SINGAPORE: A total of 124,500 workers have signed up for the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) since its launch last December.

Over 19,000 job seekers have found work through this programme aimed at helping firms and workers tide over the current downturn. More small and medium-sized firms are also tapping into SPUR.

Faced with over 50 per cent drop in orders, Kinergy had to lay off 20 per cent of its staff at the start of 2009. The equipment maker said it would have had to lay off more, if not for the SPUR programme.

David Loh, vice president of Kinergy Ltd, said: "If business continues to stay poor, in order to save costs, we may have to lay off (more) workers. But the SPUR programme, with this funding from the government, helps us to subsidise part of these expenses."

Kinergy hires 150 workers and has already sent 120 workers for training under SPUR. A total of 1,800 firms are participating in SPUR and two-thirds of these companies are small firms like Kinergy, with less than 200 employees.

About a third of SPUR trainees – or 36,000 people – are professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs). To specifically help this group, the number of courses available in the programme has been widened.

With over 40 professional conversion courses, about 2,600 PMETs have managed to find new jobs through SPUR. But 27,000 people are still looking for work.

Although there are some 30,000 jobs on offer at the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), matching these jobs to the unemployed is a challenge.

Minister of State for Trade & Industry and Manpower Lee Yi Shyan said: "For our workforce to be resilient, they have to have an open mindset. In the IRs for instance, they actually expected more Singaporeans to respond, to come forward, but the numbers are really not to their initial expectations."

With unemployment rate expected to remain high in the second quarter, workers may have to be less fussy.

Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong said: "US unemployment rate has risen to 9.5 per cent, so I think it is important for us to focus our efforts on helping companies save jobs and helping the unemployed find jobs, rather than to think about green shoots prematurely."

Mr Gan added that it is hard to predict if a second wave of retrenchments will come as this depends on companies' performances beyond July and August.

The government had budgeted S$650 million for the SPUR programme and so far, S$210 million has been committed.


- CNA/yb/so