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SINGAPORE: Half of 162 companies surveyed by the Singapore National Employers Federation said they plan to make use of the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) scheme to retrain workers and cut costs.
Since the S$600 million SPUR scheme was implemented on December 1, at least 40 companies have signed up for it, committing over 2,500 workers to training. They are mainly from the manufacturing sector and are the larger companies.
Uptake among small and medium enterprises has been limited.
Heng Chee How, Deputy Secretary-General, NTUC, said: "There is also nothing to stop a small company from taking advantage of SPUR, just like the bigger ones would. The advantage inherent in SPUR is really a solid training subsidy, training fee subsidy for sending the worker to training. So you essentially pay one-tenth the cost. And then there is the absentee payroll."
However, absentee payroll - which ranges from S$6 to S$6.80 an hour - has limited appeal for many companies who employ skilled degree holders.
Many in the banking and finance industry, which is bearing the brunt of the economic storm, feel that the courses currently offered under SPUR do not match their skill set.
Associate Professor Annie Koh, dean, Executive and Professional Education, Singapore Management University, said: "This is a very different market from the Asian Financial Crisis. Now we have moved upmarket, so a lot of our blue collared workers are getting the right jobs, but our white collared workers were not being reinvented.
"So this current crisis is a wake-up call for our service sector. So some of our white collared workers should now go deep, go specialised. We had too many of our degree holders coming up into service jobs that have generic skills. General skills will not equip you going forward."
There are currently 43 existing Continuing Education and Training Centres and another 10 will open by the end of next year.
Analysts believe the 10 new centres will focus more on offering specialised courses for white collared workers. Currently, the centres focus more on offering courses for rank-and-file workers. - CNA/vm
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