Singapore’s tendency to rely on the continual acceptance of cheap foreign labour has made it a “one-trick pony”, said Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) director Corinna Lim.
Speaking as a panellist at a forum on the country’s population issues on Saturday afternoon, Lim noted that its excessive dependence on foreign workers over the years is a short-term one that needs to end sooner or later, and that there are other ways to promote economic growth that we somehow stopped working on.
“The problem with Singapore is that suddenly, we became a one-trick pony,” she said, addressing about 50 members of the public in attendance at the forum organised by Transitioning, an unemployment volunteer NGO. “Our one trick was bring in more cheap foreign labour; we will increase GDP every year. And that is true, but it’s not the only trick in the book — (yet) it became so convenient for us that we used it all the time.”
Lim added that Singapore’s reliance on foreign workers extends beyond short-term economic goals to caring for the sick, the aged and the young.
“This one trick is very short-term. How many more people can we have?” she asked. “I’m sure we can take 6 million (people), we might even be able to take 6.5 million. But how many more beyond there? There must be an end to this... we can’t keep adding more and more people.”
In another point on Singapore’s population, the government’s repeated statements relating fertility rates to the need for foreign workers to support economic growth over the years are “illogical”, said Lim.
Quoting the then-Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng in 2010, who said Singapore’s low fertility rates mean that it “must keep bringing in foreign workers to support economic growth as the population ages”, Lim said, “If you think about it, (it’s) completely illogical.”
“Having one extra foreign worker today is not going to make any difference at all to the number of people that we have 20 years from now, which is what this fertility issue is about,” she continued. “This (the mass admission of foreign workers) has nothing to do with fertility; this has everything to do with the short-term economic needs that exist today — it’s not to do with fertility, so stop trying to confuse us with this.”
Read more http://sg.news.yahoo.com/s’pore-must-end-over-reliance-on-foreign-workers-‘sooner-or-later’--aware-director-054907932.html
Speaking as a panellist at a forum on the country’s population issues on Saturday afternoon, Lim noted that its excessive dependence on foreign workers over the years is a short-term one that needs to end sooner or later, and that there are other ways to promote economic growth that we somehow stopped working on.
“The problem with Singapore is that suddenly, we became a one-trick pony,” she said, addressing about 50 members of the public in attendance at the forum organised by Transitioning, an unemployment volunteer NGO. “Our one trick was bring in more cheap foreign labour; we will increase GDP every year. And that is true, but it’s not the only trick in the book — (yet) it became so convenient for us that we used it all the time.”
Lim added that Singapore’s reliance on foreign workers extends beyond short-term economic goals to caring for the sick, the aged and the young.
“This one trick is very short-term. How many more people can we have?” she asked. “I’m sure we can take 6 million (people), we might even be able to take 6.5 million. But how many more beyond there? There must be an end to this... we can’t keep adding more and more people.”
In another point on Singapore’s population, the government’s repeated statements relating fertility rates to the need for foreign workers to support economic growth over the years are “illogical”, said Lim.
Quoting the then-Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng in 2010, who said Singapore’s low fertility rates mean that it “must keep bringing in foreign workers to support economic growth as the population ages”, Lim said, “If you think about it, (it’s) completely illogical.”
“Having one extra foreign worker today is not going to make any difference at all to the number of people that we have 20 years from now, which is what this fertility issue is about,” she continued. “This (the mass admission of foreign workers) has nothing to do with fertility; this has everything to do with the short-term economic needs that exist today — it’s not to do with fertility, so stop trying to confuse us with this.”
Read more http://sg.news.yahoo.com/s’pore-must-end-over-reliance-on-foreign-workers-‘sooner-or-later’--aware-director-054907932.html
