He wrote about this foreign labour issue way back in 2006, and the PAP government is only starting to tackle the problem which has worsen since then in 2011!

We should have him as the finance minister!

Availability of lower income job those for local only are subjected to avaibility, and and too much local wanting it.

Excuse my pigeon English and writing no former education.

The one who were at hard rock just because you went to hard rock cafe and get bad service you compare a local to expats worker comments, please also take your head out from your back side how you know they are locals

“our education system needs to emphasis more on soft skills, e.g. personality traits and interpersonal skills. Singapore has to transform its education systems so as to prepare workers for the jobs that will exist in the higher-income countries. Basically, that requires preparing workers for personal services jobs rather than impersonal services and manufacturing. Creativity and imagination skills will be highly valued, and people skills will be more valuable than computer skills. ”

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Singapore is very young. And its citizens have been socialized to become more civil/human/nice with lots of campaigns, because of the existence of such mass campaigns encouraging citizens to smile, be nice, courteous, romantic etc (these are all elements of soft skills). We could safely stereotype the entire local labour population by the existence of the mass govt campaigns, as not having soft skills.

I believe foreigners make better workers in the service sector and in customer service. They have more empathy, initiative, they are diligent and they understand what good service entails. On the other hand, i have met foreign service workers that are just as horrible as Singaporean service workers are.

I.e. Harvey norman type electronic shop assistants will just read out an electronic good’s specifications to you, without explaining which model of vacuum or radio set is a better buy for a customer like me. In Australia, working at an electronic store involves staying behind to TRY out all the products so you can better serve the customer.

i.e. comedy night at hard rock cafe. I have noticed that local waiters/waitresses lack the empathy or the initiative to not sense when patrons require food/drink, which makes them wander around aimlessly through the restaurant, and impeding the views of patrons at the comedy onstage.

Whilst the foreign waiters/waitresses are able to instinctively tell when a patron would require their services.

Furthermore:

There is a Singaporean mindset of looking down on the retail and service sector, professional services like doctors and lawyers are much highly thought of. Can we say that in Singapore it is naturally elitist?

But service and salesmanship are viewed more positively abroad. If you are a good salesman or customer service man, you know your product and you know the competitor’s product, and you have your customer’s welfare at heart, so much so that you would recommend whatever is best for your customer (even if it means directing them to a competitor), which is how you build rapport and how the customer will remember you and bring back business. You will also be attentive to the customer and listen.

There is also much backlash against Foreigners and their language skills. Singaporeans also do not speak English, confusing yes with no because the sentence structures in typical local conversations are based on ‘symbols’ and not on the meaning of words in a conversation. This is how you can have amazing stories of foreigners who got conscripted into NS because the MOM worker did not understand the question “would my sons have to serve NS if i sign this?”

At a human-level I believe foreigners can perform well in service and retail jobs because Singaporeans lack basic social skills and empathy. As for higher end mechanical jobs, i see no reason why Singaporeans are not able to do the same job as these foreigners if not better. Yes wages are horrible for us Singaporeans and the lack of a safety net sucks.