Measures to Transit COVID-19-related Short-term Contract Workers into Permanent Jobs

Mr Sharael Taha asked the Minister for Manpower (a) how many people are employed in COVID-19-related temporary roles such as swabbers, safe entry and temperature screeners, Safe Distancing Ambassadors and vaccination staff; (b) whether the number of workers required for these roles will be reduced as more residents are vaccinated; (c) what is being done for these workers to prepare them for their next job; and (d) how does the Government ensure that unemployment numbers do not increase when these jobs are phased out.

Since the start of COVID-19, over 15,000 workers have been placed into public sector or Government-funded short-term roles under the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package to support COVID-19 operations, such as swabbing, quarantine operations, implementing safe management measures and providing patient services.

At some point and we certainly hope so, the demand for such roles will taper down. For the moment, however, these roles continue to remain in demand.

Among those placed into short-term COVID-19 job roles, about three in 10 were temporarily re-deployed as part of the National Jobs Council’s efforts to support workers in hard-hit areas. For example, some flight attendants from Singapore Airlines worked as Care Ambassadors in hospitals. These workers remain as employees of their parent companies and most of them are expected to return to their parent companies when demand recovers.

For the remaining workers, as well as those who are not able to return to their previous jobs due to reduced demand or who choose not to, our job matching services and ecosystem stand ready to help them.

In 2020, the combined efforts of Workforce Singapore (WSG) and NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute, or e2i for short, collectively placed close to 55,000 workers into suitable opportunities. It is, therefore, not beyond the ability of these networks to facilitate the job searches and to help them find placements in new sectors or activities where demand is rising. This is also supported by the Jobs Growth Incentive or JGI for short. JGI has been extended to September 2021 with eligible employers receiving support of up to S$54,000 per hire.

Employers who hire jobseekers who need to reskill can also tap onto the career conversion programmes and these programmes provide substantial wage and training support in addition to the JGI. This year, we have catered capacity for 10,000 places in these programmes.

Finally, the SGUnited Traineeships, Mid-Career Pathways and Skills programmes remain available.

I thank the Minister for the clarification. Just one supplementary question for me. As we transition to living with COVID-19, can the Ministry also consider encouraging the companies employing these temporary workers to send the workers for training, possibly through an additional training grant mechanism? Having supported the frontline through this pandemic, I worry that the workers, who have been in these temporary roles, may struggle to translate their experience to a new employment.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I thank the hon Member for his suggestion. We certainly would encourage all companies who hire short-term workers for this particular pandemic to encourage them to go for training to convert them into longer-term job opportunities.

There are many schemes available. There are also quite a number of task forces in which I personally chair and we drive, alongside with the other sector agencies to look at growth sectors. We have identified three of them: the wholesale trade, finance and infocomm. We encourage and we nudge many of the employees and workers to actually go for upskilling or reskilling to be able to fit into these new job roles and to pivot some of the existing career opportunities into newer ones. We will continue to provide support.

Employers may face hiring challenges. They should also look to consider a wider range of jobseekers. Instead of thinking with the plug-and-play mindset, we would encourage employers to open up to consider hiring them, bringing them on board and placing them collectively in training opportunities that the Government has set aside and work towards making sure the upskilling and training of these workers into their relevant industries and the jobs would result in a much better fit.

We also encourage jobseekers to stay resilient, to also keep very open minds to new opportunities and also to consider less familiar roles. So, if we all work together collectively and to the Member's point, I believe that we will come out and emerge from this crisis in a much better position.