TRAINING AND RETRAINING OF WORKFORCE (Results and benefits)

Encik Harun bin A. Ghani asked the Minister for Trade and Industry (a) whether the various efforts to train and retrain our workforce produced encouraging results over the years from 1987 to 1991 and (b) how many workers in the lower-income and lower-skilled group have benefited from the various training schemes.

Mr Lim Boon Heng (for the Minister for Trade and Industry): Mr Speaker, Sir, efforts to upgrade our workforce through training have produced encouraging results. The response from workers and their companies to training opportunities is good. The 'Fast Forward' training programme organised by the National Productivity Board (NPB) has attracted more than 700 companies. To date, about 14,000 of their employees have signed up for 'Fast Forward' courses.

Worker training has paid off for both workers and their companies. Training and upgrading of our workers have raised their productivity. For the economy as a whole, productivity has grown by an average of 3.6% a year over the period from 1987 to 1991. This increase has translated into real wage increase of 5.5% a year over the same period.

To ensure that these benefits of training are available to a wide spectrum of workers, the Government has implemented broad-based training programmes as well as a more specialised skills training. Examples of broad-based training programmes are BEST and WISE. These programmes provide workers with the basic foundation for skills training. To date, 114,500 Singaporeans have attended at least one module of BEST, and more than one third of them have passed module 4, which is equivalent to primary school standard. This upgrading process has enabled 13,000 workers to proceed to WISE and other basic skills training programmes. Since 1980, 40,000 workers have attended at least one module of VITB's part-time skills training programme under the modular skills training programme. 8,200 of them have successfully obtained the full National Trade Certificate.

The Fast Forward training programme provides less qualified workers an opportunity to upgrade themselves. Half of the 14,000 workers enroled on the Fast Forward programme have not attended any previous post-employment training. Compared to other training courses, Fast Forward has relatively more older workers enroled on it, and many of them are of primary education level. Training schemes such as Fast Forward, BEST and WISE are reaching out to a broad base of workers. Training places allocated by NPB to lower-income workers have increased five-fold from 39,000 in 1989 to 186,000 in 1990.