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SINGAPORE: Two new campuses for continuing education and training (CET) will be established, offering quality adult training that is on par with what is being offered by the Institutes of Technical Education and polytechnics.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had announced the setting up of the centres in his National Day Rally speech on Sunday night.
Singapore has learnt from previous downturns, and unionists said measures were implemented quickly to save jobs this time round.
Nominated MP and union leader Terry Lee said: "The best welfare is to have a job. Once you have a job, you have the social safety net which is very critical to workers."
In addition, training infrastructure has been put in place.
Deputy secretary general of NTUC, Halimah Yacob, said: "What is important for workers is to stay on course. Those who have jobs continue to stay and re-skill. Those who don't (have a job should) quickly get assistance from e2i and get back into the labour market as soon as possible."
Unions said the pace of economic change will pick up, creating more quality jobs. Thus, the two new CET centres will help prepare adult workers to fit into the new economy.
Ong Ye Kung, chairman, Employment & Employability Institute (e2i), said: "The hardware is now secured, we have the land to build (the centres). But now is the software, what goes inside the services. We have to include many things we are currently doing from career coaching to training, to job fairs, to assessments and tests."
Employers and businesses also welcomed the prime minister's announcement that the schemes announced to help workers and employers tide over the economic downturn will be reviewed at the end of the year.
The Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) said both the Jobs Credit scheme and Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) have been effective to help its members to cut costs and save jobs. This was shown in a July survey of 225 companies carried out by the SNEF.
Stephen Lee, president, SNEF, said: "Different companies used the Jobs Credit scheme for different purposes. About half of them used it to defray business costs. Another thirty per cent of the respondents were using the money to help training of their employees and others had also used the money as a means to save more jobs, therefore delaying retrenchment."
SNEF said the Jobs Credit scheme is a useful tool that benefits directly the bottomline of a company.
- CNA/yt
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