Back in 1965 Singapore got it’s independence and for the years the follow the economy was on the move and everyone was working. As companies moved into to country the standard of living was vastly raised and the population enjoyed the good times. With the influences of different countries the first generations Singaporeans had everything they could want and even move. With the low cost government housing that was being built it was possible for every family to own their own Flat making Singapore the envy of many other counties in the region.
Well that was then and this is now! Back in 1997 the Asia market crashed and it was time to tighten the belt a few knocks. Companies had to find way to keep competitive with the region while at the same time making a profit. So how dose a company do cost saving, easy cut people and demand that the remaining employees pick up the pass and take up the slack! Retrenchments became a word everyone feared and for good reason. Many companies cut people and I mean cut a lot of people, not just from the lower end of the scale but executives as well. No one was safe and had no ideal how long they would keep their jobs.
Once a person was retrenched finding work in the same line could be a very hard task depending on your skills and age. With so many people graduating from university in the country the market / employers had a vast pool of people to pick and chose from when they did go to rehire adding to that was that companies were now looking at a persons school levels passed, Certificates, Diplomas and Degrees. If a job seeker was unable to produce the needed documents for employment their resume was put to side and never looked at again regardless of the experience they had. So for many of the older worker seeking jobs in other fields was what was needed, but even then they found that due to their age many employers still wouldn’t hire them on because they felt the older worker would not adjust well to working for a younger manager. Plus how long would the older employee be with the company, what was their health like, and was this job just something to hold them over until a better job more their liking came a long?
It is common in Singapore that if you are over 40 years of age and seeking a job you will have a hard time. If you are over 50 well it gets damn hard then unless you are willing to take a job that pays low with long hours. For many these jobs are hard to take due to the experience and skills they have and jobs they held before. How does a person go from a Bank Manager to Security Guard and still feel good about them self? Hard question isn’t it! But it happens all the time. People have to survive and they have to take what they can find to support their families.
For the younger workers in the country it is long days and often weekends too to make the career last. With working hours from 9am to 6pm they find them selves working until 8 or 9pm at night more times then they would like to admit. Mandatory training on off Saturdays and having to classes to up-grade they skills to be met company policies adds to the stress already upon them. But you see the employer knows that if a person leaves the job they can hire some one else at a reduced pay wage and they also know that jobs are hard find so the chances of a working throwing in the towel and quitting is low. So they take advantage of these facts and the employee has nothing to little to do about it, so they bite the bullet and keep working.
Careers in Singapore are very important as they should be and the Singaporean are very hard working individuals. With the price of living being high it is important to have a good amount in savings before even thinking about getting married. It is not uncommon to find both men and woman in their mid-thirties still single. Now is this due partly to not having time for a relationship due to working so much or wanting to keep saving to by that Condo and new Mercedes, could be! Or may be is just isn’t as important as it was with the older generations.
As Singapore moves a head it talks about the world economy and what Singapore need to do to keep up and improve their standing and it is looking to the youth to come forward to take on the new challenges, but what of those that started the country? The older workers that brought Singapore to what it is today? Should they be just left be the wayside with no regard to the years of experience they hold! This is a question I can’t answer, maybe they are just victims of a small country moving too fast for them and they need to left behind for the sake of the many.
One area I wonder about is the construction field and why Singaporeans are not in this line of work. While it has its engineers there are few labors. When you live in country that is always building and rebuilding itself why is the work done but men from other countries? I fully understand that the cost is much cheaper to hire these workers but let’s put that aside for a moment. With over 200,000 in doing construction that equals a lot of job. But it is the kind of work that a Singaporean is willing to do? Not at what it pay now, I can tell you that. In time as things change there will be no choice since Singapore is joining a region wide push to cut the number of foreign low-skilled workers by tightening rules on employment in the construction sector.
This tiny city-state, which has hundreds of thousands of foreigners working in the construction industry, plans to change the criteria for work permits as part of long-term plans to reduce its reliance on this imported labor. The number of foreign construction workers was tightened by five to 10 percent compared from June 1, 2002 the Manpower Ministry said in a statement.
Singapore reduced contractors’ foreign worker entitlements to 70 percent of 1999 levels by 2005, and 50 percent by 2010. Workers from Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand will be affected. Under the current system, employers are given entitlements in terms of man-years to employ foreign workers. These entitlements vary according to the value of the building projects.
Neighboring Malaysia, home to more than a million foreign workers, recently (2002) decided to halve the number of Indonesians working in the country after several incidents of violence. Thailand, which has at least a million illegal immigrants from its poorer neighbors, launched a nationwide crackdown last month.
In Singapore there are over 150,000 maids working, taking care of the flats and children of the working parents. In a country of 3.5 million that seems like a lot of maids to me! But again with the parents working long hours and getting home until 8 or 9 in the evening there is little choice in the matter for them. The down side is that the parents have little if any time to spend with the children during the weekdays so raising the kids falls on the maids. So depending on how the arrangement is set up within the family the kids may not be getting the discipline they need from the parents to help them become responsible adults. This could be one reason for the increase in abortions and child related crimes rising in Singapore. Youth crime continues to be an area of for the country; more juveniles and young persons were arrested in 2003 as compared to other years in the recent past. The three common offences committed are shop theft, other theft and rioting.
There were 4,658 youths arrested in 2003, a 4.9% increase from 2002 (4,441 persons). Youths arrested accounted for 19.5% of the total persons arrested. Among them, juveniles arrested saw an increase to 2,515 persons. The proportion of males among the juveniles (7 to 15 years of age) arrested increased slightly from 69.1% to 72.5%. Four-fifths of the juveniles arrested were students.
And in 2005 - A total of 4,594 youths were arrested for crime in 2005, as compared to 5,010 in 2004. They accounted for 22% of the total persons arrested, a decrease from the 26% in 2004, but still slightly higher than the proportion of the youth population in Singapore (15%). While the numbers have gone down last year it is still a high count of arrest.
So why is this happening I wonder? Some where along the line there is a break down in discipline and that starts in the home? If the parents are not there to correct their children then the values of being a law biding citizen are not taught or reinforced and they child is influenced by bad member within their peer groups and they end up getting in to trouble.
From what I have seen the parents in Singapore do everything they can for their kids, maybe too much but with so little time being spent with the child it is understandable why the kids are spoiled to a point. Working a 44 hour week, but 60 to 70 is more realistic once you figure in travel time to and from home, why parents want to have the best time with their children when they have the time.
Well let’s see what the coming years bring to the working habits of the country workers.
