This is quite horrid. Based on the ST article, t he so called new jobs created are as follows:
Last week someone from WSG (think it's a stat board under MOM) came to our company and tried to sell the 25,000 traineeships. They claim it's very cheap to hire them as WSG will handle everything including hiring these trainees and then subcontract out to us and we only need to pay 20% of their salary. No need to provide benefits like medical, insurance or leave.
Out of curiosity, I asked them how much are the salary of these trainees to see whether I have budget to hire them. My goodness, the government is really treating them as sweatshop laborers! The officer claim most companies are offering traineeship to degree grads at around $2.2k, diploma $1.6k and ITE $1.3k and we only need to pay 20% of that amount. So she told us after government subsidy is even cheaper than getting those school holiday interns.
It is certainly cheap, but at the same time I cannot help but wonder what has happened to us that we need to treat our tertiary grads this way with this sort of menial wages in a program led by the government. I mean a degree grad with only $2.2k, no benefits and long working hours without OT, what's the point? Might as well become a PHV driver. The diploma/ITE pay even more ridiculous, they can make double that just doing food deliveries.
