Hansard, 2006-03-08

Under the provisions of clause 2(d) of Article 46 of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, the following Members have been granted permission to be or to remain absent from sittings of Parliament (or any Committee of Parliament to which they have been appointed) for the periods stated: Name From (2006) To (2006) Mr Lee Kuan Yew 08 Mar 08 Mar Dr Tan Sze Wee 10 Mar 11 Mar Mr Lim Hng Kiang 15 Mar 16 Mar

ABDULLAH TARMUGI Speaker Parliament of Singapore

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

The following Question stood in the name of Dr Warren Lee -

1. To ask the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs if the Government can improve the current method of updating a change of address on the NRIC where the changes are typed onto an adhesive strip and stuck onto the existing NRIC as the sticker can be peeled off and the original address represented as the present address.

Question No. 1, Sir.

he Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Home Affairs): Mr Speaker Sir, when an NRIC holder reports a change of his address, the registration officer at the reporting centre would obliterate the old address on the NRIC by making cut grooves into the address section on the back of the NRIC with a metal inscriber. He then marks over it with permanent ink, before pasting the new address sticker over the old address. Any attempt to tamper with the change in address will show up. We started this procedure in April 1999 to address the problem of NRIC holders tearing off the sticker, and passing off the original address as the present address.

Furthermore, we have put in place strict laws against those who tamper with their NRIC. Under the National Registration Act, any person who forges, erases, alters or falsifies any entry in or tampers with an identity card, can be fined up to $10,000, imprisoned for up to 10 years, or both. Using another person's address as his own is an act of cheating, which is an offence punishable under the Penal Code.

Over the last three years, an average of 193,000 NRIC holders reported a change of address each year. We have made it convenient for those who need to report their new address by allowing them to do so at any Neighbourhood Police Centre or Police Post. The current procedure balances cost and convenience with security.

Order read for consideration in Committee of Supply [6th Allotted Day].

Head K - Ministry of Education (cont.)

Resumption of Debate on Question [7th March, 2006],

"That the total sum to be allocated for Head K of the Estimates be reduced by $100." - [Dr Amy Khor Lean Suan].

Question again proposed.

Mr Chairman, Sir, let me first thank Dr Amy Khor, Dr Tan Boon Wan, Mdm Ho Geok Choo, Dr Ong Seh Hong, Mr Ong Ah Heng and Mr Zainudin Nordin for raising questions on what more we can do to engage students who are at risk of dropping out from our schools, what more we can do to get them to stay in school and benefit from the quality education that our schools provide. Dr Lily Neo and Dr Loo Chong Yong had raised similar issues during the Budget debate earlier.

Let me, first, address the scale of the problem.

First, students who drop out during their primary or secondary school years. This number has been coming down. As a percentage of each student cohort, the number of students who drops out without completing a secondary education has, in fact, declined from 3.6% of the cohort in 2003 to 2.6% of the cohort in 2005. But this is still too many - 2.6% of the cohort is about 1,200 students in each cohort - and we want to bring it down.

Another concern for us is the students who do complete their secondary education, but do not progress to a post-secondary education. We do not have a precise handle on the numbers because many of the students who do not enrol in our polytechnics, ITEs or junior colleges, in fact, go on to study in various private institutions, such as NAFA, LaSalle, SHATEC, and so on. And some of them go overseas. They have not dropped out, but are continuing their studies.

Our main focus at the post-secondary level is on encouraging as many of our Normal (Technical) students as possible to go on to the ITE. We are making progress. The percentage of Normal (Technical) students who go on to ITE has been steadily increasing over the years. Last year, 76% of our Normal (Technical) students went on to ITE, up from 63% in 1998. The increase reflects the efforts of both the ITE and our secondary school teachers, who bring their students to the ITE campuses to see what they offer and get a taste of the range of courses they can take at the ITE. I will touch more on this later.

But, again, we want to do more. The number of Normal (Technical) students who choose not to go to the ITE translates to about 3.3% of the overall age cohort, which is about 1,500 students. We will do more to engage this group of students, and encourage them to go on to a post-secondary education. This is the second group we are focusing on, besides the group of students who drop out during their primary and secondary school years. We cannot completely prevent students from dropping out of school. The reasons why they drop out are varied, and the fundamental reasons usually lie outside the school. And, even within the school, there are no quick fixes to this problem.

We are working on several initiatives, beginning from the pre-primary level and extending all the way up to the ITE - initiatives to help students learn better, see the relevance of what they learn, and feel engaged in the school community. It is a challenging and complex task, and we are trying some new approaches. We are also working with MCYS and the various social agencies, so that what we try to do in schools goes hand in hand with efforts to strengthen the family.

Let me, first, focus on a key initiative that Dr Amy Khor, Mr Zainudin Nordin, Dr Ong Seh Hong and others have referred to, which relates to vocational education. In each cohort, there is a small group of students who are unable to cope with the mainstream curriculum. In 2005, there were 1,100 students who failed the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). Of these 1,100, about 130 of them failed the PSLE for the third time.

Currently, many of these students enrol at the two Vocational Training Centres (VTCs) under the Institute of Technical Education (ITE), eg, Geylang Serai VTC and Assumption Vocational Institute. But attrition is high, sometimes because of the lack of home support. 60% of the VTC students drop out. Of the 40% that do complete the programme, less than half made it to ITE.

We spoke to teachers, students and parents, to work out a new pathway that can help these students stay in education and get the best chance to succeed. First, we will open the doors to such students earlier, as Dr Amy Khor has suggested. Currently, the VTCs admit the students only after they have reached 14 years of age, and provide them with a two-year programme - which means that the student would first need to have failed his PSLE three times before he can enter the VTC.

Many of the VTC students and their parents told us that even with the best efforts of their primary schools, it was not helpful for them to keep repeating a PSLE curriculum that they were able to benefit from. There are also limits to what we can do to provide a more customised approach for these students while they remain in primary school, as they are distributed among many schools with no more than five or 10 students per school. So we should try to let them move beyond primary school, instead of waiting for them to take a third try at the PSLE, and move them up to a school where they can be provided with an education that is customised to their needs, and their different learning styles and abilities.

Second, we will take a more holistic approach to engaging these students. They need a programme that not only focuses on building skills, but on nurturing emotional resilience and giving them a sense of belonging to the school. In fact, the students we spoke to - those who had gone through the VTC and succeeded in going onto the ITE - tell us that they find the teachers of the VTC warm and approachable. But they hope for a fuller environment, with a range of CCAs, for instance, a broader range of courses, and a more holistic and school-like environment.

MOE will set up a new school to implement this new and enhanced pathway for students who can benefit from a more customised and practice-based curriculum. The new school, which will be called NorthLight School, will build on the current VTC programme and enhance it. Geylang Serai Vocational Training Centre will become a part of the new school.

NorthLight School will admit students from January 2007. It will allow in students who have attempted the PSLE twice or more (in other words, 13 years old or older). It will thus be able to give them a longer programme - a three-year programme will be offered to students who have failed the PSLE twice and want to enter the school. Parents and students will retain the choice, if they wish, of repeating the PSLE a third time. The school will also be open to students who leave secondary school prematurely. We expect that it will start smallish, about 600 students, including the current Geylang Serai VTC students, and expand up to 1,400 students eventually, which is about the size of a regular school.

Getting the right school leaders and teachers is critical. Their conviction is critical. The MOE Committee that studied how we can enhance the VTC programme visited a number of similar schools abroad. One was the Life Learning Academy in San Francisco. In fact, it is set on an island called Treasure Island. It chooses students who have done very poorly in nearby schools and puts them together in a 'living and learning' community. The principal and teachers were passionate about what they were doing. The principal herself had a rough start in her youth, but turned her life around. She had a personal mission to help youth in trouble make good. One of the Chemistry teachers was an aerospace engineer who left a high-paying job because he wanted to do the same. And they were achieving results. Some of the school's students even made it to the top universities in California.

We have put some effort into choosing the right people for NorthLight. We have chosen as NorthLight's first principal, an experienced MOE school leader with a zeal for helping students in difficulty. She is Mrs Chua Yen Ching, whose work in recent years as principal of Shuqun Secondary School has gained the attention of the school community and the public. Yen Ching has developed fresh approaches to re-define success for her students, and help them gain the confidence to pursue their dreams.

She will be accompanied by many dedicated staff from the present Geylang Serai VTC, and other MOE teachers with a passion for helping this group of students. One of them won the Outstanding Youth in Education Award last year, for the way she has used the arts to reach out to students who feel disengaged from their studies. In fact, she had written a thorough report on how we should make more use of the arts to reach out to students at risk, which she had sent to me before she even knew that we would start a new school of this nature. The school will have a collection of passionate teachers like her.

NorthLight School will aim to prepare as many of its students as possible for further education at ITE or apprenticeship with industry. It will also aim to give them skills and strengths that they can take with them through life. Its new three-year curriculum will have three key aspects: first, to place emphasis on developing emotional resilience and instilling essential life-skills, as Dr Amy Khor had also suggested, such as taking responsibility and managing relationships. These will take up a greater share of curriculum time but within a longer programme of three years. The school will also have a full CCA programme, including sports, games and the arts, so as to develop bonds amongst the students and develop character. The school will have more full-time, inhouse counsellors to advise and guide students facing social and emotional challenges.

Second, the school will adopt a hands-on and experiential approach to learning, suited to students who learn better in non-traditional classroom settings. As Mrs Chua Yen Ching put it to me, she wants NorthLight to be the school where "School Comes Alive" - where students find lessons interesting, and see their relevance to day-to-day life.

Third, there will be a wider range of vocational options to stimulate students' interests and open up their career choices. Each of the options will have a 10-week long industrial attachment.

The school's new approach to learning, especially its attempt to create a living and learning community for students where they apply what they learn in their classes in day-to-day real-world applications, will be of interest to some of our mainstream schools as well. The exchange of experience between NorthLight and the mainstream sector can throw up more ideas on how we can engage all our students and help them stay in school.

Besides the new vocational pathway that Northlight School will provide, MOE is implementing several other targeted initiatives to assist students who are at risk of dropping out. We have mapped out a comprehensive approach, at various stages of the education system.

First, at pre-school. We know the early years in kindergarten are important in nurturing children's confidence and interest in learning. Children who are confident and eager to learn are more likely to take school seriously, and want to stay on in school. We have been helping to level up the quality of teachers in our kindergartens, and MOS Chan Soo Sen will be talking more about our approach. We are also working on some more targeted interventions at the pre-school level.

MOE is working with MCYS and other partners to help encourage every family to put their children in pre-school education. That is the first priority.

Next, we are starting a prototype project with some neighbourhood kindergartens, aimed especially at helping children who do not receive adequate support at home. We are working with 10 neighbourhood kindergartens on what we call Project SEAL (Sustained Early Assistance for Learning). It is a multi-pronged effort and a multi-agency approach that pulls together expertise from several bodies. An important part of this prototype project is to identify young children with learning difficulties early while they are in kindergartens. For example, the Dyslexia Association of Singapore is developing a simple screening tool to help teachers identify children who need special help in language. MOE will then work with the kindergartens to customise the programme to support these children. The National Library Board will loan story books to supplement the kindergartens' reading resources and assist them to set up reading enrichment programmes for the children.

12.15 pm

Next, primary schools, when the children enter Primary 1. We are enhancing the Learning Support Programme. As Mr Ong Ah Heng has pointed out, the Learning Support Programme is a critical piece in our strategy to help students who are not school-ready when they enter primary schools. The Learning Support Programme has helped many students. It is a specialised programme, focusing on basic oral language and reading skills. Each year, about 12%-14% of our Primary 1 pupils with weak basic language and literacy skills are identified for support in the programme. And on average, after one year of intervention, about one-third of the pupils supported by the programme will graduate from the programme and rejoin the regular classes.

We are now piloting an enhanced Learning Support Programme for English in 34 primary schools this year. It will further differentiate the students, because some of them need much more basic support than others. There is a group of students each year, with very weak language skills, who needs more targeted attention. We will put them through a more intensive reading support programme in the first instance. Over the longer term, if we can reach out to such students when they are in kindergartens, we can hopefully reduce the numbers in this group when they enter our primary schools.

Another feature of our enhanced Learning Support Programme is a smaller group size. Pupils are supported in groups of no more than five pupils, as compared to 10 currently. MOE will monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot at the end of this year, before fine-tuning and implementing it in all our schools from 2007.

The enhancement of the Learning Support Programme will also be supported by changes in English Language classes for all students in the early primary years. This will help all students, but it is particularly impactful for students from lower-income families - whose main language deficit is English, because it is not the language spoken at home.

We have started a pilot programme, or what we call, SEED - English Language. SEED refers to the whole set of experiments we are taking in the early primary years, so SEED - English Language is an experiment that is taking place for English Language teaching. So this is a pilot programme. We have started in 30 schools this year to provide students with an enhanced curriculum for learning grammar and phonics, to help them learn English with confidence. I would not go into the details, but it involves a very careful and gradual building up of the students' language skills. And it also aims to develop amongst young children a love for reading at a young age, by providing more early exposure to books and engaging them in the conversation on what is being read.

Second, we are also rolling out Learning Support for Mathematics. We want children with a weak start in numbers to be able to catch up and follow the class. This is now being implemented in 50 schools at Primary 1, after it has spent the last four to five years piloting this programme, and it will be in all our schools from 2007. All the schools will be provided with additional teachers to provide support to Primary 1 pupils with a late start in numeracy skills.

We are also investing more to help students with special learning difficulties like dyslexia and ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) in our schools. By 2010, we will have 140 trained Special Needs Officers in our primary schools. We already have 28 of them in our primary schools currently. We are also aiming to train close to 100 officers for secondary schools and they will be concentrated in certain schools - some schools that will pull together resources for dyslexia, others for students who are autistic. These are students who do not have severe difficulties and can be well accommodated with our mainstream system and they can benefit from the mainstream curriculum. These provisions that we are making in the mainstream schools will complement what we are doing to improve quality and facilities in our special schools which cater to children with more significant learning difficulties.

Next, secondary schools. We are strengthening counselling resources in all our schools but with priority being given to the secondary schools because that is where the challenges of growing up are greatest. MOE is on track to providing all secondary schools with one full-time inhouse school counsellor by this year. Primary schools and junior colleges will receive a full-time counsellor by 2008. Many of the counsellors we are recruiting are former teachers or some current teachers who decided to switch to full-time counselling and some former principals. They understand students and they have a heart for them. And we put all of them through a rigorous six-month diploma course at NIE. It is early days, but so far this programme is working quite well.

But the schools are not just reacting to problems, or dealing with problems as and when they arise and calling the counsellor in. They are taking a proactive approach well before the counsellor becomes necessary. It is a holistic approach, getting students to participate in CCAs, camps and other school activities, so that they develop bonds amongst each other and develop confidence in themselves. The schools are helping students find the best in themselves, whether in their studies or in their CCAs and other activities. This proactive approach to developing bonds among students and creating a sense of attachment to the school is being enhanced in all our schools.

Another initiative is the Normal (Technical) course. We are implementing a revised Normal (Technical) curriculum with a more practical orientation, to better engage students in their learning. The curriculum content is being made more meaningful to students by relating what they learn to daily life. There will be greater emphasis on group work and presentations, creativity, hands-on activities and use of IT, and new ways of assessing the Normal (Technical) students, such as evaluating their coursework, either individually or in groups, instead of the traditional pen-and-paper test. We will start rolling out the revised Normal (Technical) curriculum in 2007.

As part of the revised approach to Normal (Technical), we also introduced elective modules last year to create opportunities to broaden the experiences of the students. The students enjoy the elective modules tremendously because of the more practical and hands-on nature of these modules. But they also develop a deeper understanding of the concepts of their learning quite often. One of our principals gave me an example of students who attended an elective module on baking at the Baking Industry Training Centre. They were learning to make swiss rolls. But the four-hour session on swiss rolls also made Mathematics come alive, as the students have to calculate the correct proportion of water, flour, sugar and the other ingredients, in order to bake delicious swiss rolls. The students were so engaged that they asked if the session could be extended to a longer time. And the session also gave ideas to the school teacher who was there, on how to conduct the regular classes for the Normal (Technical) students back in school.

The elective modules are catching on in our schools. More than 40% of schools which offer the Normal (Technical) course are now offering at least one elective module to their students, in a whole range of areas from digital videography to basic mechatronics. They are making schools more interesting and more relevant to life for the students.

The next piece is what we are doing at ITE. We are making ITE a centre of excellence in technical education. All across Asia and, indeed, internationally, ITE's reputation is now up there - it is well-known.

ITE's key improvements are in two areas in recent years: new courses to keep pace with the interest of students and the needs of industry, and closer collaboration with industry to ensure that ITE students find fruitful employment after graduation.

The changes are making an impact. ITE has been attracting more school leavers, year after year, with enrolment of full-time students reaching a high of 23,000 in 2005. As I shared earlier, more and more of our Normal (Technical) students are going on to ITE.

ITE's attrition rate has also been decreasing. In 2005, the proportion of students who left ITE without a qualification was about 12% of ITE's full-time enrolment, compared to 17% just five years ago.

Mr Zainudin Nordin also asked about the relevance of ITE's training to industry. This is something that is foremost in ITE's mind. The market is the best test and the best testimony. According to the ITE graduate employment survey, the last one done in June last year, 89% of ITE graduates found jobs within five months of job search. After 10 years on the job market, ITE graduates had doubled their starting salaries. And more ITE graduates are moving up the educational ladder. Within 10 years from graduation, 10%-12% had acquired degree qualifications and a further 24% had diploma qualifications.

So you can see, we are taking a comprehensive approach in education to address students who are at risk of dropping out at various stages. We are adopting new approaches to help students at risk, from the early years up. We will learn from the experience of these experiments and improve the programmes as we roll them out. I have to repeat that there are no short cuts to reducing drop-out rates. The problems are complex and often rooted in the home.

What we want is to try harder and do better, and we will. We will help ensure that students are better prepared for school, help them to get a good start in their early primary years, remain engaged through secondary school, and after leaving school go on to a first-class education at ITE that prepares them for employment and further education. And we will provide the NorthLight School a new holistic approach to engaging students who need a more active, hands-on and practice-based approach to learning.

Sir, I would like to thank Members once again for their interest and suggestions on this important topic.

Sir, Dr Amy Khor raised a number of questions on the Gifted Education Programme (GEP). Allow me to put the GEP into context.

Since 1984, we have established the Gifted Education Programme to cater for the top 1% of our students. The programme provides an enriched curriculum to nurture these intellectually gifted students. It develops their skills in critical and creative thinking, as well as problem solving and allows them to work with specialists through mentorship programmes.

Today, our education system is more diversified. It provides different opportunities for all students to discover and develop their talents. We have schools with different specialisation and niches as well as different programmes to suit different needs.

But GEP remains relevant in this broader context of talent development. The core focus of the programme will remain, that is, to meet the educational needs of intellectually gifted students. Nevertheless, we will build on the strong foundation we have achieved and enhance it further.

Over the years, we have been moving towards greater decentralisation in the shaping of gifted education in schools. The introduction of Integrated Programme (IP) in schools, that are also GEP centres, has allowed these schools to develop their own school-based gifted programmes to stretch their students. The introduction of Specialised Independent Schools also opens up other new branches in gifted education. The NUS High School of Mathematics and Science, for example, offers a whole school approach to developing students with exceptional talents in Mathematics and Science.

At the primary level, we will continue to have special classes to cater to the top 1% of the cohort in nine GEP centres. Because these students are drawn from a large number of schools, it is more practical to gather them in a few primary schools to provide them with customised learning programmes. However, schools will create more opportunities for GEP students to interact with their non-GEP schoolmates, and develop as well-rounded individuals. The interactions should enrich the learning experience for all students involved.

At secondary level, over 90% of GEP students have joined the Integrated Programme in IP schools. With most GEP students in IP schools, we have therefore moved from a centrally-run MOE programme for all GEP students to giving these schools the flexibility to shape their own approaches to gifted education. They will cater to gifted students within the broader context of talent development that the schools have embarked on. This is in line with the mandate of IP schools to develop our top students by providing broader learning opportunities beyond the 'O' level syllabus.

As for GEP students who did not join the IP, they will be nurtured through other types of school-based programmes for higher ability students in non-IP schools.

These enhancements to the Gifted Education Programme aim to make the programme more effective and customised for our intellectually gifted students. Besides the GEP, MOE is also studying ways to identify and develop talents in specialised areas, as well as in non-academic areas, such as sports and arts. There are students with exceptional abilities in just one or two areas but who are not part of the GEP. By providing diverse opportunities in different areas, we hope that more talents can be groomed and that there will be space and opportunities for every talent to develop to the fullest.

12.30 pm

Mr Yeo Guat Kwang asked about the quality of the pre-school sector. Pre-school education lays the foundation for learning in subsequent years. As pointed out by Mr Yeo, there is a diverse range of pre-school programmes in the market. The diversity provides parents with a wide range of choices. However, this does not mean that MOE takes a hands-off approach towards kindergartens. In the past few years, MOE has put in place various initiatives at key leverage points to raise the overall quality of pre-school education in Singapore.

Firstly, we have defined the desired outcomes of pre-school education in 2000 to provide direction for the sector. These include moral and social outcomes, such as knowing what is right and wrong, being able to relate to others and being curious and able to explore.

Secondly, MOE has formulated and disseminated a kindergarten curriculum framework and teachers' resource package to guide pre-schools to design a curriculum best suited to younger children. To enable kindergartens to examine their own practices in identified areas for improvement, MOE has designed an instrument called Pursuing Excellence at Kindergartens (PEAK) and disseminated it to all kindergartens in 2003 to encourage them to conduct yearly self-appraisals. As at December 2005, 80% of the kindergartens have conducted self-appraisals using PEAK.

Thirdly, MOE has worked on one of the most important factors affecting pre-school education, ie, the quality of teachers. To upgrade the expertise of pre-school practitioners, we have articulated the professional qualifications that kindergarten principals and teachers must have by January 2006 and January 2008 respectively. To help non-profit kindergartens meet these requirements, MOE provides a recurrent grant to incentivise them to upgrade the quality of their staff and education.

Fourthly, we will be working with 10 neighbourhood kindergartens on project SEAL (for Sustained Early Assistance for Learning), which my Minister has just mentioned. Through this project, we hope that children in the kindergartens with learning difficulties can be identified early and given help.

Many of these measures will take time to bear fruit. With these measures, MOE aims to raise the overall quality of pre-school education in Singapore over time.

Mr Yeo also suggested that the Opportunity Fund be extended to pre-schools. The Opportunity Fund for schools aims to level the opportunities for needy students in terms of enrichment activities. At the pre-school level, MCYS provides the Kindergartens Financial Assistance Scheme to subsidise kindergarten fees for needy students. We feel that this is a more targeted approach to help needy children to have access to pre-school education.

Let me thank Mr Chay Wai Chuen, Dr Ong Seh Hong and Mr Ong Ah Heng for their support and interest in the teaching of Mother Tongue languages. I will update Members on the changes made to the learning of Chinese Language. My colleague, Mr Hawazi Daipi, will later elaborate on the implementation of recommendations on the Malay Language and Tamil Language education.

Bilingualism in English and Mother Tongue languages is an asset for Singaporeans. Indeed, bilingualism is the cornerstone of our education system. English is likely to remain the lingua franca of the world for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, learning one's own Mother Tongue helps in building cultural identity and knowing one's roots. It also opens doors to more economic opportunities. In fact, a recent report commissioned by the British Council proclaimed that those who were monolingual in English "'faced a bleak economic future' as multilingual competitors flood into the workforce from all corners of the globe". Therefore, we must maintain our linguistic edge of being a multilingual society.

Sir, in the last two years, the Ministry of Education separately conducted reviews on all of our Mother Tongues, ie, Chinese Language, Malay Language and Tamil Language, in their curriculum as well as pedagogy. The findings and recommendations from the three reviews set the tone and direction for the teaching and learning of the Mother Tongue languages in the next five to 10 years.

