Flexible Grace Periods for Foreign Worker Quota Calculations to Reduce Compounding Impact of Voluntary Local Employee Departures

Mr Shawn Loh asked the Acting Minister for Manpower whether the Ministry has considered providing more flexible grace periods for companies to replace local employees who voluntarily leave a company, before the companies' foreign worker quotas are impacted, to reduce the potentially compounding impact of such labour disruptions.

Ms Jasmin Lau: The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) calculates a company's foreign worker quota based on the latest three-month average number of local employees in the company. This is intentionally done to smoothen the impact of changes in the company's local workforce numbers and provide a degree of stability for its foreign worker quota.

A company can approach MOM to request for flexibility in computing foreign worker quota based on the number of local employees in the latest month once they hire a replacement local employee. MOM will assess this based on supporting documents submitted, such as employment contract and Central Provident Fund contribution of the replacement employee.