Lim Tean questions if Singapore’s foreign worker population will be larger than local labour force

Singapore — Lawyer and opposition leader Lim Tean posed a question on Facebook regarding the population of foreign workers in Singapore.

Mr Lim put up a post with a short caption, “Will The Number Of Foreign Workers Soon Surpass Singaporean Workers?”

In his post, he also included a video of a slideshow that covered some statistics about the number of permanent residents staying in Singapore as well as the number of permanent residents who are contributing to the labour force in Singapore currently.

The video states that a large number of people have lost their jobs, presumably due to the pandemic. However, the percentage of permanent resident workers in Singapore has been increasing even as the percentage of PRs in the local population has been on the decline.

Many netizens offered their thoughts in the comments section of Mr Lim’s post.

Some felt that while foreign labour is vital to Singapore, we should decrease our dependence on foreign workers.

Some also mentioned that Singapore citizens should be given priority and looked after first, especially since many had worked hard to earn their qualifications.

Minister for Education Chan Chun Sing said when he was Minister for Trade and Industry that highly skilled professionals were seeking places that would help protect their intellectual property and not hinder them from being employed in the global market. He also mentioned that Singapore could be less dependent on low-skilled foreign workers when people improved their habits and helped to keep public spaces cleaner. /TISG