Specifically, the Committee on Chinese Language has recommended a curriculum to enthuse all Chinese Language students and develop in them an abiding interest in Chinese Language and culture. This will be achieved through a more customised and flexible modular curriculum at the primary level. Furthermore, greater emphasis will be placed on oral fluency and reading for the majority of students. Other key recommendations include making CL learning interesting, relevant and engaging, aligning examinations with the revised curriculum, providing more opportunities to use and learn Chinese Language in schools and greater community support. With this framework, the case mentioned by Dr Ong Seh Hong yesterday should not arise. I would want to recommend to Dr Ong Seh Hong that he propose to his constituent to provide the feedback to the school. I am sure it will be very, very happy to look at what the children have gone through and see how it can rectify it.

Since the completion of the CL review, two committees have been set up. One of them is the Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning, which is chaired by me. The Committee is working on five areas, ie, Chinese Language education in pre-schools, reading, writing, engaging the media as well as educational exchange programmes. I want to say that the support from the Chinese community to the review on Chinese Language teaching has been very forthcoming. In fact, the Chinese community has come forward to initiate a Chinese Language and Culture Fund to raise the standard of Chinese in Singapore. It has already raised more than $7 million out of its $10 million target, and the Government has provided a dollar-for-dollar matching grant to bring its total sum to more than $14 million currently.

With all these initiatives, support and resources, we hope to create a greater environment in which Chinese is a living language for our students. I am happy to note that more schools and students are showing enthusiasm for learning Chinese. At present, more than one-quarter of our schools have twinning programmes with schools in China. Schools from primary up to tertiary level have organised many immersion programmes to China for students as well as teachers. These exchanges will allow our students to pick up the language more naturally as well as deepen their appreciation of the Chinese culture and society.

The second committee, which I think is a more important committee, is the Chinese Language Curriculum and Pedagogy Implementation Steering Committee, which is chaired by Mr Wee Heng Tin, former Director-General of Education. Mr Wee's committee coordinates and oversees the implementation of the recommendations from the Chinese Language review. Let me provide Members with an update on the enhancements made to the teaching of Chinese Language so far.

The Ministry of Education is piloting the modular Chinese Language curriculum at Primary 1 and Primary 2 in 25 schools this year. Under this approach, students study a Core Module for 70%-80% of the curriculum. On top of this, they can take a Bridging Module or an Enrichment Module, depending on their ability and interest. If they are relatively weak, they can take the Bridging Module. If they are relatively strong, then they can take the Enrichment Module. This helps ensure a baseline standard without a ceiling effect (�?底�?�?顶), ie, ensure that there is a strong base but we do not impose a ceiling for those who can achieve more. The modular curriculum will be implemented across all primary levels by 2010. Feedback from students, teachers and parents from pilot schools has been positive and encouraging so far.

Dr Ong Seh Hong shared that one of his young constituents encountered a teacher who emphasised rote learning. I want to assure him again that this is precisely the type of teaching approach which we hope to change. Many of the Chinese Language teachers, I spoke to, are passionate about teaching the language and, in fact, many of them have come up with very creative ways of helping their students learn.

Chinese Language teachers in many schools are embarking on pedagogical experimentation to make learning more engaging for their students. At Ahmad Ibrahim Primary School, Chinese Language teachers use a thematic approach on "Chinese Traditional Herbs" to make CL learning come alive. Other examples include the use of comics in Dunman Secondary School, broadcasting programmes in Xin Min Secondary and blog diary in Tanjong Katong Girls' School. The Ministry of Education has organised more than 15 sharing sessions to propagate good practices, and we will continue to do so.

Starting from this year, we will introduce an interim examination format at PSLE and at O-levels. Handheld CL-to-CL electronic dictionaries will be allowed in the CL composition component of national examinations from 2007 as an alternative to the print dictionary.

A new Literature in Chinese syllabus is being offered to O-level students starting this year. The new syllabus has included more works of eminent local writers and contemporary literature, which we believe are closer to students' interests.

In addition, we have set up a fourth Chinese Language Elective Programme Centre in Jurong Junior College and three more Zonal Centres of Excellence to promote best practices in CL learning and teaching to other schools. These additional zonal centres are in Pei Chun Public School, Chung Cheng High School (Main) and CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls' School.

Dr Ong Seh Hong asked whether fewer students were taking Chinese Language as a result of the change in university admission criteria in 2004. I would like to say that, in the same year, MOE also relaxed the criteria for students to take Higher Chinese at secondary level. Since the changes, in fact, more students have opted to take Higher Chinese at O-level and A-level. At the AO-level in the junior college, the number of students taking the subject has remained roughly the same, but what has changed is that fewer students have opted to retake the CL 'AO' examination at JC2. Previously, JC students have been retaking their CL 'AO' examinations to better their scores because it is compulsory to count it for university admission. Since then there is a drop in the candidature for the CL 'AO' examination at JC2, not the number of students taking CL. Therefore, I would say that the situation is promising. There is no decline in number nor interest in the learning of Chinese Language in schools.

Mr Chay Wai Chuen suggested allowing Singaporean students to learn each other's language, with a focus on conversational skills. MOE encourages our schools to offer such lessons to students. We are very encouraged to note that 60 schools have already initiated programmes for students to pick up conversational skills in either Malay Language or Chinese Language. To facilitate them, MOE provides schools with teaching guides and allows schools to tap on existing resource provisions to conduct these programmes.

Non-native students, who are keen and interested to study Malay or Chinese Language to a higher level, can also take these subjects as third languages, which will have a greater emphasis on listening as well as speaking skills.

Having said all this, we need to be realistic. Not all students have the ability to cope with a third language. In fact, it is a very big challenge for most of us to master just two languages. Besides Malay and Chinese Languages, MOE also offers French, German and Japanese as third languages. Mr Chay suggested Spanish could be offered to our students. I would like to say that if there is strong student interest and demand for it to be offered Spanish as a third language, we are open to this proposal provided our resources permit. But the important thing is students' interest.

12.45 pm

Dr Tan Cheng Bock asked whether it might be more cost-effective to refurbish and upgrade school buildings, especially to preserve its sentimental value, rather than just demolish and build new ones elsewhere. Wherever possible, the Ministry of Education does refurbish and upgrade school buildings, instead of demolishing and building new ones. This is for better cost-effectiveness, as well as to preserve the feeling of loyalty from the students to the school. But this is done only when the current site is still suitable, in terms of location, size as well as population catchment.

In fact, in many instances, a school building is vacated due to merger or relocation of schools. This usually reflects the falling demand of school places in that vicinity, because the estate has matured. At the same time, new demand is created in new towns as young couples set up homes and younger families move in. Therefore, we will continue to see the Ministry of Education building new schools in newer estates like Punggol in line with population characteristics. We are, however, looking into merging schools in more mature estates, such as Jurong, precisely to avoid having a school with no students and, therefore, wasting land and physical resources. Vacated school sites are returned to the Singapore Land Authority to put to alternative use, or sometimes, it may be used for holding schools for the Ministry of Education's Programme for Rebuilding and Improving Existing Schools (PRIME).

Dr Tan also commented that some primary school buildings are too large. He specifically mentioned Henry Park Primary School, which is a very popular school with parents. Since PRIME in 1999, almost all our primary schools are built with standard 42 classrooms. In the case of Henry Park Primary School, it was built to be slightly larger to provide it with another six classrooms to run the Gifted Education Programme to cater to the additional Primary 4 to 6 students for the programme. This explains why the school campus is slightly larger.

Dr Tan expressed concern that the larger campus may be too imposing for the young students. We would like to assure him that Primary 1 students are grouped into smaller class size of 30 each and they are buddied with an older primary student who will look after them and bring them around in the first few weeks of school, so that the new students are comfortable with the new environment. As for the ramp in front of Henry Park Primary, which Dr Tan mentioned, it is a traffic safety feature that is put in place because of the larger enrolment in Henry Park. It helps to ease traffic congestion entering the school by separating the buses that go to the ground level and the cars which will go up to the elevated level. Therefore, having that ramp is necessary for the safety of our students.

Mr Chan, you may want to leave some time for the rest of the replies for your Ministry.

Yes, Sir. Dr Tan Cheng Bock also asked for the Ministry's stand on teachers who give their handphone numbers to students and parents. I want to say that respect for teachers is central to education. Our teachers play an important role in nurturing and developing our young. MOE believes in upholding the standing of teachers so that the role is not compromised.

In the course of their work, teachers may be required to share their personal contact numbers with their colleagues and supervisors so that they remain contactable. This is especially necessary during times of emergency. Teachers are also encouraged to maintain contact with their students and parents, and many of them do, but they are not compelled to disclose their personal contact numbers to their students or parents if they feel uncomfortable in doing so. Teachers will normally, however, provide their students and parents with either their office or staff room numbers.

Schools value good relationship with parents and will work with them in the interest of their children as far as it is possible. The Ministry of Education does not condone harassment of teachers by parents and view any such harassments seriously. In addition, I want to say that anybody found verbally abusing a civil servant could be taken to task in a court of law.

Finally, just a brief response to Mr Ang Mong Seng's point about school bags. I want to say that this has nothing to do with Teach Less, Learn More, but it has something to do with our normal kiasu attitude. When I was a student, I also carried all the books to school when it was not necessary to do so. With proper planning, in fact, students only need to bring whatever that is required to school. In school, there are also places and lockers that they can keep their stuff. So it is not necessary for the students to carry exceptionally heavy school bags to school. Having said that, if parents notice that their children's school bags are still too heavy, maybe they should go through with them and see whatever is necessary or unnecessary for them to bring to school. In fact, to be able to bring the necessary books and leave the unnecessary stuff at home is also a very good habit of housekeeping.

I wonder if the Minister could make a clarification for me. I wonder if the enhanced Learning Support Programme is made available to those PSLE students who have failed three times.

I am sorry that I did not make myself fully clear on this. In fact, students who have failed three times would certainly go into the NorthLight School. In addition, the school will also open its doors to students who have failed twice and who wish to progress on to that school, whereas previously, you need to have failed three times and reached the age of at least 14 years old before you can enter one of the VTCs. So the first group is still a very important target group, ie, those who have failed three times.

Sir, I would like to seek two clarifications on school drop-outs. My first clarification is: may I ask the Minister whether we have school social workers to identify and assist potential school drop-outs? On my second clarification, in view of the important interplay between the community, home and schools, does MOE recognise this challenge and does MOE have any plans or initiatives to address this issue?

On her first question, the answer is yes. Currently, all schools draw on a network of social workers, both those who are working part-time with the schools as well as those provided through the entire MCYS' network, the Family Service Centres and the various voluntary agencies. And we are taking this a step further. We are going to provide full-time counsellors in each of our secondary schools by the end of this year and even primary schools by 2008 - people who can try to help the teachers to spot problems early and prevent students from coming to a point where they make the wrong decision of dropping out of school. So it is something which we are working on and, in fact, it is a question of recruiting the right people and putting them through a training pipeline before sending them out to the schools. It takes a bit of time but we are getting there.

On her second question, this is a very important focus, particularly for the pre-primary years, but also for the older children. MOE, MCYS and all the community agencies, as well as some specialist agencies, those that specialise in students with specific learning difficulties like the Dyslexia Association, for instance, are working together quite closely. First, to make sure that at the pre-primary level, every family sends their kid to kindergarten. Secondly, to be able to detect students with learning difficulties early and have a multi-pronged approach to helping that child and also, sometimes, having to help the family realise the importance of education and try to provide some support for the kids when they are in education.

So it is a lot of work, a very challenging task, quite complex, no easy fix, but we are trying hard.

Mr Chairman, I would like to ask the Minister what about the Inter-ministry Committee to relieve the congestion on the road itself. Basically, we still see a lot of congestion in the main road in front of all the schools, even for those which have undergone PRIME as well.

That is not a topic that pertains to the matter I was talking about. There is progress being made. I do not have the details. The LTA is, in fact, the chief coordinator for this Committee, but I understand that there is progress being made.

I just want to make two points, Mr Chairman. I am very happy to hear about the efforts to promote and uplift the quality of teachers in the kindergartens. I would just like to ask where are we now, in terms of achieving the target of the qualifications for all the teachers in the kindergartens, because the deadline, if I recall very well, is 2006. The second question would be: since we are trying to uplift the quality of pre-school education, are there any changes that we are trying to do also at lower primary to ensure that there is an ease of transition from pre-school to the lower primary?

In fact, if you are talking about the upgrading of the kindergarten teachers, we have achieved good progress. Based on our figures, as of January 2006, 95% of our non-profit, community-based kindergartens have implemented the new curriculum framework. 60% of the principals have obtained the necessary qualifications and 80% of teachers have acquired a certificate or diploma. So we are well on the way to achieve those objectives on time. The best link between the kindergartens as well as the primary schools is the Learning Support Programme (LSP), which my Minister has presented just now on the various enhancement features. With this, I think the linkage should be even smoother.

I will allow three last clarifications before we move on - Mr Yeo, Mr Chiam and Dr Khor. We will start with Mr Yeo.

The Minister of State mentioned that already 80% of the schools completed their self-appraisal. What I would like to know is what MOE will do with all these self-appraisals because, if there is no structured plan, all these self-appraisals will just become a paper exercise. For 485 centres in Singapore, how frequent does the Ministry do its monitoring?

1.00 pm

Sir, self-appraisal means self-appraisal. The schools appraise based on the guidelines, and they learn a lesson from it. The Ministry of Education does not micro-manage the kindergartens. They remain private. We feel that it is good to have a very diversified range of kindergartens in the market. The reason is really one of resources. Mr Yeo is trying to, I think, persuade the Ministry of Education to start implementing official programmes before the age of six, maybe playing a much more active role in K1 and K2, or maybe bringing in pre-primary education. But the point is this. Resources are limited. We would rather concentrate on the age beyond the compulsory education requirement, do a good job out of it and put in a good LSP programme to make sure that all the students are up to speed. Because, if were to keep on moving down the age, resources and commitments are going to be greater and, frankly, the issue is also an iterative one. If we were to go down to five-year olds, then the question would be how about the education programme for those who are three or four years old, and so on. So, I think there is no end to it. Our strategy is to concentrate on those years starting from the year that compulsory education becomes compulsory, and do a good job out of it.

Sir, I am concerned at the high failure rate at the PSLE. I wonder how effective is the enhanced support programme in cutting down the drop-out rate at the PSLE.

I take it that the Member is referring to the Learning Support Programmes in the early primary years. It has been working quite well. It is an intervention which, by international reckoning, has achieved more success than most. 12%-14% of Primary 1 students go through the programme in the first year. About one-third is able to graduate out of the programme and join regular classes after one year. It does not mean that we solve all their problems, but I think we have achieved a lot to correct early deficits. Second year, another portion of them, also at the end of the second year, managed to graduate to regular classes.

It is quite resource-intensive because we have got to train up teachers, especially to deal with the students in these Learning Support Programmes - small classes, different teaching methods. It is not something that you can just scale up at the word "Go". I think we can do more. We can do more in Primary 3, 4 and 5. I do not think we have the resources to continue our Learning Support Programmes for four or five years. It would be more practical to improve what we are doing in Primary 1 and 2, which is what we are doing. We will not be able to reduce the failure rate to zero. In fact, if we reduce the failure rate to zero, it would probably mean that examinations are not doing what they are meant to do. If a student has not mastered the basics, it should be reflected in his grades. What we have got to do is to keep trying to improve our teaching, and where a child is really not able to benefit from a regular academic curriculum, even the EM3 curriculum, find something else that he can do well in, take an interest in, motivate him, that gives him confidence, which is what we are trying to do.

So, we have a whole set of initiatives, starting from pre-primary to early-primary, through primary school upwards, plus having the NorthLight School, that would provide a holistic approach for this group of students who are not suited to a regular academic curriculum. Let us give them time. I can assure him that we are putting a lot more efforts and resources into this, a lot more time and a lot more expertise, quite apart from the financial resources, which is the easier part. I think we will achieve success as we go along.

We are not unique in facing this problem. In fact, as I mentioned in my remarks earlier, our problems are not large. We think they are too large for us. We want to do more, 2.6% of kids dropping out is far too large a number, as far as we are concerned. But they are not large by international standard. If you look at the UK drop-out rates, if you take those who drop out all the way through the end of secondary school, they are far higher. And truancy rates are extremely high for those who remain in school. I was just reading a report by the National Drop-out Prevention Centre in the United States, in some US cities, as much as 50% of the pupils are totally disengaged from their studies. I am not saying that that should give us comfort. All I am trying to say is that this is a problem the world over - truancy and dropping-out. Our problems are not large by international standard, but they are too big for us, too big for our comfort and we want to do more, and we will do more.

Sir, I would like to ask the Minister on the point that students can be admitted to VTC. Sir, I understand that we should not rush into this. We should take this cautiously. I welcome the changes that will be made with regard to VTC programme, but the Minister noted earlier that students may now be allowed to enter VTC prior to reaching 14 years old, ie, if they fail twice in the PSLE. I would like to ask the Minister if MOE would consider, further down the road, allowing students to be admitted to VTC even before they fail the PSLE twice, because after six years of education, it may be quite clear to the teachers and parents if the student would benefit more from the VTC-type of education experience than in mainstream schools. I am asking the Minister if that would be considered, either they fail once or even not having taken the PSLE, but subject to the teacher's and parent's advice and consent to actually send the student to VTC prior to taking the PSLE.

We will consider that eventually. First, we have to build up the capacity of NorthLight School, as well as the experience with the new programmes it is adopting. Over time, we will consider whether we want to allow parents to elect to have their children, after they fail the first time, go on to such a school. But we should look at that very carefully. Many students can repeat the PSLE and pass. There is a reasonable number of them that pass on their second attempt and go on to do reasonably well in secondary schools and on to ITE. So we do not want to make a pre-emptory move of shunting them out of the mainstream. Teachers would be able to advise parents on whether the child is suitable to repeat the PSLE. This is something which we will consider in later years. For now, we are taking in a significantly larger group of students by opening the doors of NorthLight School to students who have failed the second time, instead of failed first time. Over time, we will consider whether we can expand it further.

Malay and Tamil Language Promotion

Sir, recently the Ministry of Education had announced the setting up of the Malay Language Learning and Promotion Committee and the Tamil Language Learning and Promotion Committee. It was reported that the aim of both committees is to enthuse students in learning the Malay and Tamil Languages and to develop in them an abiding interest in the respective languages, literature and culture. Quite a mouthful, actually. So, I would like to ask the Minister to elaborate on the terms of reference of the two committees. I am assuming, Sir, that in the pursuit of this aim, the committees will work with the Malay and Indian communities, relevant organisations, the media, institutes of higher learning and schools, to organise language, literature and cultural activities. I believe, Sir, through such literature and cultural activities, we can broaden the language environment and learning to encourage students to continue using Malay and Tamil even after they are years out of school.

I am also concerned that these committees may not be effective if they work independently. So, apart from the parties that I have mentioned above, who are the other possible partners and stakeholders that could be roped in for this effort?

Lastly, I would like to know whether this effort could be turned into a movement?

Sex Education

(In Mandarin): Sir, I understand the Ministry of Education has introduced the "Growing Years Series" of sex education for students in the primary, secondary and junior colleges. It is also in the midst of introducing this series to students studying at the tertiary level.

Sir, before the schools introduced such a series, we do not have incidents of students taking their nude photos or sexual activities with their handphones. Now, with the series, we have such events happening. People are now asking whether the Ministry of Education has taught the wrong thing. Will the Minister consider reviewing this programme and also to get proper teachers to teach the lessons, otherwise, our students seem to have been going in another direction. This will be contrary to the original intention of this programme.

Sir, there is a pop song from the 90s that talks about sex. While I will not attempt to elaborate on the song, I think we should talk about this in a tone, it is not a tune our youths might listen to. The truth is, many of our teenagers are having sex. We do not need technology like mobile phones to highlight this. The starting point would be the 2,000-plus teenage pregnancies a year. But, nowadays, it would seem youths are having sex at an earlier age. I believe the call to improve our sexuality education has been made before. But has anything changed? I can cut and paste the reply that was given in Parliament two years ago from MOE's current webpage on sexuality education. Why is that?

After all, this Government tries very hard to be pragmatic. It does not ban prostitution. It legalises it. Does anyone say, therefore, that the Government is anti-marriage? Sir, I think the key message in MOE's sexuality education should be adjusted. I agree we should teach our children to love and respect others as they love and respect themselves. However, to premise our sexuality education on the importance of the family as the basic unit of society is not going to help teens who have had and who are having sex, because it is not relevant to them. This is the premise that presents and promotes abstinence until marriage and, therefore, a premise that excludes those who need help, knowledge and good counsel the most. Above all else, sexuality education must deal with the realities.

I can recognise why pupils are taught to understand and respect the attitudes, values and beliefs regarding sexuality propagated by other communities, but do our communities recognise why sexuality education must be approached, most importantly, from the point of view of the adolescents? It is the best way to connect with him or her. It is the best way to create an environment where a pupil can feel more comfortable confiding in an adult. In other words, it is the best way to help our children to exercise responsibilities and make informed decisions with which they can live. But we should not fool ourselves to think we can make this decision on behalf of our children, which means sexuality education should not come with a moralistic-laden approach.

Recently, a sexuality workshop at a junior college triggered a furore precisely because of this. It is a pity because external organisations and individuals can play a useful role. They can complement teachers by providing an objective third party perspective. However, I would like to ask if MOE has an accreditation scheme for groups which teach sexuality education. In this way, MOE is responsible to ensure that sexuality education is kept objective and schools need not fret about hidden agenda should they outsource such programmes.

Apart from helping teens to protect themselves from sexual abuse, our educators should ask if they have been successful in staying on top of the trend and real-life dilemmas of our teens. I would like to ask for the Minister's assessment on this issue.

Student Well-being

Sir, surveys done in both China and US show that about two-thirds of the students have not had enough sleep. The sleeping time of the secondary students has fallen down to below eight hours on average. Did our Ministry conduct a similar survey to find out the situation in Singapore and whether our students have adequate rest? Recently, many members of the public have voiced their concerns, through the media, that students are having longer and longer travelling time to school and most of the students have to report to school as early as 7.10 every morning. May I know whether MOE has any plans to address this concern and would the Ministry consider adjusting the starting time in all schools?

Another issue I wish to raise is whether our students have full freedom to choose their CCA. I understand that some parents have complained that their children were channelled to CCA that they are not interested in. I hope the Ministry could clarify to what extent this is true and what is the Ministry's plan to ensure that all our students can pursue their interest through CCA, and not joining CCA for the sake of having one.

Sir, most of the students, particularly those in secondary and Pre-U, have to take their meals in school canteens. I would like to know whether the Ministry is monitoring the price and quality of the food providers in the school canteens. With more and more schools tendering out their canteen operation, would there be an adverse impact on the quality and price of the food provided for our students in the school? I hope the Ministry would also monitor this.

Many students have also voiced the concern that there is no place for them to play sports game, for example, football, during weekends. I would like to know how many schools have so far opened their school fields to the community to enable our kids to play football during weekends?

Safety of School Children

Sir, I would like the Minister to stop the LTA from constructing the bus-stop near the open road in front of Block 120, Potong Pasir, Avenue 1, and instead to get the bus company to use the sheltered bus-bay which has been built by the Potong Pasir Town Council at its own expense.

My plea to the Minister, both privately and now in Parliament, is made entirely for the safety of hundreds of school children who shall be making use of that bus-stop in time to come. The bus-stop currently constructed by the LTA is not safe at all. When used, it shall expose the school children, on a daily basis, to extreme danger. I have no doubt in my mind that if the Minister allows that bus-stop, facing the open road to be used, one of these days, a child shall be knocked down or even killed by on-coming traffic. If the Minister does not want that to happen, then it is best not to use that bus-stop in the open road.

