S$12.5m fund to draw talent to public transport sector

SINGAPORE — To attract and develop talent for the public transport industry, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) today (Nov 9) launched a S$12.5 million fund for the development of industry-relevant programmes, sponsorship of study awards and setting up of new training facilities, such as laboratories and simulators.

The fund will be disbursed over the next three years. Among other objectives, the LTA aims to attract between 800 and 1,000 technicians and engineers to the rail industry. From next year, the authority will also embark on a branding and promotion exercise — in the form of career talks, fairs and internships — to create awareness and boost the image of the rail and bus sectors.

Announcing the fund, Senior Minister of State (Transport) Josephine Teo noted that the length of Singapore’s rail network would double to about 360km by 2030. London and New York took about a century to achieve a similar feat while Singapore is doing it “in less than half the time”, she said.

“Such an ambitious expansion must be supported by an equally determined effort to build up the core of local talents needed to design, develop, operate and maintain a rail system that is not just comprehensive but highly reliable,” she said. “Indeed, we expect the rail sector to add thousands more engineers and technicians to supplement the nearly 7,000 to 8,000 existing staff that we already have. And I will not be surprised if we doubled our rail professional workforce over the next 15 years.”

The LTA, Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) and public transport operators will be leading the initiatives tapping on the development fund. As part of the initiatives, diploma graduates and mid-career professionals can enrol in the Singapore Institute of Technology’s flagship programme in sustainable infrastructure engineering. The programme focuses on rail systems and offers participants the chance to work for at least eight months with the rail operators to allow them to apply their classroom knowledge at the workplace.

In April, the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) also launched the Higher NITEC in Rapid Transit Engineering programme which offers structured classroom and on-the-job training. Ms Natasha Nur Izzati Bte Tahir, 18, a final year student pursuing the course, is in the tenth week of an internship with SMRT. She said that the work stint provided a steep but useful learning curve. Adding that she hopes to carve out a career in the public transport sector in future, she said: “Sometimes there are so many things to memorise, but (it is important) to know because (the job) is high (in) risk and (requires) high responsibility.”

The fund is also expected to disburse up to about S$2 million each year in study awards and training grants for about 450 students and professionals taking up railway engineering-related programmes. Applications will start from next year.