http://forums.asiaone.com/showthread.php?t=60139#1
i dun unerstan u lah!: An exposé of Singapore and Singaporean retardation
I greatly enjoyed reading the Single Dude’s articles on the pros and cons of Singapore. As a European business person I would like to expand a bit on the “Singaporean retardation” described in the cons article. When I arrived in Singapore I was absolutely shocked at the almost unimaginable retardation of the local Singaporeans. Given that Singapore is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and apparently has the highest number of millionaires per capita, I was expecting to find a mecca of high technology and efficiency but I was sorely disappointed. It’s true the center of the city is full of modern looking buildings and is very clean but aside from that Singapore has much more in common with “third world” countries than it does with it’s very “first world” image.
Let me preface the anecdotes I’m about to tell by stating that the situations I’m about to describe are very much “business as usual” in Singapore and not extraordinary in any way shape or form. These are daily occurrences, not once in a month or once in a year occurrences. Also, please remember that Singapore claims to be an English speaking country, but as you will soon find out, that is a very unsubstantiated claim.
The first thing I would like to discuss is the experience of trying to hiring a Singaporean. On one particular day last year I invited seven people to an interview. These were people that had all previously applied for the job online through a monster.com type job site. I gave them all more than 48 hours advance notice. Of the seven: four did not respond at all, one wrote back and said they didn’t like the neighborhood (it’s centrally located serviced by 10 bus routes and one metro line), one didn’t like the time slot I offered and one confirmed by telephone. The one person who confirmed the interview did not show up and did not call or email to cancel. Please remember these are people that are supposedly looking for employment and applied for the job, not people I identified via a CV search and cold called. I can’t imagine not going to a job interview for a job that I applied for! And as I said this is not abnormal, these are very typical examples of what it’s like trying to hire a local in Singapore.
Local workers are often of much lower quality than foreign workers, and to add insult to injury they also cost much more. Businesses are forced to pay into superannuation funds (Central Provident Fund or “CPF”) for locals but not for foreigners; at the lower end of the spectrum this can make locals upwards of 50% more expensive to hire (these CPF contributions are currently capped for salaries of $5,000 and above). To pay a local around $2200 net costs me about $3000. To pay a foreigner $2200 net costs $2200 plus a much smaller than CPF “foreign worker levy“. I can easily find foreigners to pay $2200 net that are well worth $2200. Locals available for that price range are not even worth $1000 to me in most cases, in fact I have seriously considered hiring some local maids at the lowest possible salary to sit around and do nothing so that I can hire more foreign workers. You see, to make matters even worse there is currently a government quota of 3 locals per foreign employee on an S-Pass (the employment pass for mid to low level employees).
The Singaporean government has now decided that companies aren’t hiring enough Singaporeans, particularly in middle management (gee I wonder why!?!) so in their infinite wisdom they have decided to severely restrict employment passes for those making salaries below <$4,500 and to somewhat limit passes for those making between 4,500 to 8,000. Only those making above 8,000 can get an employment pass relatively easily and sooner or later that will probably become much harder too.
So the government economically incentivized companies to hire foreigners for years, and now that foreigners have become close to 40% of the population they want to stop this practice dead in its tracks and force people hire locals. Here’s the problem, besides the economic incentives, as described above, locals often aren’t employable. A Singaporean that costs me $3,000 out of pocket is not even remotely as good an employee as a foreigner I can easily find that is wiling to work for $1,500. My solution? No more jobs in Singapore – I’ll setup a shared service center in another country. Problem solved. It’s the same position Obama has put American businessmen with his retarded healthcare law, and that Hollande has put business owners in in France. “Oh you want further raise my costs for these already uncompetitive workers? No problem, I’ll just hire workers in other countries and/or replace them completely with automation.”