1.15 pm

Sorry, Mr Chiam. Your time is up. Mdm Ho Geok Choo is not here. Mr Ang Mong Seng.

Co-curricular Activities

(In Mandarin): Sir, the number of young people joining grassroots organisations in community service is on a declining trend in recent years, resulting in a lack of successors for our community leaders. Singapore has a population of 4 million but only 26,000 people participate in activities of the grassroots organisations, accounting for only 0.65% of the population. Volunteers in our local charitable organisations make up another 15.2%, making a total of 15.85%. This is inferior compared to other countries. In the USA, it is 44%; in the UK, it is 47.5%; in Hong Kong, it is 22%. With an ageing population, we need more young people to participate in community activities.

Recently, in my constituency, there are many students who volunteer to take part in our youth group organisations and help us to organise community activities. I suggest that the Ministry of Education allows the participation in grassroots organisations' activities to be considered as a form of regular co-curricular activity for the schools. This will encourage more young people to take part in community activities. We can then have more volunteers to serve our people and to promote our community activities, enhance our cohesiveness and, together, we can build a warm and harmonious society for our multi-racial and multi-cultural society. This will also help to arrest the declining number of grassroots leaders.

National Education and Racial Integration

Mr Ong Ah Heng (Nee Soon Central) (In Mandarin): Mr Chairman, the terrorist threat and the uproar in various parts of the world over the publishing of cartoons on Prophet Mohamad serve to remind us of the importance of racial harmony based on mutual respect and understanding. Such a process should start from young when our children begin to attend school.

May I ask the Minister for Education whether there is any holistic programme with concrete plans in our primary and secondary schools and tertiary institutions to enable our students to understand, appreciate and respect the different cultures and religions in our multi-racial society. I think this is very important in such a multi-racial and multi-cultural society. We will be able to respect one another's culture, traditions and customs. This is very important to a multi-racial society like ours. If we cannot start to inculcate in our students from the primary schools on such a concept, it would be very difficult later on to persuade them to come forward and serve the community, even when called upon by Government leaders to do so.

Mr Chairman, schools play an important role in providing students with the education necessary not just for their academic development but also their holistic development as individuals. I thank Members for their interest in ensuring that our schools provide well for our students, not just in "hard" aspects such as academic performance, but also in "softer" aspects and equally important aspects of ensuring that they will grow up to be well adjusted and responsible members of the society. I wish to stress, however, that in these efforts, MOE and the schools must be supported - by parents, the community and the media. MOE is always keen to engage stakeholders in the well being and proper development of our students, but this is the responsibility that lies with all of us.

Let me first thank Mr Zainudin Nordin for his question on the work of the committees that were set up to promote Malay and Tamil languages. The Ministry of Education conducted comprehensive reviews of the teaching and learning of Malay and Tamil last year. The conclusion of both reviews was the articulation of a vision of Malay and Tamil being closely intertwined with the Singapore society in which they are practised. For Malay, the vision is in the development of Arif Budiman, a Malay expression that encapsulates the learned person who contributes to society and nation. For Tamil, the vision is for it to be a living language and a vibrant part of our multi-racial society.

We fully agree with Mr Zainudin that the promotion of Malay and Tamil, therefore, has to be a community effort in partnership with stakeholders. In February 2006, MOE set up the Malay Language Learning and Promotion Committee, chaired by myself, and the Tamil Language Learning and Promotion Committee, chaired by Mr S Iswaran, Deputy Speaker of Parliament. The terms of reference are precisely to collaborate with Malay and Tamil communities to organise activities to promote the teaching and learning of these languages.

The role of these Committees is also to win support from the communities to pursue these goals. The two Committees will therefore work with Malay and Tamil community organisations, institutes of higher learning, the media, parents as well as schools. The mandate will be to collaboratively organise language, literature and cultural activities to expand the space in which Malay and Tamil are used in our daily lives.

The organisation of these activities is aimed at supporting and complementing the present efforts of the Malay and Tamil communities to promote these languages. So the two committees are not to supplement the existing efforts by the communities. We hope that they will provide momentum for language, literary and cultural groups to come together in a sustained and focused effort to promote the living and daily use of Malay and Tamil. If, through these activities, we are able to infuse in Malay and Tamil Singaporeans a sense of excitement about the role of these languages in their daily lives, I am confident that this would be the most successful type of "movement" that Mr Zainudin talked about. Indeed, we need all the collaborative efforts of the whole community to support the use of the Mother tongues.

Sir, on the teaching of the Malay and Tamil languages, Mr Ong Ah Heng sought updates on the review of the teaching and learning of these two Mother tongues. To spearhead these efforts, MOE has set up working committees for the implementation of the new Malay and Tamil Language curriculum and pedagogy. The committees will also implement new initiatives for assessment, examinations and teacher training.

Key initiatives would include opening up more space for classroom discussion, giving greater emphasis to assignments that require deeper thinking, and providing differentiated instruction to cater to students from different backgrounds and of different abilities. There will also be more focus on oral communication skills. Such initiatives will provide a richer classroom experience. MOE will implement the new Malay and Tamil curriculum at Primary 1 to Primary 4, starting from 2008.

Sir, on sexuality education, Mr Ong Ah Heng and Ms Eunice Olsen asked about the effectiveness of the sexuality education programme in our schools. Sexuality matters have become increasingly complicated in a rapidly changing world with evolving mores. We all recognise this. Why adolescents indulge in sexual behaviour that results in teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases is a complex issue. Lack of family support, low self-esteem and lack of understanding about the responsibilities in relationships are among the contributing factors. Many forces, including the influence of the family and media, contribute to shaping the attitudes of teenagers towards sexuality - rightly or wrongly. To tackle these issues, I cannot stress enough the necessity of parents, the community and the media also playing their part to inculcate sound values in our children.

What is MOE's approach to sexuality education? Sir, sexuality education is provided for all students in our schools. The emphasis of the programme is ensuring that students have the knowledge and ability to make responsible, informed choices, a point that Ms Olsen alluded to. It is premised on the importance of the family as the unit of society - an objective, a vision that we still hold to - which is a sensible approach that acknowledges the nature of our society.

Through the formal curriculum as well as the co-curricular programme, the "Growing Years Series", schools provide students with the knowledge that they need to make responsible decisions about relationships. The "Growing Years Series" discusses the consequences of teenage sexual activity, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. As a realistic approach to dealing with these issues, the Science curriculum at secondary school also provides information on contraception as a means of prevention against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, and this is taught at Secondary 2 level.

Beyond hard facts, the programme also provides the context in which sexuality matters should be viewed - what it means to be in a relationship; what it means to build a family; what it means to be responsible to your loved ones. In addition, schools provide students with the necessary life-skills to be able to make responsible decisions.

To augment their resources, schools have the autonomy to bring in relevant resources, including the Health Promotion Board or other external agencies. I would like to assure Members that guidelines have been provided to schools to help them screen external agencies. We are a secular nation. MOE ensures that all messages on sexuality matters that are transmitted through our schools are likewise secular and sensitive to our multi-religious make-up.

The "Growing Years Series" is meant for students in primary and secondary schools as well as junior college/pre-university level. Tertiary institutions customise their sexuality education programmes in accordance with the needs of their students. Although parents can opt out of the "Growing Years Series", less than 1% of parents have done so. This suggests that parents and students have found this programme useful.

Moving forward, MOE intends to ensure that the "Growing Years Series" maintains its relevance and is engaging and useful. MOE will encourage schools to adopt an even more customised approach. We recognise that different groups of students might have different needs with regard to sexuality education -this is a point which Ms Olsen talked about. Having smaller group discussions, for instance, will allow teachers to reach out differently to different groups of students, and use different approaches in discussing the same issues.

Currently, sexuality education is taught only by selected and trained teachers. MOE will additionally strengthen their training. We will ensure that such teachers are more regularly updated on matters concerning teenage sexuality. There will be a greater emphasis on how teachers should deliver information and advice on this delicate topic to their young students.

Are schools equipped to educate students on sexuality matters? I would say that MOE ensures that students obtain the best possible foundation from the school environment that allows them to later make informed choices about their relationships. But it is important that parents also play an equally active role in such efforts, reinforcing and customising sexuality education for their children based on their respective family values.

Sir, on student well-being, I would like to address Mr Yeo Guat Kwang's queries. Schools have to decide for themselves the most appropriate starting time. There are many local factors that schools are best placed to balance, such as the scheduling of the curricular and co-curricular time-tables and traffic conditions at different times. Mr Yeo would be pleased to know that with the move towards some single-session schools, some of our schools have implemented later starting times after consultation with stakeholders, although others have also kept to the same starting time after feedback from stakeholders. 46 of our schools also start after 7.45 am now.

MOE has not done any studies on how much sleep students get. I think this is something that generally we all can have more of. However, may I offer two simple pieces of advice. First, to get adequate rest for students, they should go to bed at a reasonable time at night, and this must be supervised by parents. Second, in choosing schools, parents might also wish to consider the distance of the school from their home if this is a serious concern.

On football fields, Mr Yeo asked about the use of school fields during the weekend. Fifty schools allow the public to use their fields during the weekend as part of the Singapore Sports Council's Dual Use Scheme. In addition, another 90 schools have arrangements with community groups such as football clubs, constituency clubs and alumni groups to allow them to use the school fields.

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Members may be pleased to know that every school has a School Tuckshop Committee that is chaired by the Principal, whether the tuckshop operation is tendered out or not. This is a very good thing to see in our schools. I am sure that not all other organisations maintain their canteens so seriously. The School Tuckshop Committee monitors the quality of food in the tuckshop to ensure that it meets the health and nutritional standards of the Health Promotion Board, and that the tuckshop maintains a high standard of hygiene. The Committee also monitors the prices. Annual surveys have shown that prices at school tuckshops remain reasonable. In addition, I would like to clarify that 82% of our schools do not tender out the tuckshop operation.

Mr Chiam See Tong is concerned about a bus bay at Potong Pasir. He asked us to persuade LTA to allow a loading/pick-up bay at Potong Pasir to be used as a bus stop. We agree that the safety of our students is of primary importance, and we take this very seriously. MOE will forward this suggestion to LTA, the competent authority on the siting of bus-stops. In the interim, we will consult LTA should any issue arise for the students of St Andrew's Junior College with this arrangement.

On CCAs, Mr Ang Mong Seng requested MOE to consider letting students serve on grassroots organisations as co-curricular activities, or CCAs. I am pleased to inform Mr Ang that the Ministry allows our students to do so. Students' involvement in community-based activities, including appropriate grassroots activities, is recognised as participation in a CCA if schools approve it. To ensure that students choose such activities with thought, students are required to work out formal proposals with their partner organisations.

We also hope to bring about the concept of service learning in our students. Part of this is through the Community Involvement Programme (CIP), and part of this is through CCAs. In this regard, schools may include as school-based CCA activities with organisations that fulfil this idea of service learning. This could include grassroots organisations.

Mr Yeo also wanted clarification on whether students have full freedom to choose their CCAs. I would like to assure Mr Yeo that this is very much the case. Students are free to indicate and try out the CCAs of their choice. Of course, this is subject to the availability of places in some cases. In other cases, there might be selection involved, for instance, onto the school's competitive basketball or soccer team, and not all students that want to join can get in.

I would like to emphasise that it is very much the wish of MOE for students to pursue their interests through CCAs. On top of the comprehensive range of CCAs already provided in schools, students can also initiate other CCAs that they would like to see. This scheme was started in 2004 and, to-date, has been implemented by at least 88 schools.

On racial integration and understanding, we cannot agree more with Mr Ong Ah Heng on the importance of ensuring that our students understand one another's cultures and religions. Recent world events have given us a sober reminder of the paramount importance that we must place on racial harmony and understanding.

At the same time, MOE is fully aware that true understanding will not take place in a forced and unnatural manner. MOE's approach is to infuse the importance of mutual understanding and respect through the formal and informal curricula, and provide opportunities for students of different races to interact. Additionally, we look for teachable moments in everyday life. Racial harmony and understanding that is sustainable can only take place in this manner.

Hence, we encourage students of different races to work and play together. Schools provide such opportunities through CCAs, CIP, project work, camps and overseas trips. For instance, Jurong JC sent 170 students to the recent Thaipusam Festival to be road marshals. Joint activities between schools also provide a good platform for students of different races to interact.

I am also pleased to inform Members that we are providing more opportunities for students to learn non-native Mother Tongue Languages. Starting from 2007, we will no longer impose the academic eligibility criteria for students to offer the non-native Mother Tongue Languages as a third language. An increasing number of schools have also been conducting conversational non-native Mother Tongue language lessons. While only seven schools offered conversational Malay in 2002, 60 schools do so on a regular basis today. Thirty-seven schools offer conversational Mandarin on a regular basis. I visited Tampines Secondary School last year, where non-Chinese students are taught conversational Mandarin and non-Malay students are taught conversational Malay. Lower secondary students attend one period of such lessons every two weeks. In the classroom of Malay students I saw learning Mandarin, students were alert and very excited about learning new phrases which are very commonly used by their friends. This is something that we can encourage schools to do more. These are excellent opportunities for students to gain access to the cultures of other races, and enlarge our common space.

To take racial harmony to the next level, MOE will encourage a more widespread adoption of these activities, and provide more opportunities for students to get to know one another better. One of our initiatives will be to encourage students to try traditionally ethnic-based activities such as Chinese Orchestra, Malay Dance and Indian Dance. A Malay student in my constituency attending Marsiling Secondary School is playing the erhu and he is now in Marsiling Constituency Orchestra, the only Malay boy among 120 or so Chinese youths who are members of the orchestra. This is something that we should always encourage.

Second, our SAP schools are aware of their responsibility to ensure that their students have the opportunities to interact with students of other races, and already do much in this regard. Since 2004, Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) has had a joint cultural activities programme with Westspring Secondary School (WSS). HCI students meet West Spring Secondary students once a fortnight for six months and have a camp during the June holidays. These students have taught each other activities ranging from Dikir Barat to Wushu. Since 2002, St Nicholas Girls' Primary School has had an annual one-day camp with Malay students from Admiralty Primary School, with the Admiralty students teaching them Malay phrases and dance. Looking ahead, MOE will encourage a more structured and sustained approach, with the SAP schools having at least one partner school with students from a different ethnic group.

Third, MOE will further engage stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers and the community. Schools will identify suitable students and parents to act as Racial Harmony Ambassadors to initiate programmes for their peers and to take joint ownership of this issue. We will also be further deepening school leaders and teachers' understanding of cultural issues and sensitivities. MOE will work with educational and community partners, including the CDCs, to provide training on areas such as multi-cultural studies, facilitating conversations on racial harmony and understanding racial and religious practices and taboos.

In conclusion, MOE takes a multi-pronged approach to promoting racial harmony. However, bringing about racial understanding and harmony is ultimately a nation-wide effort. Schools simply cannot do this on their own. But, as one of the first platforms through which students will have the opportunity to interact with and get to know students of different races, we recognise and acknowledge the key role that our schools must play in this effort.

I would like to thank the SPS for his comprehensive reply. I like to seek a clarification from him. When I said previously about premising our sexuality education on the importance of family as a basic unit in society, what I was trying to say was that basically we need a more specific and targeted approach because for some of the organisations, when they go and promote Aids, they will preach abstinence, be faithful to your partner and the use of condoms. So I am saying that for sexuality, we should have a very targeted approach because we always have that group of teens who do need the extra counselling and extra help, and whether the teachers can identify them. I agree with him that we need to work closely with the parents and I am wondering whether this is something that is being looked into or implemented.

Sir, I thank Ms Olsen for her suggestion. I am pleased to tell Ms Olsen and Members that we are actually doing this in schools. Schools are already engaging a lot of excellent partners to help explain to students the issues of sexuality and the problems arising from relationships. Of course, we tailor different approaches to different groups of students to address their different interest or maturity.

Just as we have done very well in the area of sexuality education, I am just wondering whether MOE would be stepping up some programme to expose our students in school to the ill effects of casino gambling. This is so important especially when we are already going into this industry. I would like to know whether, to-date, there has been any data on the number of students in school who may have been arrested for gambling and whether there are programmes that are in place to address some of these issues.

Sir, I thank Mdm Ho for her contributions. Yes, we do track this issue in schools. But, today, I would like to assure Members that there is no disturbing trend among the students. In 2005, 30 and 65 students were caught gambling in primary and secondary schools respectively. MOE will continue to monitor this issue. We are working very closely with MCYS to ensure that these programmes and training for teachers can be conducted to ensure that we can address this issue, should this become a problem.

University Fees

Sir, the recent increase in fees announced by the National University of Singapore has caused much unhappiness amongst students. Many students heard about the increases through the media, so it came as a rude shock to them. They are also unhappy with the administration's explanation for the reasons for the increase which at 3% is probably quite small. The increase ranges from $200 to maybe almost $2,000, depending on the course you study. But I can sympathise with the medical student who pointed out in the press that his fees have increased by some $1,320 in the past two years, from $16,200 in 2004 to $17,500 this year. That is a lot of money to students.

One of the issues raised by students was for the need for more transparency and accountability on the part of the university administration. All our universities say they have sufficient safeguards in place to ensure good governance and best practices but this has failed to alleviate the students' grievances. Unfortunately, the NUS increase took place against the background of NUS' 100 years centennial celebrations and the building of a multi-million dollar new University Hall characterised by opulence, thus reinforcing the perception of a NUS that is extravagant in splashing on image building events and posh buildings. Bad timing, bad PR.

Therefore, the reasons for the increase - higher operating costs and the need to upgrade resources, and the assurance that it works hard to keep costs down - sounded hollow to students.

Our universities depend a great deal on donations from the public and very generous philanthropists. NUS alone received some $200 million from donations in the past two years. However, most donors are very specific in how their money should be spent, for example, for scholarships, for research, for a particular facility or building.

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Perhaps, NUS can consider focusing its efforts on raising money that will directly benefit students in the financing of their fees. A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that NUS can reduce fees by $500 per student for its 20,000-odd students, if NUS just raises $10 million for this general purpose from its donors. Of course, donors prefer to have pet projects and naming rights and when universities get big donations, they always make the headlines. But in fund-raising, universities should try harder to convince donors to give more that would help students alleviate their financial burdens directly. Or it could tweak its budget and cut back on something else like high-profile glamorous projects.

Sir, I am reminded of the time when I was an undergraduate in the then University of Singapore. Dr Toh Chin Chye was then the Vice Chancellor. The Deputy Vice Chancellor was a man called Reginald Quahe. The late Mr Quahe ran the university like a tight ship, and he was really tight-fisted when it came to money matters. I remember that as a student leader, I used to nag him persistently for rain shelters to be built so that we could be protected from the rain from the lecture theatres to the Union House. He refused to give way for years. And his answer was very simple: "Haven't you guys heard of umbrellas?" If you consider the fact that we were not a wealthy country at that time, I think he was right.

NUS could also focus its efforts on raising money for bursaries, as only 500 bursaries were given last year. A total of $1.4 million went to needy students, which is really peanuts, if you consider that only one in 10 needy students who applied got bursaries, which means nine others are left in the lurch. Therefore, increasing the pool of bursary beneficiaries should be an urgent priority for NUS.

Some have advocated that our universities adopt a lock-in scheme whereby fees are fixed for the students during the whole duration of their studies. This is the approach now being taken by SMU. It is probably a sound approach, as students can plan ahead and set aside specific sums of money, rather than face uncertainty during their studies. But fees must be locked in at a low cost, not a high one, otherwise it makes a mockery of the system. Ultimately, the key lies in our universities working harder in cost management and cutting back on lavish expenditures that do not directly benefit students, something which students and parents feel our universities are not doing enough.

Sir, I have just one specific question: I would like to know if NUS intends to renovate the Bukit Timah campus vacated by SMU when it moves there, bearing in mind that SMU has also spent a lot of money renovating it not long ago and, if so, how much will this cost?

Mr Chairman, Sir, at last year's Budget debate, I raised some concerns about the change in funding model for our universities as they become autonomous and corporatised.

The output funding model, adopted for universities, requires students to bear more of the cost of running the universities. According to the steering committee report released in January 2005, students would be expected to bear more of the operating cost and also part of the infrastructure cost of the universities. It was also recommended that universities be allowed to raise tuition fees every year by not more than 10%. The universities have responded by passing on bigger financial burdens to the students under the new funding model. Just a few months after legislation to corporatise NUS and NTU was passed, students are asked to pay 3% more in fees. And this is just a year after NUS raised fees by 5%. SMU is also raising its fees by $1,000 per year.

Sir, the fact of the matter is that, on the whole, wages in Singapore do not go up by 10% per year, particularly for the lower-income group, where wages have actually been going down. Increases in fees will bring a strain on many families. In response to concerns about affordability, the official counter-argument is that no poor students will be deprived of a tertiary education as there are financial assistance schemes available. I do not know how true this is.

Sir, in terms of bursaries, it was reported in the Straits Times of 15th February 2006 that only 500 out of the 1,300 applicants were successful in receiving bursaries to study at NUS. Does this mean that the universities are not making sufficient funds available for award of bursaries to needy students?

Secondly, while the students can always take loans, the question is: how much debt do we want our students to incur before they start work? Assuming that fees do eventually go up by 10% per year, a four-year undergraduate programme will see a student paying about 33% more in fees compared to his first year. Assuming that his fees are $6,110 in Academic Year 2006, it will go up to $8,132 in his final year in Academic Year 2009. If he borrows the maximum of 90% of the tuition fees under the Tuition Fee Loan Scheme, he would be indebted to the amount of $25,520.86 cents, before he starts work. This is not a small sum for someone just starting to work, and it may take him several years to pay. This will adversely affect his quality of life and ability to support his family. Some, I believe, may not have the confidence to incur such a debt and may choose instead to work rather than go into university.

Sir, education is supposed to be the great leveller, enabling poor Singaporeans to improve their socio-economic status. By reducing Government funding and putting such financial burdens on our students, the Government is discouraging the upward mobility of poor Singaporeans. By so doing, the Government also imposes a heavy financial burden on young graduates whose families are poor and are unable to support them through university education.

Sir, I would like the Minister's view on this, and whether the new policies and funding model are equitable.

Sir, I think Singaporean youths must be very confused. Two years ago, the Prime Minister called on them to play a part in shaping decisions made in this country. But last month, many youths realised their roles were often marginalised. I am referring to the university fee hikes.

Without disregarding efforts by MCYS to engage the youths, eg, by seeking ideas for *scape, I believe the litmus test to determine if youths are being taken seriously is in matters like tuition fee hikes - matters which affect them directly, in which they have equal stake - matters in daily life and institutional matters.

My point is not to argue that the fee hikes are too much. One cannot make such a judgment without detailed information. But that is why students were similarly in the dark - going by their reactions last month - about the rationale for the increase. At the very least, they were unconvinced of the rationale. Some speculated on reasons other than the ones offered. And should we be surprised when they were informed only after the hike was a fait accompli?

The issue is whether the process for adjusting university fees should always include student consultation. In considering this, we should not forget how best we want our youths to feel ownership in issues, decisions and institutions that matter to this country. I have read how, in a meeting with the students' union, the NUS President regretted that management was unable to engage students this year because of the looming corporatisation. Personally, I think that, with a more established culture of consultation, students would not have been excluded from what is a very important decision.

Take, for example, the University of British Columbia. It circulates to student societies its proposals to increase tuition fees; holds open forums for students, who are invited via email; and offers access to an interactive website. It projects how much will be raised by fee increases and how these will be allocated by category, such as classroom and laboratory support or teaching assistantships, as well as by department or faculty. As funding allocations sometimes change, it even provides reports on the tuition increase allocation for the previous year. CalState University, Sacramento, goes so far as to mandate a student referendum for fees that affect the whole student body.

