“A proposal that has received wide public support is on legislating mandatory payslips and salary records for all employees,” said Acting Minister for Manpower, Tan Chuan-jin, in parliament on 14 March 2013. “Some MPs also raised this and we are supportive.”
He didn’t mention that TWC2 has been pressing his ministry on this for years.
However, he also added: “We will allow some time for smaller companies to adjust.”
The changes are likely to be in the context of a review of the Employment Act later this year. In this connection, he also said, “We will also give the government more teeth to ensure compliance of our laws. This includes enhancing the penalties for failure to pay salary as well as other measures to facilitate investigations and enforcement.” No details were available about the exact mechanisms contemplated.
Local employee salary threshold raised to $1,000
To qualify for inclusion within foreign manpower quota calculations, the monthly salary of a local employee has to be at least $1,000, Tan said in the same speech. This is an increase from the current threshold of $850 and will take effect from July this year.
“We want to ensure that local workers are actually employed meaningfully rather than being employed on token salaries just to allow the employer access to foreign workers,” he explained.