforce, we should be able to maintain the target.