How do our universities compare? It should not matter if NUS and NTU have yet to become autonomous. Whether we engage our youth should not depend on certain conditions. On the other hand, whether our universities can become truly world-class institutions may well depend on how they engage their students, not just in tuition fees but even hostel fees. Students will only buy in to a decision when they feel there is accountability. Our universities would do well to remember that students who kick up the most fuss are going to be the ones who want to be involved and who want to serve.

So, I would like to ask the Minister if he could give all our tertiary institutions an encouraging nudge - since I doubt he would give a directive - to foster a spirit of consultation in all matters.

Medical Students' Fees

Mr Chairman, Sir, we know the importance of growing our human capital and to make education more affordable for those from the lower-income families. To make education accessible and affordable for all, the fees for educational courses should not and cannot be priced beyond the reach of the average student.

Sir, may I ask the Minister for Education, with the introduction of new fees for medical students in NUS, can the House be informed how much subsidy does one medical student receive per year during his/her five-year undergraduate programme, and what is the amount received as an average for the five years?

Affordable Post-secondary Education

Mr Chairman, Sir, as human capital is our nation's only resource, our Government has spared no efforts to nurture our human capital through investing on education generously. With more than half of our cohort now entering post-secondary education and higher education, it is crucial that we must ensure that school fees in the ITEs, polytechnics and universities always remain affordable to all Singaporeans.

Therefore, it was quite understandable that students in the local universities and polytechnics as well as the ITEs and their parents are concerned with the recent fee hikes. For the university, in particular, this comes on the back of a fee hike just the year before. And what is of particular concern to parents and students is that the university fee hikes came after the universities have become autonomous. Now they wonder if they are at the mercy of university administrators. Unlike countries with many universities, we have only three, and our universities really have a ready captive audience who have not much choices. Our students' alternative is to go to foreign universities, which is a choice not many Singaporeans can afford.

Hence, our university administrators cannot expect our population to simply accept their argument that our universities are world-class or that the students have to pay more as they will earn more when they graduate. I do not think this is a good explanation. The starting salaries for graduates from our local universities do not compare very well with those for graduates from global cities like London, New York and Chicago. In London, the starting salary of a college student is about £21,000, ie, about S$60,000, a year; in New York, it is about US$35,000. And these are not from the top universities, such as Yale, Harvard or Oxbridge, but typical universities.

Sir, I would, therefore, like MOE to tell us how does the Ministry ensure that our post-secondary and higher education will always be affordable to all Singaporeans. How does MOE hold universities accountable for their fee hikes? How does the Ministry ensure that there is greater transparency in these universities when it comes to fee hikes? How does the Ministry ensure that the universities improve their efficiency rather than simply pass on the increases in their costs to the students?

Doctorate Title

Mr Chairman, Sir, the topic I would like to talk about is "misuse of title - PhD degree for sale".

On 28th August last year, a Straits Times headline read: "Jakarta's fake-titles scam - 'Alumni' of unlicensed institutions include a former vice president, several former ministers." Lately, the Straits Times reported a CEO of a listed company making a correction to his PhD degree. He said that he did not hold a PhD degree from the University of Southern California, but an Honorary PhD degree from another university known as Southern California University. The former University of Southern California was ranked in the top 30 of the American universities. Later, I tried to search the Internet for Southern California University. "Yahoo.com" search engine could not find this name. I also tried to find out what are the universities in the state of California. I got a complete list of 139 universities in the state of California and, again, the name of this university was not there. So these were what had been reported.

I was told that, a few years ago, there was a guy who brought a basket of PhD degrees for sale in Singapore and the price that he named was not low - S$128,000 per degree - and some people said it was cheap. If you pay $128,000

to an American university, after three years, you may not get a degree. There are people - some of them whom I know - use that title as if they are medical doctors or they have earned a PhD degree.

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The indiscriminate use of "doctor" title could mislead others and as a result, some people might gain personal or even commercial interest. People sometimes, by mistake, thought they really have a genuine PhD degree and commit to do business with them. They may then end up in a very awkward situation.

Years ago, I attended one of the opening ceremonies of a medical centre which was in my constituency. I was introduced to the Chairman of the organisation, Dr X. It came immediately to mind that he was a medical doctor. But only after a few years later, when the organisation seemed to get into trouble where the particulars of that individual was made public, I then realised that he was not a medical doctor but a retired banker.

There are people who have got PhD degrees and serve on a Board or Council or even head certain educational institutions. Potential students look at the school prospectus and see that there are so many "doctors" around. They may come to the conclusion that the organisation is run by academically qualified people. Only when they had paid the money and the "doctors" ran away with their money, they then realised that they had actually been cheated.

I would like to ask the Government, in particular the Ministry of Education, what is its stand on the matter of the use of honorary doctorate titles, especially for those people who obtained them through commercial means.

Mr Chairman, first let me thank Mr Tan Soo Khoon, Mr Low Thia Khiang, Ms Eunice Olsen, Dr Tan Sze Wee, Dr Ong Seh Hong, Assoc. Prof. Low Seow Chay, and Assoc. Prof. Ong Soh Khim who spoke yesterday as well, for their various comments on the universities and the higher education sector.

Let me first address the issue of university fees. The Government's objective is to ensure that our universities, polytechnics and ITE provide Singaporean students with a top-quality education at affordable cost - top quality and affordable. Our aim is not to gear up our institutions to provide a lowest cost education, low-quality education, but to provide an affordable education that is top quality. This is, in fact, what our universities are providing. They are able to do so for three reasons: first, the Government funds them substantially, more than three-quarters of the cost of an undergraduate education; second, they charge realistic fees; and third, they provide substantial financial assistance to needy students. This is what is called "needs-blind admission", ie, you get in as long as you qualify on merit, and the university helps you with your needs and takes care of your cost once you are in. It allows for a top-quality education, affordable to all university students.

This outcome is quite different from what we see in most other developed countries. In the US, UK and Australia, public funding of the universities is much lower than in Singapore. In the US, the top state universities - I am not even talking about the private universities - will get something in the order of 20% of their funding from government. In the UK and Australia, it is 50% or less. But all the universities face the same cost pressures as, globally, the cost of high quality university faculty has gone up, together with the cost of knowledge-based professionals at large. So in the US and Australia, they have raised fees substantially more than Singapore, and to a substantially higher level than Singapore. They try to deliver quality, but they can only do so at a much higher cost to students compared to the situation in Singapore.

In Europe, it is the other way around. The governments prevent universities from raising fees. In fact, the universities charge very low fees. Despite high taxes, the governments are not able to fund the universities adequately to be able to provide a good quality university education. The universities are faced with relentless financial pressures and, particularly, in the last decade, they are close to a breaking point. So they have no choice but to lower quality because the funds are not there. They cannot raise fees, and the only option is to lower quality. They pack in more students per lecturer and hire more part-time lecturers. And because they cannot pay their best lecturers the market rate, they lose them. So, with the exception of a few top European universities, you get a low-cost education, but a low-quality education. I say this not as my own assessment, but the assessment of European university heads and academics. In fact, there are a number of independent analyses pointing to the problems. Everyone knows the problems. I just quote very quickly from an Economist article. This is a very good survey of higher education. I think it was in September last year called "The Brains Business". And I quote:

"The basic problems with the universities are the same across Europe: too much state control and too little freedom to manage their own affairs. Governments have forced universities to educate huge armies of students on the cheap, and have deprived them of the two freedoms that they need to compete in the international marketplace: to select their students and to pay their professors the market rate for the job."

Everyone knows the problems, but they have tied themselves into a political knot that prevents them from solving the problems.

We have avoided this, and we can continue to provide an excellent university education to Singaporeans if we keep up public funding at 75% of costs as we will do, and if our universities charge realistic fees and continue to provide every needy student with financial assistance. I will speak a little more on that later. What we must not do is to give up on quality, give up on getting the best faculty, give up on improving teaching and keeping the laboratories up to date. The universities have to aim to provide the highest quality, while keeping overall costs under control.

Let me say something about quality. We know the latest rankings. NUS and NTU were both ranked within the top 50 universities in the world globally by Times Higher Education Supplement. That is well known. But what is less well known and even more remarkable is that NUS and NTU are providing top-quality education to a sizeable proportion of Singaporeans, a far larger proportion of citizens than what the top universities in other countries provide. We are providing high-quality education to all our university students, not high-quality education for a few. NUS and NTU take in slightly over one-fifth of each Singapore cohort. In comparison, the universities ranked within the top 50 universities, like NUS and NTU, in the same survey provide education for only a very small percentage of each cohort in their countries. In Japan and China, it is well below 1%: China, 0.02%; and Japan, about 0.5% of cohort; in India, the same order of magnitude. In the US, although there are 20 universities in the top 50 rankings, in total, they cater to about 1% of cohort. In Hong Kong, it is 6%, somewhat higher; and in Australia, which is the only country which comes close to Singapore in this regard, the six Australian universities in the top 50 rankings provide for 15% of Australian cohort. So NUS and NTU are quite exceptional and, together with SMU, we are going to provide for 25% of cohort a top quality, affordable education, unparalleled to anywhere else in the world.

There are many other indications on quality but because time is short, I will not go through them. But let me emphasise this - that we all have a stake in ensuring that our universities provide high-quality education and receive international recognition for doing so. The high standing of our universities is in the interest of students, the alumni, donors and all stakeholders of the universities. It is in the interest of Singapore. Students in the alumni would not want to see a decline in the standing of the universities and their alma mater over time. So, it is not in anyone's interest that we skimp on quality.

Let me now go into a few specifics on university fees. First, I think we all agree that fees need to be revised regularly in the universities to allow them to meet their cost increases while improving on the quality of education they provide. There is a certain natural cost increase but there is also some cost increase over time as we aspire to provide better quality. I do not think we disagree with that.

There is no intention on the part of the universities to raise fees by 10% every year once they go autonomous, which incidentally has not started yet - it is only from 1st April that universities go autonomous. I will be very surprised if I or any future Minister for Education will be happy if each year university fees go up by 10%.

What is the record so far? With all the cost pressures that I have been talking about that all top universities face internationally, since the start of this decade, from 2000 until last year, fees in NUS and NTU increased by an average of 1.8% per year. This is, in fact, lower than the average rate for wage increase in Singapore. This year, fees are going up by 3% in NUS and NTU. I do not think we expect wages to go up by less this year. I do not have a forecast, but 3% is not unreasonable.

We will ensure that fees are never beyond the reach of the average Singaporeans, and I do not just mean needy Singaporeans but the average Singaporeans, the middle-class, even those in the upper middle income bracket. It will never be beyond their reach. We will keep tuition fees competitively priced. I do not want to get into details. I answered Mr Steve Chia last week in Parliament. But a quick scan of what is going on in the rest of the world - Australia and UK - shows that fee increases in recent years have been much more substantial. In fact, Australian universities raised fees up to the full limit allowed by the government under their autonomous status, 25% in one year. UK universities are going up by almost three times this year.

Our universities are fully aware and will have to be aware of the need to keep costs down. They have put in place cost control measures. Measures like reducing administrative staff headcount, bulk tendering for goods and services, demand aggregation for electricity, outsourcing of non-core activities and constant leveraging on IT to improve productivity. The University Hall, whatever you might say about it, was funded by philanthropic donations. And I quite agree with Mr Tan Soo Khoon that the universities might want to specifically seek out philanthropic donations for the purpose of financial assistance, which I will come to in a moment.

So we will keep up our hefty subsidies. The universities will continue to exercise control over cost and we will adjust our subsidies over time to keep pace with cost increases that are necessary to deliver quality education. But what we cannot do is to increase the universities' share of the Education budget, ie, increase it beyond what it already is, which is a large share. We fund the universities 1% of GDP. Three universities, 1% of GDP - that is far higher than what almost any other country I can think of funds for their universities. It is one-quarter of the Education budget now. Ten years ago, it was about one-fifth. It has gone up mainly because we succeeded in educating more Singaporeans in our schools such that they are able to go on to universities.

We can justify our significant investment in the universities. We are not apologising for this. I am not saying that 1% of GDP is too much. It is a significant investment because it brings benefits to the wider economy. But we cannot increase the share of the universities in the Education budget, and it will not be equitable to do so. To put it very simply, the average Government funding per year which an university undergraduate receives, if I take last year as an example, was twice that of a polytechnic or an ITE student. And if we consider the fact that we are funding our university students over more years - two years in junior college and four years in university, compared to a polytechnic or an ITE student - then we arrive at an outcome where we are currently funding a university student five times more than we subsidise an ITE student and three times more than we subsidise a polytechnic student. So it will not be fair to take more resources away from schools, polytechnics and ITEs in order to give more to university students, particularly when you take into account also that university students will have higher lifetime earnings compared to other graduates from our system.

2.15 pm

What is important is that we are committed to two key things. First, to continue to enhance the quality of university education; and, second, to ensure that university education is accessible and affordable to all Singaporeans. We have revamped our financial assistance framework. The universities have revamped it and we have also given them a supplement. We are significantly expanding financial assistance provision for our universities. Let me mention three enhancements.

First, starting from this year, the maximum Tuition Fee Loan quantum has been increased from 80% of fees to 90% of fees, to minimise the cash outlay the students need. Needy students can get an additional Study Loan for the remaining 10% of fees and to cover a substantial portion of their living expenses. And all these loan schemes have quite generous terms.

Second, NUS and NTU are setting aside larger amounts of funds for financial assistance and I think Mr Tan Soo Khoon's point is a useful one. They may also want to consider, besides their regular funding resources, to seek out dedicated resources from philanthropic donations to boost the sum up. It is not one in ten who obtained a bursary last year. One in 10 referred to year 2003. In fact, it has been going up year by year. Last year, four out of ten NUS students who applied for bursaries obtained them. But they will take it beyond it, going forward, with the increase in NUS' and NTU's allocation for financial assistance - an increase of two to three times on average, in fact, in the case of NUS it is three-fold. We will be able to cater to more students.

Third, MOE is providing a new Government bursary of $800 per year to help needy students pay for their living expenses. This will apply to students with a per capita household income of about $900 per month, which is roughly equal to the 50th percentile and below of the Singapore population. So all Singaporean students, with a gross monthly per capita household income of up to $900, will be eligible for the new MOE bursary of $800 per year. In lieu of the MOE bursary, students will also be eligible for university bursaries. So, you will have more than four out of ten NUS students qualifying for bursaries because of these increased provisions.

Let me just give you an example, since Mr Low has given us an example. Let us take a needy student, who comes from a four-member family with gross monthly household income of $2,000, taking a four-year undergraduate course. We estimate he would need about $11,000 per year to pay for tuition fees plus full provision for living expenses, if I am not economising too much on the estimates. So tuition fee is about $6,100, maximum expenses about $5,500. He can apply for a Tuition Fee Loan and Study Loan to cover his total cost of fees. He will be able to get a living allowance under the Study Loan of about $3,600. He will be able to obtain a bursary that could come up to about $1,500. That would leave about $400. And the $400 can be easily covered by the work-study programmes that the universities have introduced. It does not mean you work every night. Occasional work, you get paid for it, you can easily cover the $400.

Of course, there are also some students who want to cover part of the fee costs using their parents' CPF accounts but that probably does not refer to the lowest income category, but the middle-income category. For the middle-income students, in fact, for higher income students, they too can go through the university years without any cash outlay for their fees because of the Tuition Loan, plus being able to use their parents' CPF account. But I will focus on the example concerning a low income student to show how, not just his fees, but his living expenses can be covered completely. The loan repayments are not onerous. For the Tuition Fee Loan, it is a minimum amount of $100 per month after he graduates and obtains a job. Study Loan, it is also $100 per month. So if he takes both, that is $200 a month, spread out his Tuition Fee Loan repayment period over twenty years. Study Loan is interest free*. So it is quite generous. It is quite manageable. The main thing is that we have expanded our financial assistance facility. We want more students to qualify, and this is the way forward as we continue to allow the universities to charge realistic fees to meet the cost of providing top quality education.

* It is interest-free only for those with PCI $500 or less.

I am a little short of time but let me say very quickly regarding Prof. Low Seow Chay's comments. I know what he is referring to. First, I think we should distinguish between the reputable universities that do confer honorary degrees, quite rightly, on distinguished individuals who made significant contributions either to a university or to society. Our own universities do so and they have very clear guidelines regarding who they confer such degrees on. There is no proliferation of such degrees from our own universities. What Prof. Low was concerned was about people buying or somehow engaging in some donations, so as to be able to obtain either a Doctorate degree or some other degree. It takes place all over the world. There is a market for it. The Ministry cannot do anything to stop this. It is a global phenomenon and the market can judge. I think Prof. Low judges very well the worth of these degrees. Most people know how to judge these things. I do not encourage the obtaining of degrees by transaction, but I would add that the fact that people are very keen to obtain a degree by donating money to the university is probably also a reflection of our society's reverence for education and educational advancement, probably better than obtaining knighthoods and peerages by donation.

Sir, the Minister has not addressed the point that I raised. I asked a very specific question. Does NUS intend to spend a lot of money to renovate the Bukit Timah Campus that it is moving to?

Some renovations would be required for the Bukit Timah Campus because it is accommodating quite distinct faculties and also research institutions. NUS intends to fund that very largely from its endowment income, rather than from its operating revenues.

Sir, I would like to thank the Minister for his comprehensive reply. But, Sir, it seems to me that the Minister's reply on affordability depends very much on the Tuition Fee Loan. I wonder whether it is affordability by mortgaging the students' future, by paying so much loan that they have to be indebted after their university education.

Sir, the second clarification is that the Minister said the university should charge "realistic fees". I would like to know what is "realistic fees" and whether that includes expenditure of buying expensive chairs and thereby charging realistic fees.

Third, Sir, the Minister said he will not foresee that the university will increase fees to the full amount by 10%, but I understand the Steering Committee's Report allows the university to increase up to 10% of the fee per year. How sure is the Minister that this will not happen and, if it happens, are they allowed to increase 10% of tuition fee at all?

Let me start with the last point. The framework for the autonomous universities allows for fee increases of up to 10%, but it does not happen automatically. In fact, the framework states quite clearly that the universities have to first make a submission to the Ministry six months beforehand on what their fee proposals are, and the Ministry will have to look at it to make sure the cost increases are reasonable, apply some standardised benchmarks for cost-increases across the universities, before it gauges whether the universities' proposals are justifiable. So it is not an automatic 10%. In fact, this is a different framework from what exists in some other countries. We do not envisage a situation like what happened in Australia.

On loans, I am not sure what Mr Low is getting at. This is an equation where if you disagree with all the parts you are not going to get the outcome. You cannot disagree with realistic fees being charged with loans being a means of financial assistance and, at the same time, disagree with the Government having to raise taxes in order to fund the universities more, or disagree with the policy that we should keep some fair proportion of subsidy in education between universities, polytechnics, ITEs and schools. What is our strategy? Not to charge fees that are unreachable to Singaporeans? That would be crazy. And it would not be in the interest of our universities to do so because a needs-blind admission must mean not just financial assistance provisions, but fees that are basically within the reach of the middle-class as well.

We have to make sure the university keeps cost in check, that fee increases are within reach, that financial assistance is always there for needy students and even students right up to the median income level. Beyond the median income level, we provide loans as well. The loans are not onerous. As a percentage of the starting pay of a graduate, $100, maximum $200, if he has also taken the Study Loan. Over time, as the university graduate's pay goes up, it is a smaller and smaller fraction of his monthly income. It is the practice all over the world. In fact, the proportion of students who take loans in Singapore is somewhat less than in many other places, especially Australia. So this is a pragmatic way forward to have a top quality and affordable education. Top quality cannot mean 100% Government subsidy because that must mean taking money away from very deserving investments in our school, polytechnic and ITE sectors. Top quality must mean charging realistic fees, but making sure that those who cannot afford it, get assistance. That is how we avoid tying ourselves into a political knot.

Sir, I would like to have the opportunity to ask the Minister again to provide the answer to my cut, which is what is the level of subsidy that is provided for medical students, and also when the Graduate Medical School starts operating next year, will the same level of subsidy be provided to the students of the Graduate Medical School as well.

I am sorry I missed out Dr Tan's question. Let me very briefly say that the average Ministry of Education subsidy for a medical undergraduate student at NUS is $64,600 per year over the course of his 5-year MBBS. This subsidy is about 3.5 times higher than what an Australian medical student, for instance, would receive at, say, the University of Sydney.

As for the Graduate Medical School, it has not announced the details of its fees and other financial details. They would have to charge higher fees because they are providing for a graduate medical programme and is also aiming at a very small, select group of students who are going to receive a much more costly programme that requires much more substantial investment. They would price their fees realistically. They are not going to price it beyond what the market can bear, but the details would be announced later.

Sir, I cannot seek a clarification from the Minister because I have no point to clarify at this point in time. I know he is constrained by time. So I would like him to comment on what I said about promoting a culture of student consultation because I do feel that the opinions of the students are a very integral part of our institution.

I think the universities, myself, and everyone would agree that we want to do it better the next time. The universities did consult with their student leaders before the fees were increased. Naturally, there were mixed reactions. Not everyone agreed. Student leaders, in fact, disseminated the information to the student body. The process can be improved. The universities want to, for a start, begin the whole process earlier in future, the whole process of deciding on revised fees earlier to allow more time for consultation and explanation. But I think there are some positive things that came out of this year's exercise. The universities have taken on board some very useful points made by the students, in particular the point that Mr Tan Soo Khoon also referred to, that students want to have some degree of certainty as to the total outlay that they will face over the full course of their university education. SMU has now gone for that practice of telling students exactly how much they pay for the full duration. NUS and NTU think this is a useful and practicable suggestion and are looking into it. So, we are learning from this exercise and we will better on it in future.

Sir, I do not disagree with the Minister on the need for quality tertiary education. But my question really is: is there a need to burden our undergraduates with such a heavy debt when they start to work? Why is it not possible for the Government to increase fundings to universities? Of course, the Minister's reply would be where to find the money. May I ask him whether or not the Government should have substantial revenue with betting tax when the IR is operational and whether or not with that additional tax money, the Government would consider increasing the fundings to universities so as to reduce the burden of students sharing the cost?

2.30 pm

Sir, it is another way of putting the same question. Specific questions on gaming revenue can be addressed to the Minister for Finance when the money finally comes about. But the point is a basic one. Whatever our sources of revenue, we end up with a total revenue cake - 18% of GDP, maybe 19% thereabouts. It has got to be divided up amongst many competing sources - defence, economic infrastructure, the whole health infrastructure, including the higher cost of catering to the aged in future, and educating very well all our students - primary school, secondary school upward to ITE, polytechnic, university. We have to make fairly tough decisions there.

We are funding our university students - per student as well as the universities as a whole far more than other countries. I justify it because it has wide benefits for the economy as we enter into a knowledge-based era. But you cannot increase the share without taking something away from the polytechnic, ITE and secondary school students. And the return on an investment in education in the early years is important even in a knowledge-based economy. We should not shrink from spending more to deliver high quality in our schools, polytechnics and ITEs. Sir, what we are doing is more equitable than what Mr Low is suggesting - more equitable, because we charge realistic fees so that we do not subsidise the middle class or the upper middle class. We provide financial assistance to those who cannot afford it and we make sure that a broad base of students receives a high quality affordable education. I think our priorities are right. They are not just sensible from an economic point of view but they are also pretty sensible from a social and distributional point of view.

Any more clarifications or questions? If none, Dr Amy Khor, would you consider withdrawing your amendment?

Sir, I want to thank the Minister, the Minister of State and Senior Parliamentary Secretary for their detailed responses. I would also like to thank them for the new initiative to further enhance students' learning experience and to develop the talent and ability of every student.

Sir, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

The sum of $6,357,008,690 for Head K ordered to stand part of the Main Estimates.

The sum of $609,161,400 for Head K ordered to stand part of the Development Estimates.

Head S - Ministry of Manpower. Mr Yeo Guat Kwang.

Manpower Challenges

Sir, I beg to move,

That the total sum to be allocated for Head S of the Estimates be reduced by $100.

