LABOUR WASTAGE AND UNDEREMPLOYMENT

Mr Chia Shi Teck asked the Minister for Trade and Industry whether labour wastage and underemployment are a problem and whether he will set up a committee to deal with the problem.

The Minister of State for Trade and Industry (Mr Goh Chee Wee) (for the Minister for Trade and Industry): Mr Speaker, Sir, given the very tight labour market and high level of competition in Singapore today, it is unlikely for labour wastage or under- employment to be much of a problem at the national level. At the company level, however, there could be individual cases of inefficient utilisation of manpower. But companies which routinely waste or underemploy their labour will suffer cost penalties which would render their operations non-competitive or even non-viable.

To remain profitable and viable, employers will need to deploy their staff efficiently and help them to be productive by training, motivating and managing them properly. With technology and the market conditions changing rapidly, employers will need to train their workers continually to equip them with the relevant skills.

There are numerous training programmes available to help employers become better and more effective business managers. These are run by organisations like the Singapore Institute of Management, Marketing Institute of Singapore, Management Development Institute of Singapore, NUS and NTU. The National Productivity Board (NPB) also runs best-in-management lectures and breakfast talks to help keep business managers abreast of current productivity issues.

The Skills Development Fund (SDF) also sponsors many schemes for the training and upgrading of workers. These are run by various organisations, including NPB, polytechnics and the Institute of Technical Education. In addition, NPB has intensified its efforts to promote on-the-job training which is more affordable for the smaller companies.

Through active promotion by these organisations, the SDF now supports more than 400,000 training places annually. It spends about $70 million on these training schemes every year.

NPB regularly reviews its training schemes to ensure that they are relevant to employers' and employees' needs. For example, NPB recently launched three new worker training schemes which will benefit employees of small firms, workers in the high value-added manufacturing sector, and retrenched staff.

Sir, I strongly encourage employers to make full use of the available training schemes for both themselves and their workers so that they can maintain their competitive edge. As the schemes to help employers make better use of their workers are already in place, there is therefore no need to set up a committee to look into the issue.

Mr Chia Shi Teck: Sir, from the answer, is the Minister of State saying that there is no labour wastage in Singapore?

Mr Goh Chee Wee: As I said earlier on, at the national level, we do not think labour wastage or underemployment is much of a problem. But at the individual company level, there could be cases of under-utilisation or inefficient utilisation of labour.

Mr Chia Shi Teck: Sir, is there a standard in all industries which is set by the Ministry so that we can actually measure whether or not there is wastage? Let us say in the hotel industry, the ratio on the number of rooms to the number of staff, where we can then give incentives to those who meet the standard and penalise those who do not. Because under the tight labour situation, we may have to look at that.

Mr Goh Chee Wee: There is no such so-called standard. But I think in a competit2ive environment, companies will have to be efficient and those which can utilise their labour efficiently will be the ones which will succeed.