SINGAPORE — Retrenched workers may soon receive unemployment support as part of this year’s national budget, which will be rolled out on Feb 14.
A report quotes economists as saying that the support extended may only be for a certain period of unemployment and could only be for vulnerable workers.
This type of support had been proposed by tripartite partners in 2021, The Business Times (BT) said on Tuesday (Jan 30).
In 2020, at the Budget debate in Parliament, Workers’ Party (WP) MP Sylvia Lim (Aljunied GRC) proposed the implementation of unemployment insurance for older workers who have been retrenched.
Then Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said that the Government would “keep an open mind” to the suggestion, but called the present support given to such workers “more sustainable.”
But the following year, a task force formed by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) to better support professionals, managers and executives (PMEs), recommended “unemployment income support”, among others.
And in November last year, NTUC reiterated its call, BT added.
Manpower Minister Tan See Leng responded by saying that the government is “looking very carefully” at how to go about structuring this type of scheme.
This has caused observers to say that unemployment support may be in the offing as part of the Budget.
Additionally, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong implied last month that training could be a requirement for this kind of support, saying that this should be seen as re-employment support instead of unemployment support so that workers would continue to be motivated to stay in the workforce.
“It is about… providing some form of financial cushion to workers while enabling them to upgrade their skills, and helping to place them in new roles that best fit their abilities and aptitudes,” Mr Wong said at IPS Singapore Perspectives 2023.
NTUC’s assistant secretary-general Patrick Tay said that it recommended support for PMEs in their 40s to 60s at risk of job displacement and who have difficulties in getting re-employed.
“This may come in the form of ‘re-employment support’, together with job search or training support. There should be active labour market policies to incentivise those who are actively looking to re-enter the workforce by going for employability camps, career coaching and job interviews,” Mr Tay told BT.
However, some analysts say Budget 2023 may be too soon to announce unemployment support, including Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) associate professor Walter Theseira, who said that the details still need to be ironed out.
He also told BT, “I believe there is a case for unemployment support schemes, but the implementation doesn’t need to be rushed if the labour market is doing well.”
Ms Lim, who chairs The Workers Party, had said in Parliament in 2020, “Today’s economic climate illustrates how such insurance could provide a stabiliser to workers, to soften the cliff-edge that they face with job disruption.
If the anxiety of citizens is not taken seriously enough, the door to populism and nativism will widen.” /TISG
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