Sir, workers in Singapore face many challenges today. I would like to touch on a few key issues, namely, structural unemployment, labour market, supply demand disequilibrium, women in the workforce, older workers and medical benefits.

Structural unemployment is the greatest manpower challenge today. Workers of all levels are hit, some more badly than others. Even executives are not spared. As our economy restructures and moves towards more knowledge-based activities, there is a rising danger that the less educated and the less skilled workers will find it increasingly difficult to find new jobs.

The way to address the problem is clearly skills redevelopment and training. In this regard, the WDA, together with other tripartite partners, ie, NTUC and SNEF, has made very good progress. I think it is timely for the Minister to provide an update, particularly an assessment of whether our drive to upgrade the skills of our workers is bearing fruit.

Notwithstanding our skills redevelopment efforts, there are two critical issues that we need to address. They are the mismatch of skills between demand and supply and the low level of training among those most vulnerable to structural unemployment. I understand that, for example, on average, those who have less than secondary education received only one day training per year. The tripartite partners have to find ways to reach out to them more effectively.

Sir, the services sector, where 75% of our jobs are coming from, is a key engine of employment and GDP growth. Does the Ministry have any plan to build up our service capacity and capability, and plug the skill gaps? The WQS and the other WDA initiatives have ambitious plans for the services sector. There is, however, room for improvement in the running of the actual training programmes. For example, would it not be more practical to have course materials available in Chinese since a substantial number of workers from the services sector may not be conversant in English?

With the declining birth rate, new entrants into the job market in future would be reduced substantially. The local workers' net inflow per annum will drop from 41,000 today to 28,000 after year 2010. Moving ahead, there is a pressing need for MOM to ensure equilibrium of manpower demand and supply. One serious implication is greater foreign worker dependency. There is already a large pool of foreign workers today in Singapore. MOM should help industries that are heavily dependent on foreign workers to reduce its dependency by raising productivity, and encourage these industries to adopt innovative methods to redesign and re-engineer their work processes. If we do not restructure work processes and redesign our jobs fast, we will see not just a disequilibrium in the labour market but even our continued dependency on foreign workers.

Another area of concern is women in our workforce. The women workforce participation rate is far from desirable. Much has been debated, but I personally would hope to see more concrete action being taken. I would like to urge the Ministry to consider doing a deeper study on how other countries achieve higher female labour participation rate than us even without a heavy reliance on domestic maids. This will definitely help us fine tune our policies to encourage more women to rejoin the workforce.

One key challenge we face is an ageing workforce. The life expectancy of our population has also increased significantly compared in the past. While all workers face retrenchments and unemployment, the older workers feel the heaviest brunt. Some people argue that our efforts to get our employers to employ older workers and effectively raise the retirement age beyond 62 may not work, as the employers may remain unwilling to hire older workers. Would MOM consider introducing the older worker re-employment legislation implemented in Japan, if our promotional efforts fail?

A key obstacle discouraging employers from employing older workers is the higher medical costs. Employers are not willing to incur higher medical costs associated with older workers, particularly those who may have developed medical conditions as they change jobs. The way to address the problem is the portable medical benefit system (PMBS). The concept is simple, ie, a worker can get portable and continuous seamless medical coverage during his working years, and extending into his retirement. With portable medical benefits, the worker does not lose out when they change jobs, even if he develops medical conditions. At the same time, there will not be unnecessary cost burdens to his employers as he ages.

However, for the portable medical benefit system to firmly take root, we need to enable workers to use the additional contribution of the minimum 1% of his salary by the employer to enhance the medical insurance coverage on top of MediShield, according to the employment, financial and health conditions of the worker at the various stages of his life. The workers want to have the employer-based medical benefits converted into cash equivalent, so that they can keep it and wait until when they need it, and keep those that is not used. The question is: where should the money be kept? Therefore, I would like to urge the Ministry to set up a national PMBS account to manage the additional contribution for workers' inpatient needs. It is timely for the Ministry to take firm steps towards making medical benefits portable in Singapore.

Sir, I will be raising three issues.

First, about our efforts to attract the brains or the talents to our shores. Many were attracted here especially with the billions of R&D fund being dangled before their eyes. We have been wooing many top researchers to conduct their highly-priced and high-risk work in our laboratories. After spending so much money into R&D, my concerns are as follows:

How do we ensure that the billions that we invest on this pool of talent to enable them to make these forays to expand the boundaries of mankind's knowledge on many complex and life-important issues remain within our country?

How do we ensure that what is discovered is inherited by our own experts?

How do we train the second echelon of local experts so that they can carry on from where others have left off?

Mr Chairman, we have to build up our own talent base as we cannot go on relying on foreign talents. A recent Reuters' report on staffing highlighted that employers have difficulty in finding the right people to fill jobs despite high unemployment in Europe and the US. This phenomenon is also experienced across North America and Asia, and the talent shortages identified are: sales representatives followed by engineers and technicians. It polled 33,000 employers in 23 countries in January, including 627 in Singapore.

Has the Ministry of Manpower done any study to look into the talent shortage? What is the action plan to mitigate this problem? Should a knowledge management database be launched to see how we can inventorise and nurture our knowledge so that we can add value and expand on it? In building up our knowledge base, we may gradually become less dependent on foreign talent.

Sir, my third point is on mindset training. Whilst we worry about the shortage of talents and over reliance on foreign talents, we have, in our midst, a group of what I call, PMETs - professionals, managers, executives and technicians - who can fill many vacancies. What we need is a wake-up call for these PMETs and our employers in Singapore - to help them to re-adjust and re-mould their work ethics and attitudes. It is not meant to be disrespectful of their quality and abilities. It is more trying to energise them to take a fresh look at what is available.

Sir, the way to do it is to put them through a mindset training programme. Some may say that this is a step backwards for them, but I think it is more a case of taking one step backwards and two steps forward. So I urge that we structure a scheme for PMETs to be put through a training of mindset awareness. This will ensure that the PMETs will get a better chance of getting a job.

Similarly, employers need mindset training to eliminate their prejudice for these PMETs. I urge for a national training scheme to reach out to these employers.

On this note, I thank you for my participation.

Jobs

Sir, we have to ensure that there will be continued availability of jobs for Singaporeans.

With much changes taking place in the employment structure, we see a drastic increase in the number of contract workers. While the compensation package of direct contract workers is comparable to permanent workers, indirect contract workers receive less favourable terms. Generally, their wages are lower and they are not paid CPF contributions. They also do not enjoy benefits, such as leave entitlement, medical benefits and training opportunities. This is an anomaly we must correct.

We also have to look into ways to enhance contract workers' jobs and income security, as the nature of contract work is short term and contracts are subjected to renewals. In addition, indirect contract workers may find themselves under new employment contracts with lower terms than what they had previously received. This is due to "cheap sourcing practices" whereby the bidding war of the labour suppliers drives the tender price down. Wages are reduced in order to cut cost. This is detrimental to the contract workers.

The inadequacy of savings for long-term needs among this group of workers is also another key concern. As indirect contract workers are often paid higher take home-pay without CPF contributions and other benefits, they will face the problem of inadequate savings for long-term needs, such as retirement, medical treatment and housing.

Additionally, contract workers also lack awareness of their basic employment rights. Even if they are aware, they may be unable to assert their rights for fear of non-renewal of contract and discrimination from their employers. In view of these problems that contract workers face, what is MOM's plan to enhance the wages and employment terms of contract workers?

There is also a need to review our labour legislation. We need to review the legislative protection to ensure that employers comply with minimum standards, such as paying the employees promptly even for contract workers. Under the Employment Act, entitlement to some statutory benefits is based on a worker's minimum continuous period of service. The labour movement here is suggesting that for the purpose of calculating the length of service under the Employment Act, "minimum service period rendered within a time frame" should be used as the basis instead of "continuous service".

MOM should also step up enforcement efforts. Finally, the Ministry should also publish better labour statistics on contract workers. Without them, it is difficult to effectively analyse the trends on contract employment in Singapore, much less make the policy to help contract workers.

Sir, last year, there was very strong job creation with more than 100,000 jobs created, and this is good because the experience of many countries show that economic growth alone does not ensure that there is job creation. So the need to be a specific focus on job creation. However, many Singaporeans are asking whether these jobs that are created have gone to Singaporeans or have gone to foreign talents. May I ask the Minister how many of these jobs have gone to Singaporeans, particularly in the high value-added sectors, such as the bio-medical and higher value-added manufacturing which pay much better?

Secondly, may I also ask the Minister for his projection on the job creation for this year? How many jobs will be created this year and in which sectors?

Thirdly, I would also like to ask the Minister whether the Ministry has done a longer-term projection of jobs. What kind of jobs will be created, in which sectors and what kind of skills are required? Sir, the concern is this. We still have a sizeable number of workers who have no secondary education. And we know that the projection of the Ministry itself is that by the year 2009, at least 45% of the jobs will require

post-secondary education. We know EDB brings in jobs but two out of the three jobs are for professionals and require skills. In this regard, we are working very hard to recreate jobs and retrain low-skilled workers. But in the meantime, we still need an overall strategy to provide jobs for those without secondary qualifications. So I would like to ask the Minister what steps are being taken to ensure that our low-skilled workers and those without secondary qualifications continue to have jobs in the long term.

2.45 pm

Sir, I would like to throw out some ideas on job creation. Anyone who has visited Marrakesh in Morocco would not have missed the world-renowned colourful marketplace there, known as the Djamaa el Fna. Although it is world-renowned, it is nothing more than a big open ground with mainly hawker-like food stalls and all kinds of local food and plenty of pasar malam type stalls. Then there are also all sorts of street entertainers there - musicians, performers - which bring life to and make the place really interesting. But the main attraction is still the food there.

Sir, Singapore still has plenty of vacant land. I would suggest that the Government develop one of these vacant lands, charging low rentals for its use and supply perhaps transport if the land is out of town. I am sure it can attract many hawker and pasar malam stallholders, and street entertainers to this place. If the rent is low, hundreds of jobs would be cheaply created thus.

Structural Unemployment

(In Mandarin): Sir, the employment situation now is much better than it was a few years ago. But I understand that many people are forced by circumstances to accept whatever jobs they could find irrespective of whether the jobs would allow them to make full use of their talent and skills.

For example, some Singaporeans may have high qualifications and rich work experience. But they lost their jobs due to restructuring or relocation of their companies. Because of their age, the competition from foreign talents and other factors, they are no longer able to find jobs commensurate with their qualifications and experience. With a heavy burden of living, they have no choice but to accept lower jobs with lower salaries. To the Government, these people are already re-employed, they are no longer the problem of the Government. On the manpower statistics, these people are no longer included in the number of unemployed persons.

Of course, we must give credit to these people for their ability to adapt and adopt and their willingness to accept the jobs to earn a living, despite their low pay. Human resource is the strongest, if not, the only resource we have in Singapore. MOM should be more concerned with this phenomenon of people not being able to optimise their talent, so that human resource potential could be developed to the fullest for our economic development.

This is one of the problems of the so-called structural employment. As such, we feel that we should compile "Under-employment" and "Skills Inadequacy Employment" statistics so that we have a better understanding of the situation here in Singapore.

At the 16th International Conference of Labour Statisticians held in October 1998, a statement was made that "under-employment" and "skills inadequacy employment" statistics are very important to the nation. This is because such a potential problem reflects the inability of the national policy to enable the economy to make full use of this potential. This is a very important indicator for nations which are undergoing economic restructuring. Some of these people who are under-employed due to economic reform may migrate to other countries. They could well be our home-grown elites who have benefited from our education system and the cultivation of our society. We spend a substantial part of our budget on education and skills training every year. If we continue to allow our local elites to migrate or being in the state of "skills inadequacy employment", it would be a great loss to our resource-scarce Singapore.

(In Mandarin): Sir, I am happy that the Government has announced a $40 million package to support the Job Recreation Programme. This is indeed very encouraging. My feelings may not be the same as that of Mr Low Thia Khiang. Many people are structurally unemployed in Singapore and have difficulties in getting jobs, but most of those affected are the older and lesser skilled ones, not the professional or the highly-qualified. I believe that this $40 million package will be able to give these people a better opportunity to get employed. I would like to ask the Minister to further elaborate on how the $40 million will be spent to recreate jobs. But as I see it, it is a very complex process to review the existing business processes or workflows. We have to conduct market research and use new technologies or equipment so that we will be able to improve productivity, enhance the image and raise the pay of certain jobs. I hope that the Government or the Ministry of Manpower could look at which type of jobs would require what type of workers, and try to match them. Of course, the Member from Hougang talked about people migrating because they could not find suitable jobs here. He was referring to those who were highly-skilled and highly-qualified. I am looking at the problems of the older Singaporeans, the lower-skilled workers. Even if they want to migrate, nobody would take them. So, they stay in Singapore. I hope the Minister for Manpower would look into how we could help these people to find jobs which they could be comfortable working in. I would be most grateful.

Employment Assistance

Sir, in the past, employment and job search assistance was mainly provided by the former Ministry of Labour's Employment Service Bureau. This is a specialised central agency that assists all Singaporeans to find jobs.

In recent years, with the formation of the Community Development Councils (CDCs), job search and employment assistance have devolved and decentralised to the CDCs. Whilst providing employment assistance at the CDCs is convenient and more direct for the residents, I feel that there are various shortcomings. One main reason is that CDCs are more oriented towards welfare and financial assistance as their main raison d'etre. But people going to CDCs for job assistance may not necessarily be asking for financial aid and welfare. They are basically responsible Singaporeans who just want to secure a job, not to get welfare. These are mostly the older Singaporeans whose sense of pride and dignity is high. However, at the CDCs, they could be treated with the same disdain as though they are going for welfare. They suffer the same stigma. This should not be the case. Hence, I would like to ask the Minister whether he would consider it worthwhile to centralise the job search and employment assistance functions back to his Ministry. MOM could still work with the CDCs, for example, to provide contacts and assistance points at the CDCs, but the function is the centralised responsibility of MOM.

I think there are several advantages on centralisation. Firstly, central pulling of information and details on job availability can cater for wider options and better matching of job searches. Secondly, the services can be done professionally with no stigma that it is welfare, to borrow a current word in vogue, it is Workfare. Lastly, by centralising at MOM, I wish to urge the kind Minister to provide more funds and resources for job search programmes.

Most feedback from residents is that they are not getting sufficient help and satisfaction on job search services at the CDC level. Looking for a job in itself is really a very stressful and heart-wrenching affair. Go and ask the older unemployed workers. We should not make it more difficult or emotionally draining. Therefore, job assistance agencies should be more helpful, sympathetic and professional. Can the Minister please consider how to better help the unemployed workers?

Re-designing Work

Sir, I would like to raise this issue of redesigning work. We have an ageing workforce and one of the issues in redesigning work is to make sure that our workers are continually trained and retrained, and WDA is doing programmes to retrain the workers with proper allowances, and so on. But I believe equipment and machines also have to be redesigned to suit the older workers. So the question we should ask is whether there are incentives given for employers using new equipment, to employ retrained workers and possibly older workers. All these new workers and new equipment in redesigning work must, at the end of the day, make a profit. Otherwise, there is no incentive to use the proper equipment.

I want to give an example that was piloted in the Tanjong Pagar Town Council three years ago when I was the Chairman - the current Chairman, Dr Chong is sitting here - when we decided to switch from a 30% local workers environment in cleaning work to 70%, which is currently in the Town Council there today. There was no big need for us at that time to really do this change, apart from the periodic disturbance that we had from MOM to check on foreign workers. So we sat down with the management staff and we just wanted to show Singaporean workers, even older ones, how to respond to incentives and training, so that this 70% local portion ratio can be achieved by the right alignment of process, incentives and productivity. Workers alone, redesigning work, with all the training, will not solve and address this problem. They need suitable equipment to do the job. And the corresponding output productivity must make economic sense.

Firstly, jobs have to be redesigned by retraining workers in learning the use of equipment. Secondly, equipment have to be suitable for the job of cleaning that we undertake in the Town Council. There are many definitions and standards and requirements regarding standards of cleaning. What we have to do is that we must be sure that there must be an outcome of performance that is satisfactory to the Town Council and residents. So it is only with this suitable equipment that we can match together with the workers that we have to undertake this kind of realignment. Thirdly, sourcing of contracts has to change. The cheapest guy with a broomstick may not be the preferred solution. Fourthly, contracts have to be redesigned so that the legacy contract documents which, for example, were handed down from HDB days with the old set of parameters and yardsticks of measurements also have to be changed to a better set of performance indicators.

So in our new pilot, cleaning equipment were leased from the respective suppliers, so that the serviceability of the machines and equipment is assured and the replacement units are delivered should there be a contract failure or an equipment failure. Contract terms also have to be fixed for a longer term, instead of yearly, to stabilise the risk.

As a result of these, which were successfully implemented, the 70% local ratio was achieved in the Town Council without much increase in cost. The local workers were better paid because productivity is higher. Today, the Tanjong Pagar Town Council has a full roll out of mechanisation in the town where 70% local workers are doing the cleaning services.

As a result, some enterprising businesses and grassroots people have even come up with better ideas on equipment and machines designed to suit

our HDB estates, HDB rubbish chutes and our older workers, to make the equipment easier for them to handle.

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I give this as an example. The cleaning work in Town Council estates is not a big services sector. But unless we all do the redesigning - in work, equipment, contracts and, along with it, the incentives - the services sector will not improve, and all the input expenditure cost in WDA that Prof. Ivan Png alluded to some days ago will not lead to better output or outcomes and, along with them, more employment for Singaporeans.

Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMETs)

Sir, I would like to ask for more support and help for the PMETs, ie, Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians.

In the last quarter, for instance, 37% of those who were retrenched were PMETs and, once retrenched, PMETs who are above 40 years old find it a lot more difficult to get jobs within the six-month period, ie, the benchmark we use to determine whether a person is considered as a long-term unemployed or not. Older PMETs need help in two key areas.

Job placement. As our current efforts are largely focused on non-PMETs, may I ask the Minister whether MOM can do more to create a job data bank for PMETs and help to match them to jobs?

PMETs need help in retraining, as their skills can also become obsolete after some time. Currently, the SDF does not apply to them. May I ask the Minister to put in place more initiatives to help reskill and retrain PMETs, to prepare them for jobs in sectors that need workers? If the SDF is not the proper fund, could MOM think of other ways to provide subsidised training for PMETs? This is an area that is important that we need to pay a lot more focus on, although hitherto a lot more attention has been paid on the non-PMETs. I think, as the economy churn takes its effect, it would also affect the PMETs and they also need some assistance.

Sir, like my colleague before me, today I want to bring up again the plight of a group of workers who are caught in a wedge. This group looks seemingly good. They hold high qualifications, hold jobs as managers, supervisors, and they are what we call the PMETs. They are mainly in their mid-careers, many in their 40s and 50s when their careers are at their most precarious. This is the age when what they needed most are their jobs. They are at that point in their life where they are in the midst of paying for housing, renovation and car loans, and their children are going to JCs, polytechnics or even the universities. This is also the phase in life when many body parts require more than just a touch-up job. They need repairs and cost money.

Then, one morning, when they go to work, they are crunched. Like the cork of the champagne bottle, with no more than a shake of the hands, their careers just go "pop"! A corporate merger and relocation of business, a downsizing or a change of top leadership, and they are out of jobs. Who is there to lend a voice to these PMETs? The plight of these PMETs affects not just themselves, but also their families, spouses, children and all other dependants.

I would like to urge the Minister to set up:

a special database of these PMETs, so that the Government can monitor the status of this group of executives, managers, etc, who are in need of jobs, and help them get back into the job market;

a network hub, where those aspiring for business contacts or portfolio manager jobs could be linked. At the same time, we should encourage the proliferation of more micro enterprises which could well provide the starting point for the PMETs;

a platform similar to the ADVANTAGE! Scheme to help them.

Mr Chairman, Sir, allow me to share the case of Mr X - in his 40s, unemployed, and took up a part-time lecturing job. Sir, he will not qualify for Workfare Bonus, because he teaches in modules of 24 hours at any one period of time. His average income is slightly above the Workfare Bonus' cut-off point. He lives in an apartment where, again, the annual value works against him. Can he sell his flat? He cannot, because he will be out of money, as prices are below what he owes the bank. Interest rates are rising and, before long, he may be asked to up his instalment repayments.

In raising this issue to the Minister, I am speaking for the silent mass of PMETs. We should note that the unemployed PMETs are a growing group and not a dying breed. If the issues they face are glossed over lightly, or not adequately addressed, we may unwittingly be allowing a group of negative energies to brew. The Government has been as inclusive as it can be. I call for more visible outreach to the PMETs. It need not be monetary assistance alone, but a booster and a leap-frog to the business network or micro enterprises.

Order. I propose to take the break now.

Thereupon Mr Speaker left the Chair of the Committee and took the Chair of the House.

Order. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair again at 3.30 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended

at 3.06 pm until 3.30 pm.

Sitting resumed at 3.30 pm

Debate in Committee of Supply resumed.

Head S - Ministry of Manpower (cont.) -

Mr Chairman, let me thank Members for their queries. Before I answer them specifically, let me just, as a preamble, address some general remarks.

Compared to previous years, this Committee of Supply is held amidst much better economic and employment conditions. If Members of this House will remember, and certainly those who stepped in with me to this august Chamber in 2002 and that was not long ago, where the spectre of a jobless recovery loomed in the aftermath of several difficult years, when Singapore's unemployment peaked at 4.8% in September 2003. The corresponding resident unemployment rate then was 6.3%. I remember the prevailing mood then was one of despair and despondence. But in contrast to that bleak period, the economy grew by 6.4% last year, and the outlook for this year is favourable. And Members will also remember that there were concerns during that period that even recovery would be a jobless one. It has not happened. Growth has translated into jobs for Singaporeans. Overall unemployment fell to just 2.5% by the end of last year. The situation has turned for the better and indeed, there are jobs, jobs, jobs for Singaporeans.

I have asked for a table to be distributed. If you look at the table, years 2002 and 2203, we have GDP growths of 4% and 2.9% respectively, and they were indeed very difficult years. Following a negative GDP growth in 2001, if Members cast their minds back, our GDP shrank by -2.3%. This was compounded by SARS and other factors. And because of that, if you look at the chart, 2002 and 2003 combined, those two years, we actually lost jobs, in other words, the economy, in terms of jobs, shrank about 36,000 in those two years. But in contrast, our economy and employment rebounded vigorously in 2004 and 2005 and we created together something like 181,000-182,000 jobs. These two periods served as very useful periods of contrasting fortunes and indeed, they provide for us valuable lessons that should guide our efforts and strategies, moving forward in helping all Singaporeans find jobs, earn decent wages and remain employable. Lest we forget too quickly, it would be useful for us to use this occasion where the economy is up and jobs have returned, to recap broad policies that have worked, many of which were prompted by Members of Parliament in this House. But we should also learn from the ideas that were not taken up or those, if implemented, would have created problems for us today.

In the midst of these difficult times, let me just say that I was very encouraged that Members supported the Government when we did not resort to quick and ineffective fixes. We did not succumb to calls for protectionist policies to shut out foreign workers and impose minimum wages. We avoided unemployment insurance. These policies would have led to economic stagnation and more job losses. Members in this House would have read recently of press articles about how these very same protectionist policies in some European countries have increased unemployment rates there. They do not insulate workers from global competition, but worsen their plight. In contrast, we face challenges head-on, press on with restructuring to remain competitive and relevant in a global marketplace. And because we persevered with sound policies, and unions were able to persuade workers to bear some hardship in the process, with some sacrifices, we now have a more resilient and competitive workforce to deal with challenges that lie ahead. We are in a much better position having gone through the difficult periods.

