The latest example: Singapore tourism is taking a hit already due to the COVID-19 problem, so the government has offered to increase payments for tourism workers to get training while their sector suffers. Don't just lay them off, they are telling hotels, etc, but we pay for them getting additional or other training during this down time. You can view the CNA video version of the story here.
For those who want more detail, and get a feeling of sad longing for the way the city state manages to show the way government should be, more details are here:
To help mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG), together with the Singapore Hotel Association (SHA) and the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union (FDAWU), have jointly announced various support measures for the tourism sector.Gah. That sounds such a reasonable thing to do. And supported by government, unions and business. I know that a tiny city state may find it easier to quickly come up with such proposals - they don't have to run it across a bunch of States like in Australia - but still, I find it impressive.
As part of the Stabilisation and Support Package announced by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on 18 Feb during the Budget 2020 statement, these measures were introduced today by Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister for Manpower, and Mr Chee Hong Tat, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ministry of Education, during a learning journey to Copthorne King’s Singapore. At the event, SHA and FDAWU had also signed an MOU to commit to working together to save jobs, build confidence and deepen capabilities of employees to prepare for recovery and growth. The MOU was facilitated by STB.
Such ground-up efforts and commitment from the employers and the union, together with the support measures rolled out by the various government agencies, make up the latest wave of relief measures to minimise potential retrenchment, upskill workers and redesign jobs to prepare the sector for when business demand returns. Businesses will also continue to receive support in defraying the costs involved in business transformation and job redesign, such as the Hotel Job Redesign Initiative and the Lean Enterprise Development Scheme.
Encouraging tourism sector to leverage downtime to reskill and upskill
To provide tourism companies with more support to upgrade the capabilities of their workers, STB will be enhancing the Training Industry Professionals in Tourism (TIP-iT) fund to fund up to 90% of training course fees and trainer fees, up from the previous cap of 50%. In addition, funding for absentee payroll will be increased from $4.50/hour to 90% of the worker’s hourly basic salary, capped at $10/hour.
In support of STB’s measures, SSG will also be providing time-limited, enhanced training support for the tourism sector. Employers in the tourism sector who send their workers for selected sector-specific training programmes in the next three months will receive: (i) enhanced Absentee Payroll (AP) support at 90% of hourly basic salary capped at $10 per hour, and (ii) enhanced course fee support at 90% of course fees. SSG will work through appointed training partners to ramp up training capacity for such programmes. Training programmes will include courses in digital marketing and SkillsFuture for Digital Workplace programmes.
I concur 100%. Singapore is the gold standard in virus control and runs a class act all the way around. Lee's Singapore was the Gold standard in the application of economic science to bring an entire population to wealth, and not just wealth for the few.
ReplyDeleteI would be very uncomfortable about that level of civil liberties restrictions in a nation state. But what we need is a lot more of these city-states. So if you are not getting along with Lee you can go to another class act somewhere else.
Lee was the great statesmen not just domestically but in international statecraft as well. What a bunch of goons we have by way of comparison today. Only Mahatir, and perhaps Putin stand up as real statesmen in the modern era. The rest are such a bunch of clowns.
I do not think there are any reasons to admire singapore
ReplyDeleteYou had it sorted in your first four words. I understand someone being aghast at the lack of civil liberties. But it was only house arrest and legal action. Lee didn't bash peoples skulls in. He had the communists on one side and the British had left him with all these different racial groups to deal with. He had to hold the ship together. And he did it better than anyone else. And probably inspired reform within China.
ReplyDeleteThe Aussies and the English had seen off the commies in Malaya, but he had China, North-Korea, Japan .... surrounded by tough guys and just this little city. He couldn't put up with too much outside sponsorship of strife and still deliver this miracle of egalitarian wealth creation.
What's your gripe with Singapore, Homer?
ReplyDeleteyou of all ppl would have the least issue with Singapore, Homer, they are as strait laced as you in most things
ReplyDeleteIt is authoritarian, Just look at what it does to oppo leaders who might just win votes.
ReplyDeleteThey run clean elections don't they? If the government is doing a good job these Asians will keep them in power for decades.
ReplyDeleteHomer, it's the nicest authoritarian nation on the planet: they hardly even execute anyone lately. If only they would introduce caning for getting a tattoo, I'd find a way to migrate there.
ReplyDeleteOk, I exaggerated on the executions: only 2 last year, one of those for drugs. But 2018 was 14, 11 for drugs. The numbers used to be bigger 20 years ago, though.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is they are actually able to keep most drugs out of the place. So its not a useless thing. I don't like it of course. I wonder if this policy is not out of date. But the drug trade is run at above Prime Ministerial level. Heroin used to be a British/Chinese duopoly. Which is why the British never fought alongside the Americans in any war involving the Chinese. Its not clear if or when the British aristocracy got out of the drug business. But if they ever did it may have been as recently as the Afghanistan invasion.
ReplyDeleteNow if its super-powers involved in the drug trade, Lee's only real choice is to go after the little guys. Which is completely unjust but you can see why he did it. His attitude was that they would kill them 100 times if they could. He just didn't want his people to be opium junkies. Maybe their policies are outdated but I can understand why they did it. Given fairly recent Chinese history.
The govt has something like 70 seats compared to a max of 10 for the largest opposition party. Even with the biggest advantages those clowns in the opposition would never win and they are mostly clowns the PAP brain drains the best people
ReplyDeleteMore like 80 actually
ReplyDeleteYou can't help but admire LKY. He duped the communists into supporting him then he neutralized them. How many ppl have pulled that off?
ReplyDeleteI only said win votes. Singapore aint Malayasia
ReplyDeleteYeah what s gutsy achievement. It would be as if Biden were playing things so close to his chest that he was only pretending to have dementia. And the President Biden hiring private security and destroying the central bank value transfer rort.
ReplyDeleteThe war criminal Roosevelt may have done something similar. He put all this banker mitigation stuff in place. He may have been assassinated. It was not total reform but it set up the post-war Bretton Woods banking up pretty well.