SINGAPORE: A man recently took to social media to express his curiosity regarding the notable presence of foreign workers in numerous restaurants across Singapore.
On an online forum, he asked, “How do so many restaurants have so many foreign workers? Is there really a possibility that they have that many Singaporeans working at some back office to suit the quota?”
He also shared his experience of visiting a ramen shop, where he noticed that the employees were mostly foreigners except for one Singaporean. He mentioned that the cook was Japanese, and the wait staff were likely from Vietnam or Cambodia.
“Are they all PR? Or maybe married to a Singaporean somehow? Could it be that many who marry local? I’m also asking because I want to open a cafe and I cannot wrap my head around this 😅 also don’t have any close friends who work in fnb to ask invasive questions to.”
“I myself have worked in F&B for 7 years, now in a small takeaway business and I am only eligible to get one foreign worker.”
“Many F&B outlets have skeletal crew”
In the comments section, several Singaporean Redditors who claimed to have worked at small accounting firms or as auditors for F&B companies shared their insights.
One of them said, “Many F&B outlets have skeletal crew. This means they have many Singaporean citizens on their ‘payroll’ who don’t work at the company so that they can hire more foreigners.”
Another commented, “I can confirm. I have been an auditor for 5 years with a large portfolio of F&B companies. Phantom employees are the actual term.”
A third Redditor explained that certain restaurants and eateries, especially those where the parent company is from overseas, can freely hire foreign staff such as cooks, chefs, wait staff, and kitchen staff without adhering to local quotas.
This is because all the foreign staff are on training visas.
“This I know for sure,” the Redditor affirmed. “But I’ve also noticed that it’s only for certain nationalities, so I suspect it’s linked to bilateral trade deals.”
Conversely, others conjectured that these restaurants or businesses may have positioned themselves as “factories,” taking advantage of the fact that the manufacturing industry normally obtains a larger quota for foreign labour than the service industry.
One Redditor said, “It’s more tedious to register as food manufacturing factory than a cafe or restaurant, but then you’ll get to employ way more foreigners.
Companies that you know they have way too many foreigners and have a central kitchen, very likely do this.
On top of contributing to ghost employees, and manipulating salaries under different companies, overall they get so so many foreigner quota.”
As per the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the foreign worker quota for the services sector is the lowest among all sectors at 35%.
On the other hand, the manufacturing sector has a quota of 60%, the marine shipyard industry has a quota of 77.8%, and the process and construction sectors have quotas of 83.3%.
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