Many jobs have been created for Singaporeans. Mdm Halimah asked for a particular breakdown and I would give her the figures later. But let me revisit the key strategies that were put into place which ensured this job creation. First, in response to calls from many of you, we pushed for skills upgrading and supported strongly NTUC's efforts in job recreation. That made a big difference. We set up the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) which many of you called for in September 2003. I would like to remind Members that WDA is a relatively infant organisation, but much needed. This was to help unemployed Singaporeans gain employment and to upgrade their skills.

Second, we maintained flexible wage and labour market policies. We worked with employers and unions to reduce CPF and implement more flexible and performance-based wage systems. That we did this in a downturn was a significant effort and has enabled us to better cope with further downturns and hence protect jobs.

Third, we maintained the fine balance of allowing companies to have access to foreign workers while having jobs for Singaporeans. In 2004, we introduced the S-Pass to give companies access to more mid-skilled manpower. Last year, to help companies meet additional demands, we allowed them to hire work permit holders beyond the prevailing Dependency Ratio then, but at a higher levy of $500.

These three major efforts have produced results. Mdm Halimah Yacob asked how many of these jobs created last year went to Singaporeans. From preliminary estimates, last year, we created 110,800 jobs, and the majority of 61,000 jobs went to locals. That figure of 61,000 has to be explained. First of all, more jobs went to Singaporeans than foreigners. But 61,000 is the highest annual employment creation on record for locals, not only the last few years, but even exceeding pre-Asian crisis level. We looked back at the statistics and we never had a year of such strong local job creation. Two-thirds of the jobs, or close to 72,000 jobs were in the services sector. In the services sector, of all the jobs created in the services sector, 70% were taken up by locals. The gains in local employment were mainly in business, wholesale, retail, trade, financial services. Over the last five years, the average number of new labour entrants that enter into our labour market was only around 31,000. So for the fact that we created 61,000 jobs in that year shows that our economy is buoyant. It translates to jobs and Singaporeans benefit. It indeed has been jobs, jobs, jobs for Singaporeans.

In fact, we created jobs for locals in every year since 1999. If you look at the figures that I have shown you in the table, foreign workforce bore the brunt of the economic downturns. The total number of jobs shrank but it was the foreign workers that bore the brunt of this. For locals, there were still net job creation. This tells us that we have struck the right balance in our manpower framework because companies are able to adjust their manpower needs quickly, in good and hard times, and this reduces the adverse impact on our own workers. MOM will release more details later this month in its annual report on the state of the labour market.

Have these been good jobs? Members may have been given the impression that just because we have concentrated an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Low Wage Workers, that all jobs were poor quality jobs. That is very far from the truth. I will give a fuller picture when I address PMETs that some Members have asked. But these have been good jobs and, in fact, the percentage rise has been higher for professionals, managers, executives, and technician jobs and wages for higher percentiles, the better jobs, have also increased. So our economy has provided jobs for Singaporeans with good wages and good quality jobs.

Mr Loh Meng See raised some concerns during the Budget debate that labour productivity rose only 1.9% but he has to understand this was against the background of very strong employment creation. There were many more jobs added in that flow and things may round up, and that is the reason why our productivity only increased by 1.9%.

Our economy is forecasted to grow by 4%-6% this year. Barring any external shocks, such as the avian flu outbreak or rising oil prices, there will be enough jobs for new entrants and unemployment is likely to remain around the current levels. Most of the jobs will come from the services sector. Manufacturing and construction sectors are also expected to create jobs but with higher value add and skill levels for Singaporeans.

But amidst these strong economic and employment performance, I agree with some Members - Mr Yeo Guat Kwang mentioned structural challenges that continue to persist. He is quite right. We do face a shrinking workforce growth as a result of our aging population and the decline in fertility. He said that MOM must meet long-term manpower challenges and indeed he has a point.

Beyond 2010, labour growth will slow significantly because our baby-boomers would have passed the age of 50 years by then. It grows about two-odd percent every year. It will shrink about 1.2%, about half the rate of growth. With the shrinking rate of growth in the labour force, Singapore's economic growth could be stunted if businesses cannot find sufficient workers here because you are adding too few and, secondly, sufficient workers with relevant skills. We need to encourage older workers and, as Mr Yeo has pointed out, women to stay in the labour force longer and remain productive.

The second challenge is economic restructuring. Due to increased globalisation, we recognise our workers are facing wage pressures from millions of workers from China, India, Eastern Europe and Latin America. That is why we must continually upgrade their skills and maintain their cost-competitiveness.

Sir, I want to thank many Members who recognised and understood these challenges and spoke in support of our policies. When we set up the WDA in September 2003, Members gave very good suggestions when I moved the Bill on setting up WDA. Let me quote from what some of you said. Mr Seng Han Thong said, "priority should be given to the industries which are vulnerable to the New Economy". Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon emphasised generic employability skills training. Other Members also rallied our workers. Mr Ahmad Magad pointed out, "Today's world takes no pity on the individual who gets lazy about training". Mr Loh Meng See reminded us that "the Government can only do that much if the workers do not exercise personal responsibility." We have taken your suggestions to heart and indeed many of the ideas that you have put out have been translated into programmes.

Through the employers' contributions into the Skills Development Fund and the Government's Lifelong Learning Fund, I am happy to report that 166,000 received training in 2005. Of this, 40% were aged 40 and above. As PM announced in his Budget speech, the Government will top up the Lifelong Learning Fund with another $100 million. This will generate another $4 million per year in interest.

Even though the economy has rebounded, let me assure Members that we will not let up in our efforts in skills upgrading. On the contrary, we will invest more resources to raise training standards and enhance outcomes to benefit all Singaporean workers. The Government has set aside $100 million to develop the Workforce Skills Qualification (WSQ) system which is a national framework for vocational skills and this is recognised and accepted by industries because we worked with industries to develop this. WDA has implemented the WSQ in the retail, finance and training sectors and we will also include new industries like infocomm, food and beverage and tourism by the end of this month. Other industries, such as education and creative industries, are in the pipeline and to date, we have more than 6,000 workers trained under WSQ. I take Mr Yeo's point that we should include Mandarin. I am not sure whether we do or not, but if we do not,

I agree with him that we might have to include some of the material in Mandarin.

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Having industry and training providers participate in the WSQ framework is similar to Dr John Chen's suggestion brought up during the Budget debate. In addition, we are building WSQ training institutions to make sure that the delivery of training is high. These institutes will research how adults learn, undertake industry outreach, and ensure that training is tied to jobs. We have the first of such institutions, which is the Singapore Institute of Retail Studies (SIRS), jointly set up by WDA and Nanyang Polytechnic in October 2005. This institute aims to upgrade the skills of at least 5,000 existing retail workers, and to train a further 1,000 new workers in 2006. We will add more quality institutions. So, just as we have done for the pre-employment training, we are striving to build top-notch quality institutions for our workers, because we believe that investing in our workers is investing in our future. WDA will also collaborate with top international institutions such as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William F Harrah College of Hotel Administration, to develop WSQ for executive training in the Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, and Exhibitions (MICE) industry, in anticipation of the growth in that sector. So, I assure Members that even though the economy is doing well and there are jobs, we will not let up, because as you have rightly pointed out, we need to invest in our workers.

But I share Members' concerns for the vulnerable segments of our workforce, the low wage and older workers, who face more difficulty coping with economic restructuring. Mr Low Thia Khiang and Mr Chiam See Tong gave good ideas. Sir, I have not been to Morocco. I would certainly like to go there and see what he saw. Let me say that we recognised and, actually discussed, the idea of having an informal economy in the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Low Wage workers. We recognise that in neat and cookie-cutter-style Singapore, it is sometimes very difficult and daunting for, say, a housewife who wants to sell kueh, nonya, Malay, Indian, or whatever, to enter into the market place, because there is sometimes a huge bureaucracy that they have to confront. So, one suggestion which MCYS is willing to champion is for it to be the one-stop centre. In other words, if you have an idea, whether it is micro-enterprise or a small idea, you come to us in terms of financing, outlet, licensing, being able to cook in the house, and I will offer you a one-stop shop front. This will take time to develop. I must say that a number of Mayors have already launched these initiatives in the CDCs and have some success. But he is quite right that this is an area we feel that they can supplement their income in an informal economy.

As more jobs have been created, let me also give some good news to Members that

even those who were vulnerable to structural unemployment have found jobs. The number and share, which is the proxy we use, of the long-term unemployed, that is of those who were unemployed more than six months, have fallen sharply. Preliminary estimates show that 13,200 or 21% of the unemployed residents in December 2005 have been looking for work for at least 25 weeks. This is a significant improvement from the 21,300 workers or 28% of the unemployed, a year ago. The long-term unemployed, that is, those unemployed for more than six months, has also reduced. The figure now is 0.7% of the resident labour force, and this is down from 1.2% in December 2004 and 1.5% in December 2001. In other words, compared to December 2001, the long-term unemployed has fallen by about 1.5% to 0.7%, which is half. But, despite these improving trends, I agree with Mr Yeo that we must continue to assist those aged 40 and above, and as Mdm Halimah mentioned, especially those without secondary qualifications.

Mr Low Thia Khiang asked about under-employed, in other words, someone wants to rise higher than what he is in his current job. As Members can well imagine, it is a difficult proxy to measure aspirations. You could have, say, a CEO who earns half a million dollar and still wants to earn a million, or wants to do a bigger job, and by that definition, he would also be under-employed. So, it is a difficult measurement. The way to look at it is really unemployment rate, the types of jobs created and the wages. What type of jobs has the economy created over the last 10 years? And this is to address the impression that the jobs we created are low-quality, low-class, which is far from the truth.

Let me give you some figures. You take two contrasting marks, June 1994 and June 2004, a 10-year difference. Look at the occupations and you separate them. If you look at managers, proprietors and senior officials, in 1994, they formed about 11% of all occupations. It has risen now to 14%, a 4% jump. Professionals are up by 7%. Associate professionals and technicians are up by another 4%. In fact, the ones that have shrunk are really the lower quality jobs in terms of plant and machine operators, production craftsmen, service and sales workers. And wages have also gone up in terms of real wages and nominal wages. So, I want to assure Members that the Singapore economy, as we have done our restructuring, has delivered in terms of providing good quality jobs to Singaporeans. Now, there is a skills mismatch between what Singaporeans have and what the jobs want. But that is a very different argument from saying or giving the impression that our economy has not provided good jobs.

We need to help those with the skills that they have and the skills that the job or economy needs. The first area is employment assistance. Our training programmes are geared towards this objective. WDA trained and placed about 3,000 job seekers last year. It placed about 27,000 job seekers through the various job centres in the Distributed CareerLink Network.

Mr Leong Horn Kee has suggested that MOM should centralise certain job functions. Yes, we will see how we can improve, but let me just explain that we do centralise some functions. We have already created a nation-wide Integrated Job Bank where every CDC or, even WDA and partners, see the same thing. It is data-linked. It is the same job bank. There are common user items that we also share. But, as he has pointed out, the CDCs do offer wider geographical outreach and access to job seekers. Many of us at the MPS have recognised this. It is more convenient. I am very happy that the CDC, as a job centre, is in Toa Payoh, because as long as I tell my residents where it is, they just hop over to the interchange. It is very convenient. So that geographical access is important.

Also, there are other micro-trends that are also important. For example, the CDCs have quite a good understanding of what are the local trends and unique challenges. If you speak to the Mayors in different sectors, in fact, Dr Teo Ho Pin knows that there are certain industries that have a particular flavour and need. Other Mayors would have also understood there are different dynamics, and they have been able to, for example, organise job fairs which suit their districts, because people also do not want to travel very far when they want to work, if they can.

Mr Leong Horn Kee said the CDCs may have a particular mould and they may get a stigma. I want to explain to Members that, indeed, we are moving towards a work-assisted programme rather than pure unconditional handouts, and new terms beyond "Workfare", the CDCs have come up with "WorkSupport", "WorkAssist" - there is always a "Work" in front - which is what we are trying to move our system towards. That, "Yes, you can come and we can help you, but you also must put in some effort and we can tie up social assistance and employment assistance at the CDCs". That is actually what the Mayors, MCYS and MOM want to do. In fact, that indeed is the correct direction.

So I think there are possibilities because we have, as you said, decentralised it. These possibilities include things like micro-enterprises and even an informal sector. The CDCs offer out, for example, local licences to sell ice-creams or other items, and they can integrate these programmes because it is very geographically-based. But let me assure Members that we do not adopt a hands-off approach. Far from it. WDA supports, and will continue to support the CDCs in several ways, in addition to more funding. It will work with the CDCs to constantly review on how they can improve their placement, and draw on best practices. We also organise and train on profiling and career counselling of job seekers. You actually need trained professionals who know how to do it. It provides IT support and information on jobs and we also deploy managers to head certain job centres. Sometimes, WDA seconds managers to head these job centres. We will regularly monitor and review the performance of these job centres with the CDCs.

So although job placements are done at the CDCs, there is quite a strong coordination and support. But I agree with Members that we will review, learn and improve. Let me just say, to be fair to the CDCs, that they have done a very good job. They have placed more than 16,000 job seekers in 2005, 55% of whom had secondary and below education. When we met with the Mayors, as we started this, and some Mayors will remember, I was very careful to point out that the CDCs can actually make their lives easier by choosing only the more and better qualified ones, the ones with good education, and that makes their placement rate very high, but they may not need their help. But as you and I know, some of the cases that come to us during the meet-the-people sessions, indeed, it is quite challenging for anyone to look at face value and say, "Well, I am going to employ you." They need a lot of hand-holding, training and confidence-building. And for the CDCs to have placed 16,000, including some of these job seekers, is indeed an achievement. 53% were aged 40 and above. So the CDCs cannot be accused of selecting the best ones to place. 58% of those directly placed in jobs by the CDCs remained in their jobs for at least three months. So let us be fair to them. We know the type of people that we send to CDCs to ask them to place and they are not easy, they are not the ones with sterling resumes or, some, to be frank, with good job attitudes.

So, I do not think that removing the CDCs from the Distributed Careerlink Network will serve us better. In fact, we will lose them as valuable partners. I constantly assure them that we will support them, and we will continue to support them.

The second key focus is the Job Recreation Programme (JRP) and this is spearheaded by NTUC and has been very successful. The most important element in my mind, the most significant success that NTUC has done in the JRP, is to give hope. That is very tangible, and in many sectors, much needed for workers. It is very hard to get. Some of their stories are simply uplifting. To give hope to the masses of workers to say, "I can compete at my own level. I can have the confidence. I can move up. I, indeed, can see my wages go up. I can see my life being better", is something that very few unions in the world, and many have promised, but I tell you very few have delivered and NTUC should be given full credit for what they have done to the JRP.

The Government will show its support by giving $40 million over the next three years to support this programme. The $40 million will be used to recreate existing jobs and they work with companies. The unions have an enormous and extensive network that knows the ground, so they are going to work with companies, and as Mr Chay and Mr Ong Ah Heng have pointed out, it is not just giving money. You have to raise productivity, enhance job worth, improve the image, train workers to do the job well. So you see Mr Lim Swee Say wearing different costumes, depending on which month you flip back in the newspapers - one month is a baker's hat, then it is a security guard, and I am not sure what he is going to wear next. The point is it is a total package.

We have other programmes. WDA and NTUC are supporting the Singapore Taxi Academy and this is to enhance the job scope of local taxi drivers. Sir, the idea that NTUC and the JRP had was: how do you increase the value add? So, not only restricted to a taxi driver, but can he be a medical services chaperon? Because he is the first person to meet the patient, can he be a medical services chaperon (MSC) to ferry patients to and from hospitals? To become MSCs, the taxi drivers will undergo training to acquire patient handling skills, I suppose, how to move people on wheelchairs, and to familiarise themselves with the hospitals. With the enhanced job scope, the taxi drivers can expect to take home higher pay. By providing a transfer service for medical tourists between hospitals and airports, the project will also support Singapore's development into a regional hub for international medical services. It is a smart idea. He brings the patient to the hospital, and the family would also want to do some shopping and sightseeing and he also recommends to them. The economy wins. So this is what NTUC means by a win-win-win formulation. I agree with what Mr Ong Ah Heng and Mr Chay Wai Chuen have said, that it really is a complete supply chain that you need to work it out, in terms of job redesign.

We need to look at a range of solutions. And I was very thankful to Mr Chay that he brought up the Tanjong Pagar Town Council, because that is one classic example of how, as he pointed out, we have to only change the landscape in terms of contract, we have to change on how we mechanise and what we need to do to finally make a change in the industry. I will tell Members that that is a very good example of how partnership between Government and the unions have allowed us to navigate through difficult circumstances in restructuring.

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We are going to move on to more industries. For example, in healthcare, the National University Hospital is implementing a flexible work scheduling system. This will allow nurses to enjoy a better work-life balance. The Singapore General Hospital is reviewing the job responsibilities and career paths of staff in nursing and nursing support - enhance their job scope so that they can earn more and professionalise the jobs.

Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister launched the JRP and gave out some awards. Each story was an inspiration, but let me just mention one that has made a difference to a JRP, Ms Thilagarani. Ms Thilagarani is currently undergoing training in the ITE Skills Certificate in Health Care, and when she graduates, she will work as a Patient Services Clerk at SGH. Once the job redesign has been implemented, Ms Thilagarani will take on the non-nursing tasks and some of the nursing duties currently performed by enrolled nurses. She can expect to receive a higher pay, ranging from $1,100 to $1,300. In fact, many beneficiaries of the JRP have enjoyed higher earnings - between $1,000 and $1,800.

So we take Mr Chay's point that the JRP is not just giving money. In fact, under the job redesign incentive, each company can get up to $120,000. They can use it for job redesign, and this includes consultancy, procurement of equipment and training. This reflects the multi-faceted aspect of job redesign.

Mr Yeo Guat Kwang pointed out that older and lower-skilled workers can encounter difficulties. We will put in $30 million over the next three years to help these workers - about 45,000 of them can benefit -for basic aspects of IT literacy, workplace literacy and numeracy. WDA will provide another $4 million for SMEs, because we recognise that workers in SMEs also need training.

As at end of last year, more than 4,000 workers have been trained under ESS. Again, these figures can get bland, they can get dull, but they represent individual lives which have been touched by these programmes.

Some Members have also expressed concern for PMETs - professionals, managers, executives and technicians. Specifically, Mdm Halimah Yacob and Mdm Ho Geok Choo urged for more help for this group. Again, I have good news.

The first point is that we can render help to these workers if we create enough jobs. The economy will take care of them and, indeed, it has. In the last two years, it benefited PMETs, more so than other groups. In 2005, PMETs formed the biggest share of private sector job vacancies at 37%. In other words, of all the jobs in the private sector, 37% were due to PMETs. This is in contrast to 1995 when only 19% - it is almost double - the proportion of PMET jobs in our economy in the private sector.

On average, in 2005, 65% of retrenched PMETs managed to find a job within six months, which is higher than the overall re-employment rate of 61%. This is the highest re-employment rate experienced by retrenched PMETs in four years. So it has improved. Similarly, the unemployment rate for degree and diploma holders above 40 years has dropped to 1.8%. This is the unemployment rate. For degree holders, it is 1.8%; for diploma holders, it is 2.1%. A year ago, it was double that - 3.6% and 4%. So the unemployment rate has halved.

We do have specific programmes for PMETs, including in the SME sector. The SME Manpower Scheme (SMS) is one example. It was introduced in December last year, just recently. This was to recognise that SMS restructured and de-layered. There may be fewer jobs. But our SMEs sometimes have many job openings. So this was to help PMETs make a transition to SMEs, and we started this programme in areas such as finance, business development and human resource.

Similarly, Members would remember the Strategic Manpower Conversion Programme (SMCP) for the healthcare sector, and it has helped registered nurses and diagnostic radiographers. Since its inception, 282 PMETs are currently undergoing training.

We have also placed jobs for PMETs. About 15,000 PMETs were attended to and about 4,300 found new jobs.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo asked that we monitor this talent shortage, and this was the point that Mdm Halimah Yacob said, "Can you give some forecast?" Indeed, we do. We have the National Manpower Council which is a multi-agency and we meet together - economic agencies, manpower - and we give some forward projections. I agree with the Member that we need to give out more information. This is an area that we need to, not only for PMETs, but also for lower-skilled workers and across-the-board so that people can make career choices and decide what they want to go for training. So we will do that and we will work with industry, and that will form somewhat, as Mdm Ho suggested, a network hub for an advantage scheme.

I need to be realistic and be honest to say that it does cost more to help one particular PMET. For example, a conversion course for healthcare nursing could, theoretically, help 50 lower-skilled workers. But we recognise the investment and we will pour some investment but there is a need to allocate resources.

We will go the extra mile for service, as many have rightly pointed out. Mr Yeo Guat Kwang says we should up our service capabilities and we will spend $48 million over the next three years to build service capabilities and cultivate a service mindset, because that is where the majority of jobs will come from. I think it has helped. There is a nation-wide service awareness that now occurs. And we will develop WSQ and quality schools in key service industries. This will allow service workers to pursue their training. WDA is currently developing national customer service indicators. We want to know whether we have improved nation-wide and sectors. So we need to build some indicators.

Sir, before I close this section, let me address Mdm Ho's point about talent shortage, in terms of R&D. She is quite right. We need to understand whether we have enough, and we will conduct regular dialogues with HR and industries - to get from them a sense whether we have a steady pipeline to support our growth initiatives. There are some issues - portable medical benefits and contract workers which Mr Yeo has brought up. With his indulgence, let me defer to answer later together with other Members who have also raised cuts on those issues too.

In summary, Mr Chairman, people are our most precious asset. We will increase efforts and resources to invest in our workers - young or old and of all educational backgrounds because, indeed, that will be investing in our future.

Sir, I just want to seek a clarification from the Minister. I note his explanation that a lot more high value-added jobs have been created. In fact, on the ground, that is the trend that we have also seen. Even as manufacturing companies relocate, more higher value-added jobs are created. We do note that in these sectors where high value-added jobs are created - high-value added manufacturing, aerospace, bio-medicals - there seem to be a strong presence of foreign workers. My question is: is there a strategy on the part of MOM working with EDB, maybe working with the Ministry of Education, in order to ensure that, over time, three-five years or so, there will be more Singaporeans actually going into these higher value-added jobs in some of these sectors?

Sir, it is a valid and good point. Our overall strategy is to ensure that our growth benefits Singaporeans first. That is the cardinal rule and over-arching strategy. But, of course, there are realities. For example, whether it is the bio-medical manufacturing sector or aerospace, where we, first, wanted to establish an aerospace MRO - maintenance, repair and overhaul - we needed to ramp up. The airline industries were willing to send their planes here, but we did not have the technicians. And it takes at least two-three years to go through a polytechnic course and another four years for experience. To train our local pipeline, we only train them for what RSAF needs, for example, for some of our planes, and this would mean that we have to hold back. We recognise these practical realities. But at the same time that we allow more foreign workers initially, we slowly scale back, and this is indeed what happens.

This will happen for every sector. As some Members may have read, Macau is facing a shortage of workers in IR industry. And I am sure that we will face the same shortage. So we will calibrate it. But, overall, I think the figures will give some assurance - as I said, our unemployment has dropped - that the value of the jobs has gone up and Singaporeans have gone up the value chain. So it is a metric that we watch very closely. We will ensure that Singaporeans have good quality jobs and that their wages can go up.

Sir, I would like to ask the Minister why he thinks that statistical data on under-employment and skills inadequacy employment are not really useful to understand the extent of the problem of structural unemployment, given the fact that some of these people might actually not maximise their skills and also their qualifications and experience in certain jobs. And that would not generate a maximum effect in the economy.

