Singapore — In his latest Facebook post, former Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Calvin Cheng underscored the importance of embracing foreign labour in Singapore.
Mr Cheng shares an excerpt from a blog post on his website. He starts off his post by shedding some light on Singapore’s history, saying that it was established as a trading hub in 1819 and has since progressed to become a manufacturing hub, before transforming into financial services and tourist hub.
In order for Singapore to survive, it has to continually grow and evolve, says Mr Cheng. The world will come to rely even more heavily on the technology industry. As such, Singapore will need to become a technology and digital hub, home to the best technology companies.
As such, to position itself as a successful technology and digital hub, Singapore will need to recruit talent. However, it does not have enough citizens that are able to step up to work in the industry.
Therefore, Singaporeans will need to adapt to having foreign labour in the country, Mr Cheng commented. In doing so, Singapore will be able to attract the top technology companies in the market. Consequently, the technology industry in Singapore will be able to generate better jobs for Singaporeans.
Mr Cheng mentions that a large proportion of foreign labour will hail from India and that we must be ready to embrace those from other countries.
“We must not close up, we must not shut out or reduce our openness to foreign talent. In fact, we must be even more open.”
The next stage of global competition will be one that is both borderless and virtual. Due to the fact that Singapore lacks a domestic market, refusing to open its doors to others in a digital world will bring about many detriments.
At the end of his post, Mr Cheng shared a link to the piece he wrote.
You Zi Xuan is an intern at The Independent SG. /TISG