Our comments on MOM’s migrant worker survey 2024, part 1 (skills and training)

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This is the first of a series of articles commenting on the results of the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM’s) Migrant Worker Experience and Employer Survey 2024. The results were released in the third week of August 2025. In this Part 1, we will focus on two items in the second half of the report which dealt with questions put to employers. This is the first time that MOM’s migrant worker survey included a section involving employers.

TWC2’s immediate response to the highlights of the survey report can be found on our Instragram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/DNrZKi_J0Vv/?hl=en&img_index=1. These series of articles will analyse the findings in more detail and wherever possible, offer solutions.

Channel NewsAsia had a story out on 22 August 2025 (https://www.channelnewsasia.com/watch/over-95-migrant-workers-polled-satisfied-working-and-living-singapore-mom-5307301) and which has also been uploaded to Youtube. TWC2’s Executive Director Ethan Guo was interviewed in this programme.

Interestingly, the survey included a question about training provision. We think it was a poorly framed question – we’ll explain why later. The report wrote:

Majority (80.6%) of employers reported providing additional training for their migrant workers beyond mandatory training requirements. This demonstrates employers’ commitment to maintaining a skilled migrant workforce.

Job-specific core competencies, offered by 68.8% of employers, were the most common type of additional training provided. This was followed by safety and first-aid courses, which were provided by 39.6% of employers

These don’t quite count as skills training. “Job-specific core competencies” can easily mean teaching the new chap how to use a specific tool, how to operate a specific oven in the restaurant kitchen, or how to use the shoe shop’s point-of-sale system. It’s too narrow.

The question would have been better framed if it had asked employers how much they spent sponsoring external certification training for their employees; what percentage of their payroll was spent on paid training courses? Our guess would be that the answer would be close to zero.

Workers want to go for training. But they expect to be rewarded with career growth and better salaries, and that’s only fair. However, it’s very common for workers to tell us these things:

• I was prepared to pay for my own training, but my boss won’t give me time off;
• My boss promised me a salary increase if I signed up for training (at my own cost) but after passing the exam, there was no salary increase.

That same afternoon (when Channel NewsAsia called), the employment agent, responding to our comment about employers not willing to sponsor workers for courses, said, “Employers are afraid that if workers go for upgrading courses, they will resign soon after.” This explains why workers tell TWC2 that their bosses refuse to give them time off or annual leave even when workers are prepared to pay for their courses out of their own pockets.

Bosses want to reap the reward (a lower rate of Monthly Foreign Worker Levy) if workers upskill, but refuse to share that bounty with workers by giving them a meaningful increment. Hardly any wonder that workers would want to find another job.

Where and who to train?

There are two related points we need to make:

For construction workers, the Building and Construction Authority and MOM have set out a number of upgrading courses. However, only holders of Work Permits and S-Passes are allowed to take the exams. As mentioned above these guys face difficulty getting time off to do these courses. Meanwhile there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of workers on Special Passes. They either suffered an injury and are recovering or have filed a salary claim and are awaiting resolution. They are not allowed to work while on Special Passes and thus they have all the time in the world. But because they don’t have valid Work Permits, they cannot sign up for these courses or take the tests. This is bureaucratic absurdity!

Singapore’s ITE colleges are where real work skills are taught, from automative repair to structural draftsmanship to cooking. But, the last time we checked, foreigners must pay the full price; no subsidies are offered even when the person is working here, contributing to our economy. Shouldn’t this change?

More generally, the point we’re leading to is that Singapore should think harder about how we train the foreigners coming here to work and how much we’re prepared to support that training. However, judging by what the Straits Times reported of Minister of State Dinesh Vasu Dash’s comments – that MOM is reviewing the work permit framework to help employers secure higher-skilled migrant workers – our policy-makers are firstly, like our employers, still expecting skilled workers to be coming out of our cheap-labour source countries and secondly, relying on carrot-and-stick regulatory tweaks to conjure skills out of thin air.

TWC2 has argued before that Singapore employers, supported by our government, should have large-scale training-and-apprenticeship programmes. If we feel we have a need for, say, 10,000 skilled workers each year, then we should offer 10,000 candidates sponsored training in ITE colleges coupled with work apprenticeships in partnering companies. When these young men and women graduate from ITEs, they may be bonded for a number of years working in Singapore, and the companies that offered apprenticeships (plus wages) through their training period can have first pick.

Is this too far a bridge to cross? Consider this: If Singapore did not have a low birth-rate problem, if we did not need to import foreign labour, then our native-born youth would be expected to fill in the jobs in construction, retail, hotels and manufacturing. Would it be controversial to support technical training in ITE colleges for them? Almost surely not controversial at all.

But the reality is that we don’t have those numbers of native-born workers. We can easily have the numbers of workers we need (from abroad) except that they’re not born here. Simply for that reason, we recoil from the idea of spending a single dollar to train them, and then lament that our economy is in dire need of a better skilled workforce.