Sir, I did not quite say that I did not think they were useful. I was saying that it was very hard to measure under-employment - not unemployment. It is under-employment which is Mr Low Thia Khiang's point. In other words, if we took a survey of 1,000 workers in a particular company and say, "How many of you think you can do a bigger job than what you are currently doing?", you may get answers. In fact, the service worker may think that he or she should be manager. But how do I act on it? A survey of under-employment is a measure of aspiration - what I want to become or what bigger job I want to do. Very few countries track that, honestly. The only proxy that we have is asking somebody, "You are working part-time, do you want to work full-time?" That is quite objective. That is based on time. But if you ask him, "Are you working to the fullest of your potential?", I would venture a guess that many Members in this House would say that a good proportion would say no and, therefore, you are under-employed too. So it is a difficult metric to measure and it is not useful from a planning point of view. What we want to do is to make available training courses and provision for workers to step up, so that if they want to, we provide the training to the best of our ability. And then, they must also go and market themselves in the marketplace to move to a better job.

So, it is not that we do not find it useful. It is that the data is quite subjective. But we do look at other issues, in terms of part-time, full-time, employment rate, wages and the percentage share of PMETs' jobs.

Workfare

(In Mandarin): Sir, in encouraging the low-income workers to qualify for the Workfare Bonus, they have to work continuously for six months before they can qualify for the Workfare Bonus. I am glad that the Government has been flexible in allowing workers who have worked accumulatively for six months during the last 12 months to qualify as well. I think accumulatively is very good. Many low-income workers can now qualify for the Workfare Bonus. We know that a lot of low-income workers work for three days and stop for two days. Today, they work as a painter, next week, they sell durians. On another week, they may be doing another job. They are very grateful that the Government is flexible in dealing with this issue.

Another thing is a technical problem which MOM would face, ie, how do you count the six months? There are many workers who ask, "If we work five months and 28 days, will we be ruled out?" I think we should take five working days as one week, hence, 28 working days should be deemed to be one month. If they work hard and deserve the bonus, we should give it to them. They are the people who deserve our help.

4.15 pm

On this concept of continuous working, some people do not know the rationale for Workfare. They asked, "They have work and receive income, then they get the welfare. I am unemployed, yet I don't get the welfare." They do not get the point. Even Mr Low Thia Khiang did not understand. He said that we are now facing structural unemployment and a lot of professionals are unemployed. Although they are initially prepared to be under-employed, but later on, they cannot take it anymore, they will migrate to other countries. Actually, not many people migrate because they cannot find jobs in Singapore. If their skills are not relevant here, I do not think other countries will take them in too. In Singapore, you need to have the relevant skills to find jobs. If you do not have the relevant skills, you cannot get a good job. I think the workers should participate in all the training programme or NTUC's Job Recreation Programme. When they have the relevant skills, they will have no difficulty getting a job.

Unemployment does not cause people to migrate. The important thing is that we have jobs but no suitable people to take them. We must have people to do the job.

Workfare Bonus

Sir, I support the intended social objectives of the Workfare Bonus to help our older, low-wage Singaporean workers.

There is a segment of Singaporeans who fall under the vulnerable low-income group with no job security. So much so they are often at their employers' whims and desire. I have heard from both my residents and elsewhere that some older workers earning less than $600 a month on irregular jobs, though qualify for the Workfare Bonus, do not dare to come forward and apply because they might lose their jobs. There is a segment in Singapore that finds regular employment hard to come by and would agree to anything to find work. Often, it includes no contribution to CPF. As a result, this group is afraid to register for fear of upsetting and implicating their employers with CPF non-payment. The older workers risk losing their jobs and livelihood if they register for the Workfare Bonus. They are caught in a dilemma. May I ask the Minister how does he intend to address this problem?

Sir, a second low-income group that I like to ask the Minister to consider extending a helping hand to help them access the Workfare Bonus is that comprising those who are not plugged into the regular channel of communications. These are the elderly Singaporeans living in rental flats and subsisting on irregular and odd source of income. This is the group that would benefit most from the Workfare and Progress Bonuses. We need to make sure that they do not fall through the cracks. May I ask the Minister whether more can be done for them to ensure that they do not fall into disadvantage?

Sir, in my Budget Statement speech, I brought up a specific case where a worker missed out on the Workfare Bonus. I believe it was not fully answered by the PM. This case concerns a worker who earns a basic salary of $1,200 a month. He has a wife and three children, and he worked hard and did a lot of overtime which earned him a gross salary of $2,500 a month. Since his salary of $2,500 is over the $1,200 and $1,500 Workfare Bonus upper limits, he is not entitled to the Workfare Bonus. The way the Workfare Bonus is framed is not fair to the hardworking Singaporeans. Can the Minister comment on whether something can be done for workers in this category?

Employability of Older and Low-Income Workers

(In Mandarin): Sir, just now, the Minister talked about employability of older workers. With our ageing population, we should take some steps to give older workers more job opportunities, particularly those who are physically and mentally fit. The NTUC has convinced some 50 unionised companies to employ older workers. But for those companies which are yet to be unionised, is there any plan on the part of MOM to persuade the employers to also agree with our plea to employ the older workers? The exercise to employ older workers cannot be carried out unilaterally. We cannot expect MOM to dictate it. We need the support of the employers. As the NTUC works its way into convincing the unionised companies, can MOM find some way to persuade the non-unionised companies?

Employability of Older Workers

Sir, allow me to read out a note I received recently from a resident when I went on my rounds of house visits. I quote: "It has been many years since the economic downturn. Many people have difficulty looking for jobs. I hope the Government can stop using the term "older workers aged 40 and above". This has a great impact on us as many naive employers do not want to employ people who are 40 and above. Even if we managed to get a job, we are often abused with heavy workload and little pay, as low as half of what we used to earn. No matter how good we do our job, employers often think otherwise because we are older workers."

Sir, I think this note encapsulates the very sad sentiments of older workers in their sense of loss and pain being unemployed, and being looked down upon as useless when they grow old. I think this resident is a little mistaken as "older worker" is generally defined by the Government as "50 years and above", not 40 years and above. However, this goes to show that people do feel that even 40 years old and above are deemed older workers by some employers.

I hope that the Government will do more to encourage both the public and private sectors to employ more older workers. We know that workers above 50 years old are not necessarily less energetic, slower or less capable than the younger workers. Older workers have experience and wisdom. These traits are in fact very valuable. There are many fine examples of people around the world who are still productive when they reach the age of 50, 60, 70 and even 80. In the US, Warren Buffett, the world's richest man is still working at the age of 82. He has not mentioned about retirement. In Singapore, we also have our own notable examples of our President, Mr S R Nathan, and, of course, our Minister Mentor, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who are also in their 80s. They are doing a great job and soldiering on. Most commendable, Sir!

As medical care and healthcare improve, people will live longer and remain mentally and physically active for longer years. I feel strongly that the Government should lead by example. It should stop labelling the older workers and curb the practice of early retirement of our senior civil servants, army officers, police officers, general staff and workers. Older workers should be encouraged to work as long as they can and willing to. They would agree to be paid less as they have passed their peak, but employment should continue. Older workers would not feel any sense of shame or stigma if they are paid less, provided they continue to be gainfully employed. They will retain their pride. Therefore, I strongly urge the Government, statutory boards, GLCs, and TLCs to take the lead to employ more older workers. The private sector would then follow the Government's example.

Sir, finding employment for older workers, especially those who are not equipped with special skills, is a problem. The current trend among employers is to find ways and means to retrench older workers and push them back into the job market. For the next employer, it is a long and painful process to reassess the ability and performance of these retrenched older workers. We need to change this trend of shoving our older workers to the job market at age 40 to 50. While I am not advocating an iron rice bowl mentality, we need to encourage our employers to look into the redeployment of their workers at each stage of their employment career so that their skill sets stay relevant and they can contribute positively to the job market.

We should make definite review at definite stages of a worker's employment. The review of the skill set of the employee can be from a helicopter view of the person or a review of the actual skill set needed for him or her to handle the work. Employers should plan and chart ahead of a person's career in the company. This review can be done when the employee is at the age of 30, 40, 50, and after which the review can possibly be done at shorter intervals as the employee becomes older. At each stage, the workers are encouraged to stay on at work. The main objective is to keep people working and to create the environment so that they can stay longer to get additional training.

Secondly, this definite review would also be in line with the remuneration of an employee. He is paid for what he is doing and not based on his seniority. In this manner, companies are more willing to keep the older workers within the company. They would have to assess between reliability and agility. And as human beings, at different stages in our life, our physical and mental capability will vary. Recently, we went to Japan, and we note that this definite review is done for their older workers at age 50.

Next is the cost of healthcare for older workers. It is a fact that health insurance premium is higher when a worker is older. It is also a fact that it is expensive to insure a worker at an older age in view of his or her health condition. I have gone to great lengths, during the debate on the Prime Minister's Budget Statement, to ask the leaders of the tripartite relationship of the employer associations, the NTUC and the Government to resolve the question of the cost of healthcare for the older workers. Unless we walk the talk, we will still be talking about this in the next Budget in 2007. Where are we stalling? When can we begin this portable medical benefits scheme?

Finally, we should be able to review the jobs within the job market as many of our older workers do not have specific skills. We can get employers and unions to agree that certain general jobs be reserved for older workers, eg, F&B work, kitchen helpers, storekeeping, support staff in libraries and childcare centres, and other backroom operations where the demands are not pressing. The older workers can be channelled to work in these areas. Those who have the qualifications, skills and ability to cope will, of course, take on more front-end jobs.

Before I end, I am glad that the Minister has mentioned that it is important to develop the service culture under GEMS. Unfortunately, recently, when we encouraged our hawker stallholders to talk about GEMS, WDA is not as supportive of this matter itself.

(In Mandarin): Sir, a few years ago, we were saying that by age 50, we need to have savings for our old age, a wife to keep us company, some friends to talk to and good health to do what we want to do. Now, we talk about lifelong learning and lifelong working.

The mindset now is different. In those days, when you are old and still working, it was considered a shameful thing. But now, the older people want to work. They feel very uncomfortable if they are not working. Many older workers began looking for alternative jobs after retirement. Some work as newspaper distributors, some as gardeners and some as car-washers. They just want to have something to do. Moreover, some of them are actually getting jobs which are better-paid than their previous jobs.

The Government now sets aside more money for the Lifelong Learning Fund. However, it seems to be targeted at the younger people. As we encourage the older workers to continue working, we would like to see the Government opening up more job opportunities in the various departments and train the older workers to fit into these jobs. Some of the training courses should be conducted in Mandarin to enable the older workers to participate in. We need to actively settle this matter. If we do not do it now, it would be a problem in the future. As we promote lifelong learning and lifelong working, we should encourage everybody to work and find some suitable work for them to do.

4.30 pm

Sir, I have residents coming to me looking for jobs. They used to be 40-plus or 50-plus, but, increasingly, over the last few years, 60-plus, 70-plus, and they always ask where are the jobs for them. I have referred them to the North East CDC, as all of us are now looking for jobs for older workers and they share a databank with other CDCs. And a few months, half a year or sometimes a year later, the same residents would come back and say no job-matching for them yet. Even those who have been job-matched, they say the employers tell them, "Sorry, you are too old".

It is a recurring story, Sir, and I feel that there must be some truth in what they are saying. I understand that the CDCs are doing as good a job as they can. But I think the problem is deeper. One is whether there are jobs for them. The Minister said that there were 61,000 jobs created last year. I would like to ask the Minister, of these 61,000 jobs, how many have gone to older workers. I also want to support the point made by my hon. colleague, Mdm Cynthia Phua, about whether we can reserve some jobs for older workers. In other words, looking at the job landscape and these jobs that are being created, which all the investments are bringing in, can we, say, "chope" a few for our older workers, without introducing rigidity into the system or making our employers uncompetitive, ie, giving them wage enhancement and training, making sure that they are up to the job?

I would also like to ask the Minister whether he would consider setting up a job-matching centre dedicated to older workers because, with the present system, we have the CDCs doing it. They have many other things to look out for. There are community programmes to do and welfare assistance to look out for. So, when the older workers go to them with their problems - they may have medical problems and some of them may have problems finding suitable jobs - they may not receive the care and attention that they need. Given that we have an ageing workforce, and that this trend will continue far into the future, should we not invest in a centre dedicated to finding jobs for older workers, training them, placing them, giving them the necessary support that they need?

Sir, this is done in other countries. In Japan, as we know, it has the Silver Jinzai Centre, a human resource centre which matches employers and job-seekers aged 60 and above. It registers about 750,000 senior workers and, according to their record, about 80% of them are placed in jobs ranging from school tutor to gardener. I am not sure whether we have achieved anywhere near their success rate for our older workers in Singapore.

Sir, in Britain, they have a government programme that provides job search assistance for people aged 50 and older when they have been out of work for six months or longer, and also offers training opportunities and wage enhancement. There is a need for such a centre, and I hope that our Minister for Manpower will consider this.

Increasingly, we are also moving towards the re-employment of older workers beyond the retirement age of 62. I commend all the initiatives done under ADVANTAGE! to give incentives to employers to hire older workers, and I know more will be invested in this initiative.

Sir, I hope, when the contracts are being renegotiated, that MOM will make sure that older workers will not be discriminated against or even exploited. Sometimes, I wonder, especially for higher skilled workers, say, they are 62 years today, doing the same kind of job, contributing as much as ever, then when they are 63, suddenly, their value drops, as if, overnight, they have changed. But all that has changed really is that time has passed. And I worry that, if we move in this direction without clear guidelines, employers will say, "OK, you are 63 today, half your pay, no medical benefits and no annual leave, because the Government is now moving towards re-employment of older workers and this is what employers must do. Therefore, it is acceptable to cut your pay according to a new contract."

Sir, I know that the unions are working very hard to make sure that workers get fair terms. But I hope that employers will also do their part, and that the Ministry of Manpower will also make sure that when employers hire older workers beyond 62, it will be on fair terms for them.

Mr Chairman, Sir, I echo the views and concerns raised by various Members before me on the need to do more to help older workers get jobs. This is more so, as our population matures and Singaporeans live longer as a result of improving standards of healthcare and quality of life.

Sir, I applaud the Minister for setting up the Tripartite Committee on Employability of Older Workers. The Committee has submitted an interim report, and I understand it is expected to complete its work by the end of the year. The Committee may be looking at legislation for the re-employment of older workers. I have read the report.

Sir, whilst I acknowledge that the Committee's work is work-in-progress and it may be some time yet before legislation can take place, I suggest we start changing perceptions and mindsets among employers, and this includes the Government, to encourage them to employ older workers. Older workers have the advantage of wisdom, experience, stability and knowledge, which, like what my colleague, Mr Leong Horn Kee, has said, the younger workers do not have. Perhaps, we could initiate a nation-wide campaign to educate all employers on the virtues of employing older workers.

In addition, I suggest that the Government take the lead and implement practices to employ older workers in the public sector, in much the same way as what the Government had done in the past in taking the lead in employing handicapped Singaporeans, ex-prisoners and ex-drug addicts in the public service. The engagement of these older workers could be on shorter durations, on contract basis, say, one-year, two-year or three-year contract, renewable every year subsequently, or it can be on a project or assignment basis. These jobs need not necessarily be limited to menial jobs like cleaners, sweepers and lift attendants, but could be extended to include the services of older professionals such as engineers, accountants, managers, and clerical officers.

Sir, by doing so, we can convince private sector employers to do the same and start re-employing older workers. May I urge the Minister to convey this suggestion to the Public Service Division of the Ministry of Finance for implementation?

Central Provident Fund

Mr Chairman, Sir, Singaporeans understand that the CPF is fundamentally for old age, medical expenses and basic housing, and that the Government will continue the CPF system around these core objectives.

However, with the number of changes proposed and made to CPF, for example, lower CPF contribution rate and ceiling, Singaporeans worry that savings for old age will be eroded. We must ensure that our workers' CPF savings will have stable and reasonably good returns. Allowing individual CPF members to invest their savings seems not to be a preferred choice, and the privately-managed pension plan also does not seem to be an effective alternative. So what is the Ministry's long-term plan for CPF savings to ensure that we have better returns? I would like to ask the Minister to provide the House with greater details and insights.

4.35 pm

Ms Eunice Olsen is not around. Dr Ng.

Mr Chairman, Sir, let me first thank the many hon. Members who have spoken in support of the recommendations from the Ministerial Committee on Low Wage Workers. This is in specific reference to Workfare and other initiatives. Indeed, many MPs - Dr Tan Cheng Bock, Mr Wee Siew Kim, Mr Ong Ah Heng, Dr Amy Khor and Mr Ang Mong Seng - had previously in this House raised the need to look after the lower-income group and to help them cope with the effects of economic restructuring and globalisation.

It was in response to these calls and public feedback that the Prime Minister set up the Multi-Ministry Committee in July 2005. In formulating our strategies, the ministerial committee consulted widely and listened attentively. Members of the committee met with employers, unionists, community and social leaders, low-wage workers themselves - we had some sessions with them - and the general public. This gave the committee an in-depth appreciation of the poverty traps, the vicious cycles of the low-wage workers and their families that kept them down.

Most Members of this House would have read the report that we had circulated, and will be gratified that the majority of stakeholders that we consulted, like many Members in this House, and indeed the low-wage workers themselves, argued against "unconditional needs-based assistance." Many understood that such an approach was not sustainable and, in fact, did not help workers over the long term. Workers wanted help to contribute to the economy and gain self-reliance. This is what they told us. The recommendations were crafted, taking in their feedback and views. After the release of the report, the committee received positive feedback from diverse groups of Singaporeans. While we are gratified with the resonance and affirmation, it would be prudent to focus on the fundamentals of our recommendations on how we should assist low wage workers.

First, continued economic growth and job creation is the best assurance of a better future for low wage workers;

Second, the efforts to help low wage workers must reinforce our strong work ethic;

Third, increasing opportunities for upward mobility should be the main means to help low wage workers; and

Finally, we will focus on raising the skills and know-how of the next generation, to create hope for their future.

These are the four fundamental principles which we listed in our report. The Government has approved the recommendations and set aside $1 billion to implement them. While the Workfare Bonus has attracted much attention during the Budget debate, I want to refocus attention on where the main emphasis of our recommendations lies. Yes, the Workfare Bonus was meant to incentivise work and help meet short-term needs. This was a practical response to the reality that the incomes of low wage workers were held down as a result of globalisation. We understood that. And it was positioned as a one-off scheme over two years for reasons spelt out by the Prime Minister.

But I want Members to note also that the larger share of $630 million of the $1-plus billion is to meet long-term goals through recurrent spending. Not one-off. $230 million will be spent on enabling work, expanding job opportunities and training for higher skills. About $250 million will be spent on helping the children of such families move ahead in life. Another $150 million will be spent to help them own homes and have assets as a reward for their work.

These recommendations are not an election ploy, as some have suggested. The ultimate goal, through the next election and every election thereafter, is to ensure that Singaporeans progress together, as one people. I quote from the report, chapter 1, paragraph 10:

"The common vision of Singaporeans working and progressing together must carry on through to the next generation. We must help those who can work to find meaningful jobs and earn adequate wages to support themselves and their families. They should be able to own their homes, educate their children and put aside enough for their medical and retirement needs."

All Singaporeans must share in the fruits of our progress. These are not just short-term aspirations but long-term goals that this Government has committed itself to.

Let me now address some of the specific concerns and questions about the Workfare Bonus raised by Members during the Budget debate and in this COS.

In response to Mr Seng Han Thong's question, we assess regular work based on the number of months worked, rather than on the number of days worked. We know that there are cases that need special consideration. We are not completely inflexible. As the hon. Member rightly pointed out, we have already made one adjustment by relaxing the six continuous months' rule to six months over one year for those who have really genuine difficulties. But I would like to remind Members that the thrust of the Workfare Bonus scheme is to incentivise long-term goals, to make sure that the worker keeps a steady job, for at least six months or more, to be self-reliant. That is the overall goal of the scheme.

This is why the Workfare Bonus is deliberately divided into two portions, so that those who did not qualify for it this year will do so next year. So we want to encourage them to try to enter the economy, now that the jobs are there, to find a regular job. I know that it will cause some pain on the ground, but workers will have to adjust. I think it is the right thing to do, and we will need, as we said, help from the community, as well as business and unions, to achieve that. Our counter staff at the various CCs, CDCs and CPF Board have been trained to direct the unemployed who cannot qualify to the Distributed CareerLink Network and the job centres to allow them to have more comprehensive assistance.

Mr Chiam pointed out that those who work hard and then exceed the upper limits may not receive the Workfare Bonus. I agree with him that for that person who has worked very hard and does not receive it, he may feel that this is not equitable. But all of us recognise that we are targeting that assistance to the lower-income group and that there has to be a ceiling to that, and we have chosen $1,500. In response to his example of the $2,500, he has forgotten that that family can benefit from the housing grant, which is not a small sum by any measure - $20,000, $15,000, $10,000 and $5,000 - and this is on top of other housing grants

that we have given out. I do not think that we should cast it as if Singaporeans will not get anything if they work very hard. That is not the message, but we are targeting our assistance to lower-wage workers.

4.45 pm

During the Budget debate and COS, both Dr Lily Neo and Dr Warren Lee highlighted that some workers would be afraid to sign up for the Workfare Bonus in case they got themselves and the employers into trouble for not paying their CPF. Let me assure Members that the purpose of the income declaration exercise is to facilitate those without CPF contributions and who not have received an income tax return to receive their Workfare Bonus if they fill up that declaration form. It must be a true declaration because we can verify in some cases and the penalties are quite stern. But if it is a true declaration, the purpose of the income form is to facilitate the Workfare Bonus. If during the process, they decide that they want to complain against the employer, we will act.

Finally, on Workfare Bonus, Mr Seng Han Thong has suggested using this exercise to promote the concept of Workfare. We agree, because we believe that for Workfare to work, we need to help that layer of Singaporeans who find it hard to cope with restructuring. Yes, there will be skill gaps, attitude gaps and aptitude gaps, but if we resort to an unconditional need-based, in other words, if you need, I give it to you, we would have done them a disservice because they will expect the next handout every time they need it. So we have to couple it with these efforts to make them self-reliant and I take that some difficulty there will incentivise them.

Let me now talk about employability of older workers. Sir, this has been close to many Members' hearts in the past. Assoc. Prof. Koo Tsai Kee, Mr Loh Meng See, Dr Teo Ho Pin, Mdm Cynthia Phua, Dr Lily Neo, Dr Ahmad Magad and, recently, Mr Seng Han Thong talked about training that we ought to incentivise this training, and we agree.

Many Members - Mr Leong Horn Kee and Mr Chew Heng Ching - have now asked that we ought to ask employers and industries not to view older workers negatively, and to highlight enlightened employers who hire older workers. Some have suggested an Equal Opportunities Commission. Let me say that Government feels as passionately as Members, but we need to translate your passion into real results, and that is our job. And we want to take a very pragmatic approach that works. I would want to caution ourselves that this would take time. We will need to work with industries and every industry that we succeed in will be a step forward. But there will be very few magic bullets that we can shoot. We do not agree with the quota system and for good reasons that the PM mentioned. If you move down that way, it will be no different from having moved down, and, in my last reply, I talked about how when you asked for quotas for older workers, it will basically rigidify your labour market and it is very inflexible and people can work around it. If there are quotas for older workers, why not we have quotas for women or other groups? In the end, you are left with a very small group that would not have a quota, so it is reverse discrimination. In other countries where quotas have been applied, it has not worked. We think that we ought to change practices pervasively and work very hard at it. But we have acted on some of the Members' suggestions, and one way to go is the Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment and Practices, which is one suggestion of the Tripartite Committee to promote mindset change of employers and employees. They will go on a roadshow sometime this year. This is in response to Mr Chew Heng Ching and Mr Ong Ah Heng.

We will publicise examples of good employers and excellent older workers. We will facilitate sharing of best practices and pilot projects that have worked. Many of you have asked for the civil service to take the lead. Minister Teo Chee Hean has answered on what the civil service position is. To just add on to his reply, civil service is aware and is in tune. In fact, they were very much involved in our discussions. There are certain organisations that require certain aspects. We do need a vibrant and young SAF to be optimal but where the civil service can move in certain areas. We will work with them to develop some of the programmes that can redeploy some of the older workers. At the end of it, we have to convince businesses that there is a business advantage for hiring older workers.