The one exception to all of this is the lowly “Work Permit”, these are not that hard to obtain because this is how they import people from impoverished countries to be maids, nannies and other forms of workers to do jobs that Singaporeans would consider themselves to be above no matter how desperate they were for work. These are also the passes they issue to the construction workers who work for a pittance often live in squalor in the unfinished buildings they are working on our elsewhere on the job site in things that resemble shipping containers. While perhaps this is not an example of local stupidity, it does indicate that Singaporeans have no qualms about taking advantage of impoverished and desperate foreign workers.
i dun unerstan u lah!: An exposé of Singapore and Singaporean retardation
I greatly enjoyed reading the Single Dude’s articles on the pros and cons of Singapore. As a European business person I would like to expand a bit on the “Singaporean retardation” described in the cons article. When I arrived in Singapore I was absolutely shocked at the almost unimaginable retardation of the local Singaporeans. Given that Singapore is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and apparently has the highest number of millionaires per capita, I was expecting to find a mecca of high technology and efficiency but I was sorely disappointed. It’s true the center of the city is full of modern looking buildings and is very clean but aside from that Singapore has much more in common with “third world” countries than it does with it’s very “first world” image.
Let me preface the anecdotes I’m about to tell by stating that the situations I’m about to describe are very much “business as usual” in Singapore and not extraordinary in any way shape or form. These are daily occurrences, not once in a month or once in a year occurrences. Also, please remember that Singapore claims to be an English speaking country, but as you will soon find out, that is a very unsubstantiated claim.
The first thing I would like to discuss is the experience of trying to hiring a Singaporean. On one particular day last year I invited seven people to an interview. These were people that had all previously applied for the job online through a monster.com type job site. I gave them all more than 48 hours advance notice. Of the seven: four did not respond at all, one wrote back and said they didn’t like the neighborhood (it’s centrally located serviced by 10 bus routes and one metro line), one didn’t like the time slot I offered and one confirmed by telephone. The one person who confirmed the interview did not show up and did not call or email to cancel. Please remember these are people that are supposedly looking for employment and applied for the job, not people I identified via a CV search and cold called. I can’t imagine not going to a job interview for a job that I applied for! And as I said this is not abnormal, these are very typical examples of what it’s like trying to hire a local in Singapore.
Local workers are often of much lower quality than foreign workers, and to add insult to injury they also cost much more. Businesses are forced to pay into superannuation funds (Central Provident Fund or “CPF”) for locals but not for foreigners; at the lower end of the spectrum this can make locals upwards of 50% more expensive to hire (these CPF contributions are currently capped for salaries of $5,000 and above). To pay a local around $2200 net costs me about $3000. To pay a foreigner $2200 net costs $2200 plus a much smaller than CPF “foreign worker levy“. I can easily find foreigners to pay $2200 net that are well worth $2200. Locals available for that price range are not even worth $1000 to me in most cases, in fact I have seriously considered hiring some local maids at the lowest possible salary to sit around and do nothing so that I can hire more foreign workers. You see, to make matters even worse there is currently a government quota of 3 locals per foreign employee on an S-Pass (the employment pass for mid to low level employees).
The Singaporean government has now decided that companies aren’t hiring enough Singaporeans, particularly in middle management (gee I wonder why!?!) so in their infinite wisdom they have decided to severely restrict employment passes for those making salaries below <$4,500 and to somewhat limit passes for those making between 4,500 to 8,000. Only those making above 8,000 can get an employment pass relatively easily and sooner or later that will probably become much harder too.
So the government economically incentivized companies to hire foreigners for years, and now that foreigners have become close to 40% of the population they want to stop this practice dead in its tracks and force people hire locals. Here’s the problem, besides the economic incentives, as described above, locals often aren’t employable. A Singaporean that costs me $3,000 out of pocket is not even remotely as good an employee as a foreigner I can easily find that is wiling to work for $1,500. My solution? No more jobs in Singapore – I’ll setup a shared service center in another country. Problem solved. It’s the same position Obama has put American businessmen with his retarded healthcare law, and that Hollande has put business owners in in France. “Oh you want further raise my costs for these already uncompetitive workers? No problem, I’ll just hire workers in other countries and/or replace them completely with automation.”
The one exception to all of this is the lowly “Work Permit”, these are not that hard to obtain because this is how they import people from impoverished countries to be maids, nannies and other forms of workers to do jobs that Singaporeans would consider themselves to be above no matter how desperate they were for work. These are also the passes they issue to the construction workers who work for a pittance often live in squalor in the unfinished buildings they are working on our elsewhere on the job site in things that resemble shipping containers. While perhaps this is not an example of local stupidity, it does indicate that Singaporeans have no qualms about taking advantage of impoverished and desperate foreign workers.
