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By John Gee

In 2011, when looking into the costs Bangladeshis face in coming to work in Singapore’s construction industry, one of the expenses about which the research team asked workers was that of training. They quickly discovered that, though the workers had to pay significant amounts to training centres to gain skills that would qualify them to be employed in Singapore, many of them were trained in skills that they either did not use when they arrived, or only used a little.

Further research was therefore undertaken on this issue and this found that 75 per cent of the workers interviewed did not work in the job for which they were trained, so that thetraining failed to meet Singapore’s goal of enhancing worker skills in order to raise productivity while burdening workers with an expense that was not justified in the circumstances. A memorandum was prepared which was shared with the Building & Construction Authority in February 2013. Since several other reports have now appeared on this subject, we felt that it was long overdue for publication, and are therefore making it available now.

The other reports can be found here.

reportThe Memorandum on Required Training for Construction Sector Workers can be downloaded by clicking the icon at left.