Forward-thinking companies around the world have already started changing their employment and work practices to accommodate older workers. In essence, they are turning the problem on its head and using an ageing workforce to its business advantage because they know that that is the group that is growing the fastest.

Let me give you one example, IBM in the United States. IBM was concerned about the shortage of IT workers, and it looked at post-retirement employment, alternative work schedules, benefits, mentoring, and ways to transfer knowledge. The company is now working to engage former IBM alumni. They have an IBM alumni where they worked for the company, they keep a database, if they move and the company needs them later, they will bring them back. This is an on-call-on-demand workforce which they are capitalising. Some of these retirees are engaged via intermediaries to work on projects. The scope may not be long but it may work both for the company and the employee.

BT Group in the United Kingdom is another forward-thinking employer. It started a programme called NewStart and this challenges employees' expectations about retiring early. The programme provides flexible options. I presume near retirement, they would say that these are options that you can tick off, that you do not have to retire, you can either be redeployed, job-share at lower grades, phased sabbaticals, reduction in working hours, and secondment to other companies. There is a menu of choices, and we will learn from these examples. Employers who act now will find it in their best interest, but we have to work with industries. This is something that you cannot grandstand and say that this is good or this is what you want. You have to engage the industries to slowly change their practices. Workers also need to change their mindsets, in terms of being redeployed and being adaptable to flexible working schedule.

In terms of specific measures, what have we rolled out? I am pleased to report that even though we launched the ADVANTAGE! scheme quite recently, 31 companies have come on board. Together, these 31 companies who hire more than 800 older workers retain 480 workers approaching or above age 62, and implement job redesign projects that will improve the work of 4,400 older workers. They span various sectors, including manufacturing, F&B, retail, public transportation, and healthcare.

Let me give you one local example. SingHealth has tapped on ADVANTAGE! to set up what they call a Silver Connection Office. I promise you that you will get a slew of these new initiatives coming up. It is called the Silver Connection Office run by mature workers for mature workers, something like what Ms Irene Ng said, a dedicated centre for job search for older workers. The Silver Connection Office will recommend working options, new roles and older worker-friendly policies as well as run activities, workshops, and counselling services for SingHealth's 5,200 mature employees. For a start, the Silver Connection Office has hired a 60-year-old Programme Consultant on a one-year contract to manage this set-up. Programme executives will be hired to staff the office and go through a preparatory Diploma in Counselling Psychology course, subsidised by ADVANTAGE's training grant. This office aims to re-employ about 80% of its retiring employees.

Translink Express is another company that has come on board. Translink Express helps food service chains like Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf to deliver food products from the warehouse to the outlet. Originally, the products were transported in pallets and this required physical strength to lift them. Further, you have to do it in two trips because you have to do it for chilled and non-chilled, so delivery workers had to do it twice and this required manual strength. This favoured younger workers. The company recognised that they did not want to change that and with the help of ADVANTAGE! scheme, they found a solution. Instead of using pallets, it now uses containers and cages which can be used to pack both chilled and unchilled, and this saves the workers one extra trip. They are wheel-mounted for easier movement, and productivity has gone up and is suitable for older workers. These are simple examples that you can do, company by company, process by process, to be able to move this initiative forward. I know it is slow sometimes but we need to persevere. I encourage more companies to come on board and we need to get business leaders and there are many enlightened business leaders who will come on board.

During the Budget debate, some MPs - Dr Teo Ho Pin, Mr Wee Siew Kim and Mdm Cynthia Phua - asked whether we can help older and less educated workers to set up their own business. WDA is piloting a 12-month programme to help individuals become self-employed and earn a living by starting and managing a business. This is a pilot programme where they are taught how to start and write business plans. One participant in the pilot that has been done so far is Mdm Toh Ah Tuan, who is 45 years old. She has two young children, relying on her husband's monthly pay of $800. Mdm Toh joined this pilot scheme and was put through a three-month job attachment programme at McDonald's, where she was rotated to do different types of work. She also attended the Retail Workforce Skills Qualification course and in February this year, with the help of the mentor, Mdm Toh rented a stall at a coffeeshop to sell fish soup. Her business is doing well and they tell me that she takes in about $180 a day, not bad. The mentor will continue to guide her for the next nine months. I give you this individual example to explain to us that it does require hand-holding and helping for these processes to move along.

In response to Mr Yeo Guat Kwang's earlier question, and also Mr Chew Heng Ching who also talked about looking at re-employment legislation, we will be looking at the legislation that Japan puts in where older workers beyond age 62 are given a re-employment contract.

To answer Ms Irene Ng, we do issue tripartite guidelines on re-employment, medical and other benefits that need to be adjusted. These were formulated with the inputs of employers and workers, so it is a set of guidelines that form the yardstick and benchmark.

Mdm Cynthia Phua and Mr Yeo Guat Kwang asked about portable medical benefits. Last year, MOH reviewed and revamped MediShield. The changes are to protect Singaporeans against the financial burden of large hospital bills, at least at the Class B2/C level. Members should understand that this is a de facto national scheme that providers will have to subscribe to and cannot cherry pick. In this way, premiums for essential coverage under MediShield are kept affordable. If you think about it, this, in fact, enhances the portability of medical benefits. I want us to be careful, when Members talk about portable medical benefits, where indeed, they may not be talking about portable medical benefits, but about comprehensive medical coverage. Let me explain. As long as someone has enough in his Medisave to pay for the premiums for MediShield, even if he is not working or has retired, in essence, he is covered for basic medicare. And the MediShield premiums are affordable. Let me give you an example. We keep saying that it costs a lot to hire workers and we work against ourselves because the messaging is conflicting. We actually reinforce that notion that if the older worker is hired and he falls sick, you have to pay a very high medical bill and if he does not have MediShield, maybe the employer has to pay. The truth is not there. Let me explain why.

What is the annual premium for MediShield for someone age 40? It is $40.

For age 50 it is $80, aged 60 it is $160, and aged 70, it is $275. This is the annual premium. This means that even a worker who earns a few hundred dollars a month would have enough Medisave to pay for his annual premium plus many more years' premium even if he is not working. So the key to portability of medical benefit is you must work long enough and accrue enough in your Medisave. So we should not send mixed messages. I think the revisions in MediShield, in fact, work for older workers, because they were set to protect larger hospital bills, and it is the older workers that are likely to have longer hospital stays to incur larger bills. So, companies, therefore, do not need to be biased against hiring older workers for fear of being saddled with high medical expenses. Now, the tripartite partners are studying how medical coverage can be increased, but that is different from portability.

5.00 pm

One idea, as Mr Yeo Guat Kwang pointed out, is to convert what the company spends on medical benefits for its Workfare into individual contribution. Then the worker purchases coverage for himself. The civil service, for example, moves to an individualised system. This is known as the Medisave-cum-Subsidised Outpatient System (MSO), where in-patient subsidies were replaced with 1% additional CPF contribution in the civil servant's Medisave account. This may be a model that the tripartite partners can study.

But MPs have also asked to increase coverage to reduce deductibles and co-payment elements. That is quite different from increasing the portability. I want to issue an universal caveat that nothing is for free. For the same premium paid, you can either choose to buy a policy that insures against a big medical bill or a different policy that pays for your smaller bills but less of your big bills. It is a necessary trade-off. But if you want a policy that comprehensively covers the first dollar from the smallest bill to the biggest bill, then your premium must go up. As most big bills are incurred when one is older, I think it is prudent to opt for a system that covers more of your bigger bills through higher deductibles which excludes smaller bills. This will ensure that Medisave contribution lasts beyond retirement, where most medical costs are incurred. So, to reiterate, as long as the person is working and contributes to his Medisave, and has enough in his Medisave account to pay for his premiums for MediShield, even when he is not working the premiums are still paid, he is still covered.

Mr Yeo Guat Kwang asked for helping CPF account holders gain better returns. I agree. Mr Inderjit Singh and Dr Teo Ho Pin raised similar issues in the Budget debate. As a first step, many Members will remember that, as on 1st February, we tightened the criteria for entry of new funds. Now they have to meet the benchmark of the top 25 percentile in their global peer group and their expense ratios must be lower than the average. But beyond that, we will help members understand the factors that impact the fund's performance, and make available tools and information through CPF's website. We will also encourage greater disclosure by fund managers and publish information on fees and costs to help members make comparisons.

The second strategy is PM's suggestion in September last year of a default pension plan which is optimised for the needs of a typical member. Such a scheme would basically aggregate members' funds for long-term investments, to reap economies of scale and lower costs. We are presently studying this, but it will take time. Because it is not just about designing a scheme that is more cost-efficient. The greater challenge is to explain to CPF members that nothing is for free, that higher returns will be accompanied by higher risk.

The improvements that we need to make to the CPF system will have significant implications for all of us and so I am going to take my time. But we should also draw from the experience of others, taking advice from local and foreign experts. To facilitate this, I am, therefore, pleased to announce that we have set up the International CPF Advisory Panel, chaired by Mr Koh Yong Guan, who is also the Chairman of the CPF Board. I will ask the Clerk to now distribute to Members a press release to be issued by CPFB today on the composition of the Panel. As you can see, the Panel will comprise both local and foreign experts in pension funds and investment management. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. We can learn from their mistakes as well as their pluses. Their advice will help us to better achieve our objective of enhancing returns for members.

Sir, our combined efforts on these various fronts - low-wage workers, older workers, CPF adequacy, medical benefits - will improve conditions for Singaporeans. It will ensure that we work and progress together.

Sir, the Minister did not reply to my question on whether there are jobs out there for older workers and to reassure that where there are jobs they will be matched to them. Also, he did not reply to my question on whether he would consider having a national centre that will cater to job matching and also to train older workers for new jobs, not SingHealth, but a national one.

Sir, in a sense, I did. I said that last year there were 61,000 jobs created for everyone. So the first question to ask is: are there enough jobs created for Singaporeans? When we create 61,000 jobs for Singaporeans, obviously, if your average number of entrants per year is only 31,000, you have actually created quite a lot of jobs. Then the issue becomes: can the person do the job? This is where we can help the older workers.

We will consider the idea of a dedicated centre for older workers. I am not sure whether that works for or against us. So, let me study that. But let me say on a programmatic basis, we do have specific programmes catering to older workers. She mentioned, for example, whether we can give certain wage supplementation for certain aspects. Indeed, wage supplementation for certain programmes in electronics and other sectors is for older workers. And, indeed, the Workfare Bonus, there is an age criterion - Many of you tell me that I cannot use "age 40 and above" and I cannot call them "older workers" - so I do not know what I am supposed to say, but it is meant for this special group of people with special age characteristics but, indeed, that is what that programme is called.

Sir, since the Northeast CDC's name was invoked, may I have a chance to clarify? First of all, I would like to thank hon. Member, Ms Irene Ng, for empathising with the heavy responsibilities of CDCs. Second, I also empathise with the proposal that we should have a more focused approach to older workers. But I would just like to add on to say that all our job fairs cater to all age groups, even our job preparation exercise and walk-in interviews too. This Saturday, in fact, we are having a special training and employment opportunity for mature workers, where all the people in our databank, seeking for jobs, will be invited to attend. Some are more employable than others, some have better mindsets than others. Just as there are choosy older workers, there are also choosy employers. But as mindsets change, our records have indeed been improving.

Any more clarifications? No, then we move on. Mdm Halimah Yacob.

Employment Practices

Sir, the Tripartite Committee on the Employability of Older Workers has recommended the establishment of a tripartite alliance for fair employment practices. May I ask the Minister what will be the focus of this alliance? What will be the measures that will be put in place and, equally important, what kind of resources will be allocated to this alliance so that it can perform its work effectively?

Sir, I would like to urge all employers to employ people based on merits, which has been the cornerstone of our meritocratic society. If employers start looking at other factors, over time, people would lose confidence in the system. Hence, as a society, I urge that we build a consensus to make all forms of discrimination, whether on the basis of age, gender, race or religion or any other factors, so taboo that it becomes intolerable for any employer to practise such discrimination.

Sir, we have heard quite a lot of complaints about discrimination against older workers, pregnant women and also job advertisements that ask for Mandarin-speaking candidates when that is not required for the job advertised. May I ask the Minister what more can be done to prevent such discrimination in our workplace, how to change mindset, perceptions and stereo-types?

Sir, what is the point of having labour laws when they are not strictly enforced when companies cut corners and costs by employing illegal foreign workers to do the jobs that rightfully should go to Singaporeans? I know the Ministry carries out surprise checks and enforcement actions, but these apparently are not regular. Every now and then, I have Singaporeans calling me to complain of certain coffeeshops employing foreign workers to clear their dishes and that certain Town Councils are employing construction work permit holders to do the cleaning service, and that certain construction companies are deploying Bangladeshi work permit holders as drivers to ferry the workers from the hostel to the worksite and back. You can see many of these illegal redeployed drivers along Kranji Road and Admiralty Road turning into Sembawang Shipyard, etc. Sir, these are not allowed under the law, but enforcement action is slack. I hope the Ministry do not just report but the enforcement ---

Mr Chia, your time has expired.

Contract Work

Week after week, in my meet-the-people sessions, I see residents coming for financial assistance, and if you scratch the surface a bit, they are often contract workers - contract workers who are not paid regularly or contract workers who have no CPF, or contract workers who have just lost their jobs and are in the hunt for another contract, or contract workers who found another contract job later on at a lower pay. Sir, it seems to me that the trend is on the increase and I feel that more should be done to address this issue.

Sir, as my hon. colleague, Mr Yeo Guat Kwang said, especially for indirect contract workers, those employed by agencies and deployed to individual employers are often not paid CPF, do not enjoy benefits such as leave entitlement and medical benefits.

Sir, there is a big problem due to cheap sourcing practices, which is still currently the trend, even though we have been promoting best-sourcing. When the bidding of labour supplies drives the tender price down, what happens is that they will eventually squeeze the workers and the wages will suffer. And there is little that the workers can do. Sometimes, they worry about complaining to the Ministry of Manpower because it would mean that they would get into trouble with their employers, it would mean that they would get into trouble with CPF Board if they are not paid CPF, and this is often the case. I also want to reinforce the point made by Dr Lily Neo, and it has been raised to me just last night by my grassroots leaders, that workers are afraid to even apply for Workfare Bonus if they are not paid CPF.

Can the Minister give a very clear signal that if they fill their income declaration form and they claim that they are not paid CPF, that the Government would not go after them or their employer and get them into deeper trouble?

Sir, on the need to address the trend of contract workers and ensuring that workers' interest are protected, from time to time, the labour movement on its part has helped contract workers where there are problems with payment of salaries, for instance, and now the NTUC is also looking at how to organise them, how to help this growing group of contract workers more effectively. But we need the tripartite efforts of all parties, and I would urge Government Ministries and statutory boards to show the way in adopting best-sourcing practices instead of cheap-sourcing so that the wages of workers are not driven down. The Ministry of Manpower should also take active enforcement measures to ensure that contract workers are provided with statutory benefits that they are entitled to under our labour laws.

Sir, I also want to raise one last issue, which is the fear of losing their jobs. While I understand that from the employer's point of view the trend should be encouraged, that it encourages labour flexibility, helps them to save cost, I hope that the Ministry of Manpower would do more to assure workers that their interests are also protected. The labour movement is doing its part, but we need the Ministry of Manpower to enforce its labour laws and make sure that our contract workers are well taken care of and that there are more options beyond low-wage jobs.

Outsourcing

(In Mandarin): Sir, there is a Chinese saying: "Rich water must not flow into other people's field." In other words, what is good should be retained for your own use and not be extended to others. That was why in the old days, almost all the factories made everything themselves so that they did not lose the business to others. But now, as long as it is more viable, the manufacturers will outsource parts of their processes to save cost. Because of globalisation, everything can now be outsourced, not to only one location but all over the world.

However, not all outsourcings yield good results. If you are unlucky, your outsourcing may end up as bad-sourcing. Just the other day, Mr Low Thia Khiang mentioned the translation in which Katong, the sea turtle became the grandfather of Chew Joo Chiat. This is a typical example of bad-sourcing.

Outsourcing is a trend that cannot be stopped. In NTUC, our preliminary responsibility is to protect our workers. To us, good-sourcing means if the work is done well, the bosses will not go away. Now, we learn from MOM that there are in fact a lot of cases of bad-sourcing. In order to win the tender, the contractor has to cut its cost, and hence the wages of the workers. If the workers are not well-paid, they would not put their hearts and souls into their work. As a result, the product is sub-standard. The outsourcing became bad-sourcing. When business stops coming, the company will collapse.

I hope that MOM would look at this problem squarely and see how the interest of the workers can be looked after. We should get to the root of the problem early, so that the workers can have good protection.

Workplace Safety and Health

Sir, the number of industrial accidents and occupational diseases has been steadily declining over the years. This is the result of the efforts put in by the Ministry, the employers, unions and the workers in improving the workplace health and safety. What I like to ask is that, with the new Workplace Safety and Health Act introduced on 1st March 2006, what is the response so far from all the stakeholders, particularly the employers? What is MOM's plan to ensure that all workers will be able to have a better understanding of the OHS risk at work so that they can be effectively a whistle-blower at the ground as mentioned in the Act? How would MOM alleviate the fears of the workers being whistle-blowers? There are numerous ways to make the whistle-blower's life hell as soon as he is exposed,

and when the employers get to know about it.

MOM has introduced a hotline for workers to report safety breaches. What is the volume of the calls and how effective is this hotline? What will MOM do to effectively prevent the whistle blowers being penalised by the employers?

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Workplace Safety

Sir, like Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, I too want to talk about the new Workplace Safety and Health Act, which was passed in Parliament and enacted this month.

Sir, this Act is a major piece of legislation for workplace safety in Singapore. It covers general factories, construction sites and shipyards, totalling about 17,000 workplaces. There were 44 fatal workplace accidents last year, and MOM has set a target to reduce workplace fatalities by half within 10 years. I applaud MOM for taking a firm stand on workplace safety. If the tripartite partners, ie, the Government, employers and workers, take a collective and collaborative approach to improving workplace safety, I am confident that our workplace fatality and accident rate could be reduced.

Sir, while I support MOM's objective and approach in improving workplace safety, I have received negative feedback from construction companies who felt that the approach relies too much on using the stick rather than the carrot. Some also felt that the system of workplace safety checks and demerit points could be improved.

Sir, MOM, currently, has a system where demerit points are given for safety breaches at the construction site. Upon accumulating a number of points, the company will be penalised. In the more severe cases, the construction site will be given stop-work orders. The construction companies are also informed of these breaches. Furthermore, the demerit points are given to the construction company regardless of the number of construction projects under its portfolio. With the Workplace Safety and Health Act in place, the enforcement of the demerit system has been retched up. Some large construction companies are facing imminent disqualification from hiring foreign workers. Once they are disqualified, they might as well close shop.

Sir, I am sympathetic to their plight and that it is unfair to apply the demerit points to a single company as a whole, regardless of the number of ongoing construction projects. This could act against big companies with multiple projects. Applying the demerit points to a single construction site would be logical if it is also in line with the Government's requirement of the formation of green fuel company for each development project.

Sir, if the current demerit system were to be retained, perhaps MOM could consider fine tuning it to give more allowances to companies with multiple ongoing construction projects. Further, I hope that the Ministry would move towards a more collaborative approach and work together with companies to improve workplace safety rather than relying heavily on a system of punitive measures.

Sir, let me, first, begin by thanking Members who have spoken on employment practices and workplace safety. Our efforts to nurture a quality workforce must be supported by parallel programmes to build great workplaces. Employment practices must be fair and equitable, based on ability and productivity. Occupational safety and health systems must be comprehensive and robust.

Globalisation and competition may put pressure on companies to cut costs in order to survive. Some may be tempted to take the easy way out by cutting back on the provision of legislated employment benefits. Some may even be prepared to compromise safety and health standards and, in the process, put their workers at risk. These practices are not acceptable and will in the long term undermine the interests of our workforce and our economy as a whole.

On employment practices, the Government recognises that more needs to be done to prevent discrimination and other unfair practices at work. During the Budget debate, Mr Ahmad Khalis raised the concern that the "Mandarin requirement" in job advertisements was not always relevant to the job. I agree that employers should not use discriminatory criteria. They should assess candidates based on their merits. The Tripartite Guidelines on Non-Discriminatory Job Advertisements serve as a useful guide to employers in this regard.

MOM investigates all complaints of discriminatory employment practices, including those alleging that the "Mandarin requirement" was used to exclude non-Chinese candidates. In some cases, employers are able to justify the requirement, such as the need to deal with Mandarin-speaking clientele. However, imposing the "Mandarin requirement" in jobs where this is not needed is inappropriate and it will prevent companies from getting the best candidate.

The Tripartite Committee on Employability of Older Workers also recognised the need to improve HR standards in relation to recruitment and retention. It recommended establishing a Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices, which will go beyond age-related issues. Mdm Halimah Yacob has asked what role the Alliance will be taking and what measures it will put in place and what resources have been given to the Alliance.

The Alliance will be set up by June. Led by SNEF and NTUC, it will receive support from MOM. The Alliance will also work with employers, employees and unions to promote a culture of fair and responsible employment practices. The Alliance will start by publishing guidelines and good practices to help shape behaviour. It will also partner relevant agencies to develop industry capabilities and introduce training programmes. Employers that are exemplary in implementing fair employment practices will be recognised. I expect the scope of the Alliance's role to evolve over time as it gains more experience and confidence in promoting fair employment practices at the workplace.

Several Members expressed concern over the impact of certain employment practices on workers. Ms Irene Ng was concerned that contract workers were not paid CPF and other statutory employment benefits. Mr Yeo Guat Kwang mentioned the need for legislative protection for these workers. Mr Seng Han Thong had urged a more holistic approach to outsourcing to reduce its impact on workers and how we can help them. I will take these issues in turn.

First, the number of contract workers has been increasing over the past few years, although the overall proportion remains small. MOM's Labour Force Survey showed that the share of workers on short term contracts of less than a year rose from 2.9% in 2001 to 4.9% in 2004. Notwithstanding this increase, the number of successful claims lodged by contract workers under the Employment Act has remained stable over the past few years, at about 200 per year.

Contract workers enjoy the same protection as permanent full-time employees under our employment laws, such as the CPF Act, the Employment Act and the Workmen's Compensation Act. Their employers must contribute to the CPF if their income exceeds $50 a month. They are also entitled to specific employment benefits under the Employment Act, such as annual leave and medical leave, and overtime pay if they work beyond the contracted hours of work. Mr Yeo pointed out that there is a minimum service period of 3-6 months to qualify for benefits under the Employment Act, and suggested that this should be reviewed.

First of all, it is not easy to track intermittent employment and it is not easy to verify such employment. It is also not easy to justify on-going liability for an employment contract that has been severed. For example, an employee works for an employer for a short period of time, say, one month. At the end of the month, the contract is terminated or is completed. Later on, if he were to return to the employer to continue to work, the employer would then become liable for the previous employment that they have entered into. This may not be fair to the employer and, in the long term, it may, in fact, deter the employer from employing these employees who have left the company. But we will look at the Act from time to time and see whether we can improve the effectiveness of the Act to protect the interests of contract workers.

The issue, today, really is one of compliance and enforcement, not the lack of legal protection for these contract workers. The CPF Board and the Ministry of Manpower will continue to investigate complaints against violations and take serious actions against errant employers, including legal prosecution.

Employees, including contract employees, who are denied their employment benefits under the Employment Act should seek advice and assistance from their unions, if they are union members. Non-unionised workers can approach my Ministry officers for help. Our officers will help the workers to pursue their claims if they have a valid case.

It is important for employees to bring incidences of non-compliance with the law to the attention of the authorities promptly. Any delay in reporting non-payment of salary and CPF will make recovery much more difficult, especially when the company is facing financial difficulties.